ICTs and Women’s Political Participation

This article by  Fjola Zlatku was first published in Albanian by Portalb.mk and translated into English by Meta.mk. An edited version is republished here under a content-sharing agreement between Global Voices an

British MP Jess Phillips describing the online attacks she has received from Elon Musk in recent days as “very, very, very tiring” will have struck a chord with many women. Powerful men trying to silence women happens so often that it rarely makes news.

From the United States to Italy, Britain, and Pakistan, female politicians are increasingly becoming victims of AI-generated deepfake pornography or sexualised images, in a troubling trend that researchers say threatens women’s participation in public life.

An online boom in non-consensual deepfakes is outpacing efforts to regulate the technology globally, experts say, with a proliferation of cheap artificial intelligence tools including photo apps digitally undressing women.

A new report has found that women in Congress are 70 times more likely to be targeted by deepfakes than men, often with sexually explicit images created by AI.

The American Sunlight Project (ASP) found that out of over 35,000 images of politicians, 26 different people have been exposed to non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII).

Out of these, 25 were women. Strikingly, one in six congress women have fallen victim to non-consensual imagery.