Savita Pawar (name changed), president of the female wing of the youth wing of one of the leading political parties from Yavatmal district of Maharashtra, always had a dream to serve the public and had started to work for women and youth from her district for one of the national political parties since 2017.
A few months ago, she posted a video on her social media page criticising a godman who had criticised one of the political leaders from her party. “It was my regular way of expressing my views. However, I started to receive obscene messages in the comment section and on my mobile. The language used in those texts was so vulgar. My photos with Rahul Gandhi were morphed and circulated among all local party members. Though I was experiencing a mental breakdown, I lodged an FIR, and now the case is in the court. The judge, while listening to those vulgar comments, told her reader to stop and just share that document with her. The comments were so vulgar. It caused me immense mental damage. Thankfully, I had already blocked all my family members on all my social media handles; they did not come to know about it. Otherwise, they would have asked me to leave politics,” said Savita.
Though Savita continues to work for her political party, she has stopped expressing her views on social media. She says her trolls have definitely become successful in shutting her voice, at least online.
“In India, women sarpanchs, corporators, and political workers face deepfake videos, vulgar comments, character assassination, and organised trolling on social media. And social media presence for politicians is a need of the hour. Compared to their male counterparts, the attacks against women are far more personal, sexualised, and gender-based, which clearly shows a pattern of discrimination,” said Manali Bhilare, State Yuvati President and State Spokesperson of Maharashtra, Nationalist Congress Party – Sharadchandra Pawar.
“For women from smaller towns, the impact is far harsher. They already deal with social pressure, limited support, safety concerns, and financial constraints. On top of this, they face AI-generated deepfakes, morphed photos, their phone numbers being leaked, and gender-based rumours spreading on WhatsApp, Facebook, or local social media groups for mere presence on social media or expressing their views. Such digital attacks damage their confidence and create fear, often forcing them to step back before even starting their political journey,” she added.
“In general, female participation in politics, even just as party workers, especially from smaller towns or slum settlements in urban areas, remains low due to reasons like deep-rooted patriarchy and socio-economic-cultural barriers. When they join, they often suffer from character assassination, like serious-level allegations that affect them throughout their lives. And now, that violence against female political leaders has started reducing girls from joining politics,” said Gitali V. M., a feminist scholar and also editor of Milun Saryajani, a feminist Marathi magazine based in Pune.
There are less than 10% female MLAs in state assemblies and 13% female MPs in Parliament of India. Through the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendment Acts, India has reserved 33% seats for women in local bodies since 1993. And a few states have increased that reservation to 50%. However, it is an open secret that male members, like husbands/brothers/fathers of these women representatives, call the shots in decision-making.
As per the UN 2025 report, 16-58% of women across the world have faced digital violence, and 44% of women lack legal support to fight against this violence. And women in leadership, politics, and business are at the forefront of the attack. As per Amnesty International India’s 2020 report, 95 female politicians in India received one million hateful responses on social media from March to May in 2019 ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. One in five of these responses were abusive or misogynist.
Sarika Pawar (name changed), a 20-year-old college student of BA, always had a passion to do social work. Being from a village of not more than 5,000 population in a marginalised district of Maharashtra’s Marathwada, she started to help college student girls from smaller villages to join a college at the block level. She convinced the college management to arrange transport for girls; otherwise, their families would discontinue their education. Meanwhile, she joined a leading state-level political party to solve problems of students from smaller villages that have no educational facilities, like helping with concessions in fees for poor students and helping with applying online forms for government exams.
“However, one of the male students, who was from the opposite party, had started to chat with, text, and finally started dating her. They both would meet at a bridge outside the village or sugarcane farms, where he took her private photos. Soon, he started threatening to circulate her photos among friends. Her family, after getting to know about it, beat him and made sure he deleted her photos. However, he had a backup in his mobile of his friend and continued to threaten her. The girl’s family finally married her off to a farmer in a village in one of the districts of Konkan that is 500 km away from this village. Now, nobody from the girl’s village can go that far, or someone from that village can come here. In fact, she was not even asked to attend the funeral of her own grandmother. Now she is a homemaker, abandoning all her political aspirations,” tells her friend.
Shipla Sane (name changed) from Shiv Sena (UBT) Party, from one of the blocks in Gondia district, says, “Shiv Sena party is known for firebrand leaders who give it back in the language of abusers. But still, when it comes to women who receive obscene/objectionable comments like I get it regularly, I cannot reply to trolls when the language is obscene/vulgar. I have just muted the response section so that none can comment on my posts. And that is what most of my female colleagues from my party have done. But then our reach to people gets restricted, and that definitely affects our potential success.”
Ketaki Date (name changed again), like her father and brother, was working for a national-level political party and left politics after her obscene photos were circulated for no particular reason. “Despite having a political background, I had to face it. As a girl who wants to be married, there is no way I would continue to remain in politics. Imagine how girls who don’t have a political background or financial support will dream of serving people through politics?”
Amruta Kaldate, Rural President, Rashtravadi Yuvati Congress (NCP-SP), says, “I am from a small village from Kej, a marginalised block from the backward Marathwada region of the state. If you go to any village around, you will find groups of unemployed boys sitting at the village squares or tea kiosks. They generally are on the job to find girls who are in public places, like in politics or even social work, stalk them on social media, and post obscene comments/trolling on their posts, for which they get some money from local leaders of opposition parties. This is the common scenario across India. Thus, young aspirant girls face violence on the field in villages and also digitally. And when it is at the village level, its extremely vulgar language that nobody would want to listen to.”
Amruta, though a software engineer by profession and aware of the power of social media, tells, “I work with hundreds of girls from rural Maharashtra. Though they are keen to join politics, they remain cautious about their image through their public participation or online presence. We cannot convince half of the girls to join the party for this reason. One obscene comment on their social media post, and their families compel them to leave education, jobs, politics, and just marry them off to boys they select. And this digital media, especially artificial intelligence, has been proving catastrophic for girls from smaller towns who want to be seen on social media.”
Tara Krushnamurthy, co-founder, Political Shakti, a non-partisan group of citizens campaigning for more women MLAs and MPs, said, “Patriarchy suppresses access to public places for women, and politics is about public places. Whenever women want to access public places through politics, patriarchy comes in with antisocial use, sexual abuse, rape, and now through social media. Though social media was supposed to be a democratised medium, patriarchy through violence is restricting women who are keen to be in public places. We have seen even educated ministers making statements like why women want smartphones? Social media apps/websites have regulations in place. But this is the issue of gender equality. Until that is not addressed, patriarchy will continue to harass women through all means, like even the most latest digital evolution that AI. And yes, digital violence is affecting female participation in politics negatively.”
“We receive 3-4 complaints of digital violence—women political workers and content creators from small towns facing digital violence—trolling, rape threats, doxing, circulation of nude pics made with AI. We do help them with taking down this content by writing to social media platforms like Meta. But one report/complaint to a platform like Meta does not mean that content gets removed from online completely. This content reappears on another platform and gets circulated,” said Sameer P., project lead at Meri Trustline, a helpline run by Rati Foundation working for women, children, and marginalised people who face digital violence.
“Victims/survivors suffer from severe loss of personality damage, dignity, violation of personality, and suffer from mental health issues like paranoia and anxiety. They remain in anxiety that their family members, friends, relatives, and neighbours will come to know. Many times, they stop creating content, and thus that is the end of their freedom and career,” he added. “In general, there is no awareness about legal or cyber rights among people. They don’t know how and where to lodge a complaint to remove explicit content. Besides, police are also not sensitised, as they blame victims with comments like ‘Why are you posting on social media?’, retraumatising victims. Female police officers are available to take complaints. Based on our work with police, they lack resources like lack of knowledge of English or technology to raise issues with social platforms or remove explicit content from online. Police many times also refer victims to us.”
Besides, helplines like this are limited across India, and victims or even the general public are generally not aware of such helplines. And India’s Information Technology Act 2000, to deal with cybercrime, is ill-equipped to address gender-related technology-facilitated abuse. The cyber wing of Maharashtra Police did not reply to the email requiring what measures are in place to protect women from online abuse. As gender discrimination has now gone digital, taking criminal form, young female political aspirants are either choosing not to enter the field or remaining silent on important issues due to fear of online abuse, as per many experts.
Bhilare says, “Digital harassment is not only a cybercrime; it is a structural barrier that limits women’s equal representation in politics. This is a threat to democracy. Solving this issue requires two strong actions: one, better AI-based regulation and stronger accountability from social media companies; and two, better digital awareness and cyber-safety training for girls and women at the grassroots level.”
- Varsha Torgalkar is a Laadli Media Fellow. The opinions and views expressed are those of the author. Laadli and UNFPA do not necessarily endorse the views.
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