Women and girls are experiencing a surge of violence and abuse online and the digital world has become a new front in the assault on the freedom and power of women. Being a woman online means being disproportionately at risk of abuse. When you’re a woman of colour, and a Black woman in particular, LGBTQ+ or from other marginalised groups — the abuse is often far worse. And the consequences can be devastating.

As part of our work to tackle this crisis, we convened a series of policy design workshops to co-create product solutions to online gender-based violence and abuse. 

These workshops were built upon and informed by the evidence produced in our consultation series that we held over the past year to understand the reality of the abuse different groups of women, including activists, women in public life, and young women and girls, face on tech platforms in various countries and contexts. 

During the workshops, participants worked in small groups to create product prototypes addressing specific problems, based on personas of five highly visible women with intersecting identities. 

These prototypes helped inform detailed recommendations and design suggestions for technology companies on the themes of curation and reporting, to give women more choice over what they see online, when they see it and how they see it, and to help women better manage and track their reports of abuse. 

To learn more about our innovative policy design workshop approach and our recommendations and design suggestions, read the report and visit our project website. 

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