Six things we can do now to keep women safe online

Women are less likely to protect themselves online because current safety advice is not inclusive of their needs, despite them being more at risk from cyber abuse and threats than men.

The online abuse of women is an increasingly serious problem – with one in five women experiencing harm online. While the UK government’s recent Online Safety Act commits to tackling online violence against women and girls, the solution is not straightforward. Prevention, training and education for women are essential. However, as our research recently identified, there is a gender gap in accessing online safety advice and technology. Men are more likely than women to engage and get informed about security and privacy technologies aimed at keeping them safe online.

To investigate this gender gap, we conducted a survey asking more than 600 UK adults (approximately 50 percent women and 50 percent men) about their preferred online privacy and security methods. Respondents indicated their preferred approach to keeping informed about online safety, with options including formal training from official bodies, semi-formal advice from webpages, downloading and using cyber safety technology, and getting informal advice through word of mouth from family and friends.

The findings revealed a significant difference between the way men and women access online safety advice. 76 percent of women say their go-to approach is asking their family and friends, compared to under 24 percent of men, whilst 70 percent of men seek this advice from online sources compared to only 38 percent of women.

While guidance from family and friends is not necessarily risky, there is no guarantee these ‘advisors’ have the skills to provide the appropriate information and enable learning. In contrast, the trusted sources of digital safety advice is not reaching the majority of women.

The study also found that women are more likely to rely on simple or built-in online protections such as privacy settings, security software updates and strong passwords. By contrast, men participating in the study appeared to be more fluent with a wider spectrum of protection methods, including more sophisticated technologies such as firewall, VPN, anti-spyware, anti-malware, anti-tracking, and multiple factor authentication.

We suggest a number of recommendations for researchers, technology developers and providers, online safety advocates and policymakers to consider, to make digital safety protection more inclusive of women’s needs.

Supporting in the community

Community Support NGOs have in-depth, first-hand experience of safeguarding women’s online safety. They are often the first point of call when women encounter abuse or cyber attacks, and offer support for various problems women face. These “informal” community-centred support methods are more effective for women – as they offer face to face advice from a person, which, as our research suggests, works well for women who prefer word of mouth advice. We therefore need to actively support these NGOs with the tools, resources and skills to reach all women.

Making online advice more accessible

We need to re-vamp online safety advice so it makes sense to people in their day-to-day, rather than putting them off with inaccessible jargon. We need to prioritise certain crucial pieces of advice to communicate, and provide this consistently across all online sources that people use most often, such as search engines, online reviews and recommendations, technology company adverts, social media including YouTube and X, and online forums.

Tailoring advice to scenarios faced by women

Unfortunately women disproportionally face many specific threat scenarios, such as intimate image abuse, cyberflashing and coercive behaviour including intimate partner violence. Safety advice, in response to these harms, is usually provided across the websites of NGOs who support women but we need this tailored-to-abuse-type advice more broadly across the online sources mentioned above.

Developing safe online spaces

Safety advice in response to Online Violence Against Women and Girls is often embedded in the support package given to help victims recover from abuse and trauma, via NGOs. We should develop new online spaces for communities of women who’ve experienced abuse to share advice and support for digital safety. This would provide emotional support and trustworthiness in situations where complex harms have taken place, enabling women to help women in an open and accessible way.

Empowering women and girls with the right skills

We should be focusing ensuring women and girls have the right digital skills to comprehend and action online safety protocols, offering training where required. We should be designing advice and technology that anyone can use to gain optimal protection, irrespective of their skill level, and without a cost attached.

Analysing risks before releasing new technologies

We need multi-stakeholder engagement and discussion assessing the possibility of gender-based online harm from new technologies. This should take place before they are openly put into public use, rather than after they have been misused to harm specific users such as women . This should involve dialogue and collaboration between the government, Ofcom, industry, Online Platforms, NGOs, and research institutions. An obvious example is the need to consider and address the impact of AI-embedded public platforms before misuse occurs.

With online safety considered a social good and its equity advocated by international human rights organisations, we need cooperative action to bring about greater gender equity in online spaces. This requires re-envisaging the current models of providing advice online that don’t currently best serve women, so that we can make the online experience safer and fairer for everyone.

Dr Kovila Coopamootoo is running a workshop at the 20th Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS 2024) on 11 August 2024.

The 'Gender, Online Safety, and Sexuality Workshop (GOSS)' aims to foster community around the study of online safety through the lenses of gender and sexuality. It will include a keynote address, lightning talks, and small and large group discussions.