Blog, Regional Feature

Gender, Power, and Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence in Jamaica

COFEM Secretariat / July 23, 2026

Digital spaces now shape how people communicate, form relationships, and participate in public life in Jamaica. At the same time, they have become spaces where gendered harm is enacted—often with a speed, scale, and permanence that exceed what is possible offline. What is emerging is not a new form of violence, but an extension of existing inequalities into digital environments. 

Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence (TFGBV) includes online harassment, cyberstalking, non-consensual sharing of intimate images, sextortion, doxing, impersonation, and manipulated sexual content. While these harms occur online, their consequences are deeply material—affecting safety, mental health, livelihoods, and participation in public life.

Understanding TFGBV requires grounding it in Jamaica’s broader landscape of violence, where, according to UN Women’s Jamaica Women’s Health Survey of 2016, 27.8% have experienced intimate partner violence, with World Bank estimates rising closer to 30–40% when underreporting is considered (UN Women, 2018; World Bank, 2023).

Violence in Jamaica starts early in the life cycle and is normalized. The 2023 Jamaica Violence Against Children and Youth Survey (VACS) shows that more than three in four young people aged 13–24 (over 77%) have experienced some form of violence in their lifetime. More than half of young women report physical violence, while over one in three (35.7%) report sexual violence, often first experienced at age 13 or younger by someone they know. Emotional violence affects over 60% of young women.

Preliminary findings from a World Bank-commissioned study on TFGBV in select Latin American and Caribbean countries indicate that over a third of Jamaican respondents reported personal experience of TFGBV. All Jamaican respondents reporting lived experience identified as women; and half of the Jamaican respondents were aged 18–24. The most common forms of harm reported included online harassment, cyberstalking, non-consensual image sharing, and sexualized digital threats. Perpetrators were often known to survivors, including intimate partners. Survivors reported primarily emotional and psychological harm. Yet formal reporting was limited, suggesting that the existence of laws and reporting mechanisms has not translated into confidence that survivors will be believed, protected, or supported. This points to a critical gap between legal frameworks and survivor trust.

From Childhood Exposure to Digital Reproduction

Technology-facilitated GBV in Jamaica should be understood as part of a continuum. The same dynamics that underpin intimate partner violence and child abuse—control, surveillance, punishment, and entitlement—are reproduced through technology.

However, the scale is now amplified as digital platforms allow harm to be shared instantly, replicated across networks, and persist indefinitely. A single act—such as the non-consensual sharing of an image—can quickly involve multiple perpetrators and audiences.

For many young people, digital spaces are not a new site of violence, but an extension of environments where harm is already present. Exposure to violence in childhood is associated with both later victimization and perpetration, suggesting that the behaviours seen online are not incidental, but learned and reproduced over time.

The implications of this are significant. When violence is experienced early in life, and repeatedly, it becomes normalized within peer relationships and everyday social interaction. In digital spaces, this normalization takes new forms—through peer harassment, non-consensual sharing of images, and the circulation of harmful content. What is often framed as “online behaviour” among youth is, in many cases, part of a broader continuum of violence that is reinforced across multiple environments.

This helps explain why TFGBV is particularly prevalent among young people. Digital platforms provide new tools through which existing patterns of harm are enacted, amplified, and sustained.

Layered Vulnerabilities for LGBTQ+ Communities

For LGBTQ+ people—particularly lesbian, bisexual, and queer (LBQ) women —these dynamics are intensified given the fact that same sex relationships are still illegal in Jamaica under the 1864 Offences Against the Persons Act. Therefore, LGBTQ+ citizens as a distinct group are not protected from violence and are largely excluded from Jamaica’s GBV ecosystem.  The Being LGBT in Jamaica national survey (2023) identifies the top issues affecting LGBT persons in Jamaica as:

  • Difficulty freely expressing sexual orientation/gender expression (83.9%)
  • Violence due to prejudice (83.1%)
  • Lack of family support (75%)

Within this same national sample [n=962], experiences of violence were widespread:

  • 83% reported verbal violence
  • 55% psychological/emotional violence
  • 37% virtual/cyber violence
  • 29% physical violence

Furthermore, 27% reported experiences of sexual violence, including rape and sexual assault, and 8% reported actual or attempted “corrective rape.” (UNDP, 2023). These conditions shape both offline and online experiences of harm and the capacity of LGBTQ+ Jamaicans to report digital abuse as well as conventional gender-based violence.  

For LBQ women in particular, the law fails to protect them and legitimizes stigma, violence and discrimination.  A study of 205 lesbian and bisexual women in Jamaica indicated that 44.4% reported experiencing sexual assault, 40.8% sexual violence, and 38.3% physical violence, with men identified as the primary perpetrators (Logie et al, 2018). Narratives describe sexual assault targeted at gender non-conformity, with women reporting being attacked because of how they dress or present, and men using sexual violence to “prove a point” or enforce heterosexual norms (Logie et al. 2018).

Digital spaces can provide connection and visibility, but also increase exposure to targeted harassment, outing, and sustained abuse. For LBQ women, TFGBV often includes threats to disclose identity, non-consensual sharing of personal information, and coordinated harassment. At the same time, violence within same-sex relationships remains under-recognized due to heteronormative assumptions in law and services. This creates a dual vulnerability of exposure to violence and limited access to protection.

The government of Jamaica made amendments to the Cybercrimes Act in May 2026 to expand definitions of online abuse and to criminalize the non-consensual sharing of intimate images (Jamaica Information Service, 2026). While these are important developments, the following gaps remain – there are no standalone offences addressing sextortion and threats to release content. There are also no clear obligations for digital platforms to remove harmful content within specific timeframes.  

More broadly, Jamaica’s GBV response system continues to face implementation challenges, including delays in justice processes, limited digital forensic capacity, and fragmented institutional coordination. For young people and LGBTQ+ individuals—who already face barriers to reporting—these gaps are particularly consequential.

Cybersecurity laws are not gender responsive and operate in parallel to domestic violence legislation. Neither pieces of legislation currently include definitions of TFGBV. Revising these laws should be part of the context in which domestic violence and intimate partner violence occurs, including within and same-sex relationships. There is also a great need for institutional strengthening and institutional coordination among service agencies. Law enforcement and judicial actors need the tools and training to respond to digital harm, while survivor support systems must be accessible, trauma-informed, and inclusive of diverse experiences, including those of LGBTQ+ communities and young people.

The VACS data highlights how early exposure to violence shapes later outcomes. It would be critical for interventions to be created that address harmful gender norms, promote healthy relationships, and support young people in navigating digital spaces.

A Question of Power and Participation

TFGBV in Jamaica raises broader questions about power and participation. If digital spaces are central to public life, then exclusion from those spaces—through harassment, intimidation, or forced withdrawal—has implications for equality itself. Where safety online is not possible or accessible, it becomes a matter of access and justice. Any kind of substantive change to the landscape of technology-facilitated gender-based violence in Jamaica will depend on whether legal frameworks, institutions, and social norms evolve together to reflect the lived realities of those most affected—particularly women, young people, and LGBTQ+ communities. 

References

This feature was written by Taitu Heron, member of COFEM’s Technology Facilitated Gender Based Violence Working Group.

I write as a Caribbean feminist researcher and development practitioner committed to dignified, rights-based solutions to complex development challenges. My work is grounded in intersectionality because research that does not count those most marginalized risks reproducing exclusion and indirect discrimination: those who are not counted are too often not considered in legal and policy change.

Gender Based Violence, Jamaica, TFGBV
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