Discriminatory, sexist and abusive language in social media is one of the main reasons cited by women leaders in opting out of Georgia’s rough-and-tumble political arena. UNDP and the Government of Sweden assisted Georgian civil society organizations in bringing this issue to the limelight, offering tools to uncover gender-based verbal abuse in the online space.

The report compiled by the non-governmental union “Sapari” presents a set of indicators classifying types of gender-based abusive language and providing an important systemic tool for identification of the specific violations.

Based on this methodology, the non-governmental organization “Media Development Foundation” (MDF) monitored Georgian social media before the parliamentary elections 2020 and identified over 200 of the verbal abuse aiming at women politicians, such as sexist language, ageism, body-shaming and threats of sexual violence. The combined results are presented on the online platform https://genderbarometer.ge/