Panoptical Web: Internet and Victimization of Women

Abstract

In this paper we attempt to examine the role of electronic space and its intersection with young women's lives. The article investigates the internet use/abuse of women as embedded in the power structure and the ways it reshapes gender relations and re-constructs women's victimization. In an attempt to expand our understanding of the victimological and criminological implications of the internet for females our case study focuses particularly on how young Palestinian women living in a conflict zone experience the internet, and questions whether and how the internet could become a tool for misuse, abuse and the production of new crimes that might victimize women in conflict zones. The research is based on empirical evidence collected from Palestinian college women and mental health workers. Our findings show that the internet is perceived as a contested site — although internet use reproduces masculinity and hierarchies of power and is used as a tool of further control, oppression, punishment or abuse, it also enables Palestinian women to engage in new forms of contestation, both on the socio-political and economic level.