DW Akademie Study Safer platforms, stronger participation
of women’s public presence as a social threat, including
during high-visibility moments (e.g., public celebrations),
where commentary frames women’s visibility as morally
offensive and politically inappropriate, thereby converting
women’s participation itself into “provocation” and rendering abuse predictable.
4.5.1 Victim-blaming discourse
The findings indicate that victim-blaming is not only an
attitude but a structured discourse that positions women
as responsible for preventing GBVO by limiting their voice
and visibility, effectively presenting withdrawal as the
“solution.” This was captured directly in the FGD evidence:
Women are told to stop speaking to
avoid problems.
FGD — Women activists
The media scan illustrates how this discourse operates in
practice, by translating “stop speaking” into a broader logic
of exclusion and conditional participation. Rather than
condemning perpetrators, comments frame women’s presence in public life as the root problem and propose restriction as common sense: “A woman’s place is in the kitchen,
not among men,” “The original role of a woman is to stay at
home,” and “I think it is better for you to devote your attention to your children and home only and leave driving to
men.” In high-visibility moments, the same logic becomes
more explicitly disciplinary, as in the December 8, 2025,
anniversary of the Assad regime fall in 2024, commentary
that framed women’s public celebration as illegitimate
and morally offensive “This victory was not meant for girls
to dance in the streets …”, effectively arguing that women
should regulate their behavior to avoid provoking backlash.
Victim-blaming also appears in sector-focused variants
that shift responsibility onto women-led civil society and
women’s rights actors, an empirical pattern flagged in the
matrix and strongly visible in the scan. Women-led organizations are portrayed as the cause of social breakdown
“home wreckers”, and public hostility is redirected from
perpetrators to women’s empowerment work. The scan
examples “Shut up, your associations of lies … all cases of
divorce … are caused by you,” and accusations of financial
opportunism and exploitation demonstrate how this discourse discourages reporting and solidarity by reframing
GBVO prevention efforts as illegitimate or corrupt.
Crucially, the scan shows that victim-blaming rarely stands
alone; it interlocks with other dominant narratives that
intensify justification for abuse:
– Foreign agenda delegitimization used to reframe
women’s speech as betrayal rather than civic participation (e.g., the “Zionists” framing in attacks documented
against public female figures).
– Threat to traditional values framing, where women’s
rights advocacy is treated as an attack on religion or
morality (e.g., the discourse around hijab and “Islamic
norms” in commentary targeting women’s rights leaders).
– Political/sectarian moral erasure, where disagreement is
recorded as disloyalty and then punished through gendered shaming and reputational attacks.
Together, these narratives legitimize violence, discourage reporting, and normalize women’s withdrawal as an
acceptable, sometimes even desirable, outcome. They
also help explain why GBVO is experienced as predictable:
when public discourse treats women’s participation as
conditional, deviant, or externally driven, abuse becomes
socially “explainable,” and therefore easier to repeat.
4.5.2 Disciplining social norms and the
erosion of collective resistance
The dominance of victim-blaming and silence-oriented
narratives reveals that GBVO is not sustained by technology alone, but by deeply entrenched social norms. By
framing violence as a consequence of women’s visibility
or expression, these narratives legitimize abuse and shift
accountability away from perpetrators.
Such discourses serve a disciplining function; they communicate that participation in public life comes with
costs that women are expected to manage privately. This
reinforces self-censorship and normalizes withdrawal as
a rational response, rather than recognizing it as a loss of
rights and representation.
The persistence of these narratives also weakens collective resistance to GBVO. When violence is individualized
and moralized, it becomes difficult to mobilize institutional or community-level responses. Challenging these
discourses is therefore central to any strategy aimed at
reducing GBVO.
36