Exploring Bangladeshi Young Adult Women’s Perceptions and Experiences of Technology-Facilitated Sexual Violence Victimisation

The recent surge in internet-enabled devices and social media connectivity in Bangladesh, while offering numerous benefits, may be contributing to harmful and abusive behaviour against women, a long-standing issue in the country. This study explores Bangladeshi women’s experiences of technology-facilitated sexual violence (TFSV), examining the extent and impacts of TFSV, attitudes towards it, and the victim-survivors’ help-seeking behaviour. Utilising Kelly’s continuum of sexual violence (1988), Crenshaw’s intersectionality (1989), and Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory (1979), this study analyses TFSV as a part of gender-based violence, recognising how multiple social identities and multi-layers of sociocultural contexts shape it.

This research employed an explanatory sequential mixed-method design, consisting of an online survey of 324 Bangladeshi women (aged 18–34) and 17 semi-structured interviews with TFSV victim-survivors. While TFSV is found to be highly prevalent among Bangladeshi young adult women and manifests in diverse forms, women have multidimensional attitudes towards TFSV. Quantitative data shows that women can simultaneously acknowledge the pervasiveness of TFSV to occur without trivialising or minimising its harms. The study found diverse but interconnected impacts of TFSV shaped by gender identity, level of education, place of residence, and marital status. However, it uniquely uncovers social isolation (reported by 71.2% of respondents) as the most prevalent consequence, operating as both a covert (self-isolation) and overt mechanism (social boycott) of coercive control. While seeking help, women encounter multi-level (e.g., micro, exo, macro) barriers and prefer informal support systems over formal channels.

This study contributes to understanding TFSV as a part of the broader pattern of sexual violence, providing empirical evidence of how digital technologies enable a diverse range of harmful behaviours and demonstrating links between TFSV and face-to-face violence. It offers insights into help-seeking barriers by identifying the multi-level factors influencing women’s response to TFSV while highlighting the methodological challenges and practical understanding for male researchers conducting sensitive research in conservative societies. The study recommends several policy and practice changes, including sensitive policing, victim-survivor-centred support, community-based interventions, and context-aware safeguarding mechanisms.