The theme for this year’s 16 Days of Activism is End Digital Violence Against Women and Girls. At Leeds Women’s Aid, we’ve been exploring how women can be targeted through technology by individuals, often in stalking, coercive control, and domestic abuse scenarios, but we also need to draw attention to how women in the public eye are subjected to large-scale and coordinated harassment online.
Women in public roles such as journalists, politicians, athletes, actors, musicians, and influencers experience disproportionately high levels of online abuse. This can include threats of violence, sexualised degradation, doxxing (publishing private personal information), smear campaigns, and relentless trolling designed to silence or discredit them. An Ofcom report (2025) found that online abuse directed at female politicians often carried a distinctly misogynistic tone and regularly escalated to rape and death threats.
It has also become normalised for female public figures to be judged far more harshly than their male counterparts, with their looks, behaviour, or personal choices being policed by online audiences. Meghan Markle, for example, has been subjected to intense racist and misogynistic media coverage and trolling, while Greta Thunberg continues to face gendered and age-based attacks for her climate activism often criticised for her appearance or demeanour rather than her message.
This double standard is visible across different mediums. In 2022, influencer Molly Mae appeared on The Diary of a CEO podcast and said, “We all have 24 hours in a day.” Although similar sentiments have been expressed by male entrepreneurs for years, her remarks received an overwhelmingly negative and vitriolic backlash. Likewise, each year on reality TV shows such as Love Island or Married at First Sight, a female “villain” is often quickly established and disproportionately scrutinised on social media.
While the Online Safety Act requires platforms to proactively tackle illegal activity such as stalking, extreme pornography, and intimate image abuse, online trolling or gendered harassment often sits in a grey area, where harmful behaviour may not meet the legal threshold for removal. As a result, the burden frequently falls on women themselves to mute, block, or report content, placing additional emotional labour on those already being targeted.
Social media companies must go further to flag, limit, and remove harmful content, and to ensure their platforms do not enable or reward misogynistic behaviour. But this responsibility doesn’t lie with tech companies alone. We all have a part to play in challenging harmful narratives, calling out abuse when we see it, and reflecting on the impact our words and interactions can have.
Ending digital violence against women and girls requires collective action across policy, platforms, and everyday behaviour. By fostering safer online spaces, we take an essential step towards a more equal and respectful digital world for everyone.