Legal gaps and digital vulnerability of women in Paraguay

Abstract

Digital violence against women in Paraguay constitutes a growing legal problem that the State has not addressed comprehensively. The objective of this study is to evaluate how the Paraguayan State addresses digital violence against women through its legal framework, identifying its main normative and institutional gaps in order to propose reforms aimed at ensuring effective judicial protection. Based on the analysis of Law n.° 5777/2016 on Comprehensive Protection for Women and the Paraguayan Criminal Code, conceptual and structural gaps that limit the effective protection of victims are identified. The methodology was exploratory, with a qualitative approach from the multiparadigmatic interdisciplinary field, with a phenomenological-hermeneutic design and analytical scope; the temporal delimitation covered the Paraguayan territory between 2016 and 2024, evaluating, through non-probabilistic sampling, a corpus of legislation and scientific literature. The main results identify conceptual and structural gaps, demonstrating that the absence of a precise legal definition of "digital violence," the insufficient criminalization of conducts such as cyberbullying, sextortion, and identity theft, and the lack of specific care protocols generate impunity and revictimization. It is concluded that the current regulatory framework is insufficient and inadequate in the face of ICTs, which supports the imperative need to implement concrete legislative reforms to Law n.° 5777/16 and to the criminal sphere, projecting as an implication and regional model the experience of Mexico's Ley Olimpia to ensure effective judicial protection.