PROTECTING WOMEN ONLINE
VALUING WOMEN IN PUBLIC LIFE IS A SURE WAY TO A MORE EQUAL SOCIETY: PROTECTING THEM ONLINE IS THE FIRST STEP It is a fact not so universally acknowledged that violence against women remains one of the most widespread, prevalent, and largely unpunished violations of human rights in the world today. This is especially true of the global community in today’s post-pandemic world. Whilst Coronavirus spread across communities around the globe, a silent pandemic raged behind closed doors; the UN estimates suggest that domestic abuse and violence towards women could have risen by a devastating twenty per cent globally over the past year. Gender-based violence affects 1 in 3 women in their lifetime, and it comes in many different forms. Online violence is not a new phenomenon, but it is growing rapidly as a continuum of the violence that women and girls face offline. As the internet increasingly becomes the modern-day forum where the digitally native live their lives, this challenge in the online world is only set to rise. The problem of online abuse is particularly acute for women in public office across the world. In the UK, for instance, research from the University College London’s Constitution Unit revealed that women Members of Parliament received an increase in online abuse twofold greater than their male colleagues, and Amnesty International UK research found that women MPs from Black, Asian and Minority ethnic backgrounds received the most abuse of all. Here in Westminster, the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Women in Parliament held a debate to raise awareness of this abuse which targets women in a very particular way, going well beyond the usual rough and tumble of political life, beyond offensive language, or passionately expressed political views. Rather, my female colleagues and I can receive very personalised threats of rape, murder, stalking, or physical violence towards ourselves or our families, simply for participating in the democracy to which we were elected, very different to the experience of most elected men. Sometimes the abuse comes in the form of trolling,
often by individuals using anonymous social media accounts. There is also ‘pile-on’ harassment, co-ordinated by mass, online groups, deliberately working together to orchestrate an online attack on an elected Member of Parliament. Above all else, what this kind of abuse seeks to do is intimidate, isolate, create fear and ultimately silence women, so that they are not able to contribute to political life freely and without constraint. The impact of this style of abuse is already affecting our democracy. Research from the Fawcett Society shows that in the UK, growing numbers of women are resigning from their existing elected positions because of the incessant hate and threats they face online. Many more are being put off standing for election in the first place. In 2019, the number of women unlikely to stand as an MP in the UK stood at 59%, compared to 74% in 2020; the picture is equally worrying in local authorities, where the number of women unlikely to stand as a councillor has also increased from 44% to 62%. Alarmingly, 69% of those surveyed said that abuse or harassment from the public or other parties stopped them from pursuing a career in politics. For these reasons, the inspiring Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians (CWP) network chose to focus and discuss this important issue in a virtual debate organised by the CPA UK Branch in March 2021, as Commonwealth Day opportunely coincided with International Women’s Day. Parliamentarians came together from Canada, Fiji, Gibraltar, Trinidad and Tobago, Kiribati, New Zealand, Pakistan, Sierra Leone, Gambia and the United Kingdom to discuss how we can best work together to challenge online harms faced by women Parliamentarians. It was clear from the contributions of each representative that women Parliamentarians face similar problems across the Commonwealth family. The session was an inspirational
Rt Hon. Maria Miller, MP was first elected to the UK Parliament in 2005 to
represent Basingstoke and has been re-elected four times. She has held a number of Ministerial roles including Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, and Minister for Women and Equalities as well as the Chair of the Women and Equalities Select Committee. Maria is a member of the CPA UK Branch Executive Committee and before entering Parliament, she worked for 20 years in marketing.
152 | The Parliamentarian | 2021: Issue Two | 100 years of publishing
