The Digital Self-Defence Toolkit is now available!
The PEI Coalition for Women's Leadership Launches a New Digital Self-Defence Toolkit
Tuesday, November 25, 2025
The new resource is designed to educate and provide supports on cyberviolence and other forms of technology-facilitated violence.
For Immediate Release: The PEI Coalition for Women's Leadership Launches a New Digital Self-Defence Toolkit
25 November, 2025
Charlottetown, PEI: The PEI Coalition for Women’s Leadership has launched a new Digital Self-Defence Toolkit, a resource designed to educate and provide supports on cyberviolence and other forms of technology-facilitated violence.
A new resource has been released to help communities better understand and respond to the growing crisis of online violence, more specifically tech-facilitated gender-based violence. The toolkit features clear definitions, current national statistics, testimonials from PEI, and a reporting log designed to help individuals track incidents of digital harm. Online harassment continues to affect people of all genders, but women and gender-diverse individuals experience these harms at significantly higher rates.
- 61% of women and gender-diverse people in Canada have faced gendered digital harm, compared to 53% of the general population. These numbers become even more concerning for those with intersecting identities, who face disproportionately higher levels of online abuse (Canadian Women’s Foundation, 2025).
● Young women aged 16 to 29 are nearly twice as likely to experience online harassment as young men in the same age group. Technology-facilitated violence creates real and damaging barriers to equitable representation, operating as a tool to silence, intimidate, and exclude individuals from civic discourse and public life (Statistics Canada, 2023).
● Youth aged 18 to 25 and individuals from underserved backgrounds are twice as likely to consider or engage in self-harm or suicide as a result of online abuse. These findings underscore the urgent need for accessible supports, education, and preventative tools (Canadian Women’s Foundation, 2025).
“Tech-facilitated violence is negatively impacting our democracy, in more ways than just the gender diversity of our leaders. This toolkit is one step along the path of addressing this growing issue together.” - Sarah Outram, Executive Director of the PEI Coalition for Women’s Leadership.
The new toolkit is now available for download on the Coalition’s website. Physical copies will also be distributed to libraries and a range of municipal offices across the province within two weeks' time.