A Commitment to End Online Violence Against Women
As the COVID-19 pandemic increases the time people spend on the internet, we’ve seen online violence grow as a significant threat to women globally — and it continues to increase. In fact, when women and girls have access to the internet, they face online violence more often than men through a continuum of multiple, recurring, and interrelated forms of gender-based threats, according to UN Women.
A recent Jigsaw study, in partnership with the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), surveyed women from the 51 most online-populated countries to better understand the prevalence and impact of online violence against women on a global scale. We found that 85% of women reported witnessing online violence, and nearly 40% have experienced it personally.
One of the most common threat tactics used against women is cyber-harassment (also referred to as online harassment), or repeated behavior using textual or graphical content to frighten and undermine self-esteem. Underrepresented groups, ethnic minorities, and public figures — including human rights activists, political leaders, journalists — receive a disproportionate number of toxic comments when they engage in online conversations. This creates a chilling effect on the participation of women in politics and society.
Today, Google is proud to join a number of other technology companies like Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok in joining the World Wide Web Foundation’s commitments to end online gender-based violence on social media. These commitments are part of a broader effort, led by UN Women’s Generation Equality Forum, to propel action on gender equality, including gender-based violence.
The World Wide Web Foundation recently brought together 120 experts from tech companies, civil society, academia and governments across 35 countries for a series of workshops on the topic. These workshops have been developed using research and design thinking to help create new technology that tackles online abuse, and involved targeted women who shared their experiences and took part in developing solutions.
In line with the Web Foundation commitments to improve curation and reporting experiences, Jigsaw is experimenting with technology that could help women (particularly female journalists, politicians, activists and human rights defenders) navigate instances of targeted, coordinated harassment online — by documenting and taking action on the harassment they receive across multiple platforms. These efforts leverage Jigsaw’s long-standing investment in user experience research and machine learning technology that can help detect toxicity in online comments and measurably reduce toxicity across online platforms. We’ve worked closely with many of the organizations that have participated in the Web Foundation’s working sessions on the topic, as well as public female figures targeted by online harassment, in order to incorporate their ideas and feedback into our work.
Our research has also inspired a global online digital safety program for women, in partnership with Google Women Techmakers, which aims to ensure the security of women around the world, by providing them with necessary skills to protect themselves against violence — both online and offline. The program provides training and hackathons, led by technology experts and developers, and includes free products that can help manage harassment, like Jigsaw’s Perspective API and Google’s Advanced Protection Program, but also fosters the creation of new tools designed for women’s safety needs.
Since 2020, Women Techmakers and Jigsaw have brought together hundreds of women technologists from across the globe, including in EMEA, APAC, the Americas and Africa. Starting this summer, we will host a series of virtual trainings and hackathons that focus on new technology to directly reduce violence against women online. We look forward to sharing our progress, and we will continue to work closely with leaders in civil society and the human rights community to uphold technology as a force for supporting women’s rights around the world.
By Patricia Georgiou, Head of Partnerships and Business Development, Jigsaw