Paper short abstract:

Digital technology opens civic space for women to reach out for justice against violence. Through use of mobile phone, women are enabled decision making against victimhood, report to law enforcement and access justice for no-more impunity to perpetrator amidst disproportionate social power-relations, earlier unprecedented in Punjab, Pakistan.

Paper long abstract:

From the notion of providing connectivity, digital technology has rendered itself to altering the civic-space available to women for accessing justice against violence. In less developed societies with disproportionate social powers, as in Pakistan, breaking-free from victimhood cannot begin unless women report. Evidence, earlier unprecedented in Punjab, shows how through use of mobile phones, victimized-women have been able to take decision to culminate victimhood, connect and reach-out to law-enforcement to report against the perpetrator. Such goes beyond connectivity to opening new space where victimized-women feel empowered to take the very first step towards justice and life-safety. The present study while deviating from earlier research work examines the role of digital technology in disembarking women from victimhood, using Multiple Indicators Cluster Survey, 2018, Punjab-Pakistan. Logistic regression is employed to a sample of 873 victimized-women. Findings present a significant positive relationship between use of mobile phones and women’s access to justice. Results further show that in patriarchal setup, where on one hand woman tends to follow a man’s perception of ‘treating a woman’ with decision to her self-safety being overruled by the violence justifying attitude of the male; woman through using mobile phone gets the very space required to reach out to justice and institutional mechanism for redressal. Besides, even if she knows the perpetrator and her own house is the assault-place where she gets further intimidated by harassment and discrimination, digital technology goes out to empowering her while closing space for perpetrator’s impunity, with direct policy implications reverberating through SDG-16&17.