Digital Shakti 4.0

                                                                        Digital Shakti 4.0

Blog Credit: Trupti Thakur

Image Courtesy: Google

The National Commission for Women (NCW) launched Digital Shakti 4.0, a pan-India project for digitally skilling and empowering girls and women in cyberspace.

The fourth phase of the Digital Shakti programme focuses on making women digitally aware and skilled in standing up against any inappropriate or illegal online activity. The NCW launched it in collaboration with Meta and CyberPeace Foundation.

Rekha Sharma, Chairperson of NCW, mentioned the commission’s efforts to empower women across the nation in every sphere. She stated that the new phase would prove to be a milestone in making safe cyber spaces for women. Digital Shakti is accelerating the digital participation of girls and women by training them to keep themselves safe online and use technology to their advantage. The Digital Shakti project will contribute towards fighting cyber violence against girls and women and creating the internet to be a safe space for them.

An interactive panel discussion on the ‘Safe Spaces Online Combatting Cyber-enabled Human Trafficking and Combatting Other forms of Online Violence’ followed the launch of Digital Shakti. The discussion took place to provide expert opinions from the government, industry and academia for addressing the issue of online women’s safety and provide an approach to ensure better online safety for women.

The Digital Shakti programme started in June 2018 to help women across India raise the digital front’s awareness level, fight cybercrime and build resilience in the most effective ways. Through this project, more than 3 lakh women in India have been made aware of cyber safety tricks and tips, data privacy, technology usage and reporting and redressal mechanisms for their benefit.

The program’s third phase was started in March 2021 by the NCW Chairperson in the presence of Jamyang Tsering Namgyal, MP, Ladakh and Lieutenant Governor Radha Krishna Mathur. In its third phase, a resource centre was developed under the project to give information on reporting avenues when women face cybercrimes.

Objective

Digital Shakti started in June 2018 to help women across the nation to raise the awareness level on the digital front. It is helping women in reporting & redressal mechanisms, data privacy and usage of technology for their benefits. The third phase of the program was started in March 2021 with the launch at Leh.

The fourth phase of the Digital Shakti Campaign was launched recently by National Commission for Women (NCW).

What is Digital Shakti Campaign?

The Digital Shakti Campaign is a national-level campaign that was launched in 2018 to digitally empower and skill women and girls to ensure their safety in cyberspace. Through this initiative, over 3 lakh women across India have been made aware of cyber safety measures, reporting and redressal mechanisms, data privacy and technology usage.

Why was the campaign launched?

Over the past decade, there has been a surge in the number of cybercrimes in India. A majority of these crimes targeted women. Some of the reasons behind this are prevalence of huge gender inequality and the lack of digital literacy. Also, most of the women who are victims of cybercrimes do not file complains due to the absence of support from family or law enforcement and the lack of awareness. Despite the presence of a cybercrime reporting portal to ease the complaint reporting process, many cases remain pending and unresolved. Those cases that have been resolved and disposed off were reported again within 6 to 12 months on an average. These challenges make women and girls highly vulnerable to cybercrimes.

About the third phase

The third phase of this initiative was launched in March last year. It was launched in Leh by the National Commission for Women (NCW). In this phase, a Resource Center was developed to provide information about available avenues for reporting in case a woman becomes a victim of a cyber crime.

About Digital Shakti 4.0

The Digital Shakti 4.0 aims to make women digitally skilled and aware to stand up against illegal or inappropriate activities occuring in the cyberspace. It was launched by the NCW in collaboration with the CyberPeace Foundation and Meta. It seeks to achieve the goal of making cyber space a safe place for women and girls.

The National Commission for Women (NCW) has launched the fourth phase of Digital Shakti Campaign for digitally empowering and skilling women and girls. The Digital Shakti 4.0 is focused on making women digitally skilled and aware to stand-up against any illegal/inappropriate activity online.

 

 Functions of Digital Shakti 4.0

Its functions are to:

• Review the constitutional and legal safeguards for women.
• Recommend remedial legislative measures.
• Facilitate redressal of grievances.
• Advise the Government on all policy matters affecting women.

Blog By: Trupti Thakur