Women4Cyber North Macedonia launches a survey and digital risk map to expose the harassment and online violence women face every day
Women are increasingly building their lives, careers, and communities online, yet for many, the digital space remains a place of fear rather than freedom. Women4Cyber North Macedonia’s Digital Spark project, “Women’s Digital Risk Map and Youth Cyber Ambassadors for Safe Digital Democracy,” is changing that narrative by listening to the women who experience it every day and documenting their experiences. Through a fully anonymous survey on digital risks and online safety, the project is putting data behind stories that have gone unheard for too long, and turning those stories into a publicly accessible Women’s Digital Risk Map.
Women4Cyber North Macedonia is a chapter of the pan-European Women4Cyber Foundation, a non-profit organization committed to closing the gender gap in cybersecurity and making the digital world safer and more equitable for women. Our Digital Sparks project is implemented with the support of key partners: the CIVICUS Digital Democracy Initiative (DDI), the Metamorphosis Foundation, and Techsup, as part of the Regional Support Mechanism EECA project.It was made possible through the Digital Spark grant scheme.
At its heart, the initiative is built on a simple but urgent conviction: you cannot solve a problem you have not yet measured. We set out to measure it.
The name Digital Spark captures what we hope to ignite: a broader, evidence-based conversation about women’s digital safety in North Macedonia, one that women themselves can own and lead.
A problem too big to ignore
Online harassment is not a minor inconvenience. It is a systemic barrier. Women who speak up professionally, politically, or personally online are disproportionately targeted with threats, doxxing, cyberstalking, image-based abuse, sextortion, impersonation, and coordinated attacks. Many go silent. Many leave platforms entirely. And most never report what happened, either because they do not know how or because they do not believe it will make a difference.
In North Macedonia, this problem is compounded by a significant lack of local data. Global statistics on digital harassment exist, but they rarely reflect the specific cultural, linguistic, and institutional context that shapes how women in our country experience and respond to digital threats. Without that evidence, it is nearly impossible to advocate for meaningful change with institutions, employers, or policymakers on the ground.
Digital harassment carries a cost that extends far beyond the individual. When women are silenced online, communities lose their voices, and public life loses the full participation of half the population. Addressing online gender-based violence is not only a matter of personal safety. It is a matter of democratic urgency.
What Digital Spark set out to do
The project has four interconnected goals: to generate evidence on the prevalence, types, and impact of digital risks women face; to surface patterns by region, age, and online role; to compose a publicly accessible Women’s Digital Risk Map that visualizes trends without exposing individuals; and to support evidence-based policy recommendations on online gender-based violence.
The survey is fully anonymous. It collects no names, no email addresses, no IP addresses, and no identifying information of any kind. Respondents can share their experiences across categories such as online harassment, hate speech, cyberstalking, deepfakes, sextortion, and coordinated attacks, with all responses stored and analyzed under strict privacy and GDPR-aligned standards.
Equally important is a secondary goal: building awareness through participation. For many respondents, completing the survey may be the first time they have been formally and seriously asked about their digital safety. That moment of being asked and taken seriously truly matters. The findings will directly inform a policy brief and the training of Youth Digital Security Ambassadors who will deliver digital safety education to communities across the country.
For the team at Women4Cyber North Macedonia, the process of launching this initiative has been a profound learning experience. The most successful element so far has been the collaborative design process with local women’s rights and journalism networks. Through these deep community conversations, the project uncovered that the willingness to speak up is incredibly high; women do not want to stay silent: they simply have lacked a safe and trauma-informed space to share their realities.
Who this project is for
The survey is open to all women aged 18 and older residing in or originating from North Macedonia who are active in digital public spaces. Special attention is given to reaching women from rural areas, ethnic minorities, and women with disabilities — groups that often face the most digital risks, yet they are the least represented in existing data.
Outreach is conducted through trusted intermediaries: women’s rights organizations, journalism networks, student associations, and Youth Digital Security Ambassadors. The survey is available in Macedonian, and the form has been designed to be accessible regardless of technical background. A “Need support?” link and a clearly labeled exit button appear on the page, reflecting the commitment to trauma-informed, participant-centered design.
The beneficiaries extend far beyond those who fill out the survey. Every woman who benefits from the policies, programs, and conversations that this data helps shape is part of the story Digital Spark is telling. And every institution or policymaker who takes these findings seriously becomes part of the solution.
At the time of publishing this article, the survey had been going on for three days and had already received around 30 responses.
The project invites all women in North Macedonia to participate in the survey and make their voices count. Complete the survey here.
Authors:
Leona Simeonova, Ljubica Ristovska, Nadica Naumova & Ljubica Pendaroska Krstevska
Women4Cyber North Macedonia
