This post is written by Lucina Di Meco and Kristina Wilfore, co-founders of #ShePersisted, a global initiative to address gendered disinformation and online harms against women in politics.

  • The problem: Women in politics are the targets of overwhelming volumes of gendered disinformation and online abuse, designed to alter public understanding of their track records for immediate political gain.

  • Why it matters: Gendered disinformation doesn’t only discourage women from seeking political careers: it poses a national security threat, and a challenge to democratic institutions and human rights.

  • The solution: We need a new digital social contract that safeguards democracies, with human rights at its core.

"The truth is that women in politics and journalists, particularly women of colour, have been experiencing relentless, overwhelming volumes of online abuse, threats and vicious gendered disinformation campaigns."

President Biden will be holding a virtual Summit for Democracy on December 9th-10th. The summit will bring together a diverse group of global leaders in order to incentivise countries to issue commitments and launch initiatives fighting against authoritarianism and corruption and promoting respect for human rights. Additionally, it will demonstrate on the world stage the effective governance of democracy.

The Summit for Democracy offers a unique opportunity for democratically-minded governments to promote a new digital social contract, and to continue building transatlantic alliances to fight authoritarianism, and call out the role digital technologies are playing in facilitating dangerous phenomena like disinformation, hate, and extremism.

Yet, the US - and all countries committed to democratic outcomes - will be missing the forest for the trees if they fail to fully use this opportunity to hold companies accountable for the disproportionate harms that vulnerable groups, including women in politics and journalists, are targeted with.

Speaking truth to power

The truth is that women in politics and journalists, particularly women of colour, have been experiencing relentless, overwhelming volumes of online abuse, threats and vicious gendered disinformation campaigns in the forms of fake stories, humiliating or sexually charged images, including photomontages, designed to alter public understanding of female politicians’ track records to undermine and marginalize them, as well as to discourage women seeking political careers.

By building on sexist narratives, authoritarian actors are able to intimidate women in order to eliminate critics and consolidate power, therefore blocking democratic processes. Such disinformation tactics are being imported to the West, and are increasingly being picked up by both foreign actors and the far-right in Europe. Globally, there have been enhanced calls for tech regulation recently, with special attention to protecting women online, offering a unique and urgent time to act.

"The way digital media platforms are designed does not only reflect the sexism and bias against women in politics that are pre-existing in society - it increases it."

How tech threatens fair elections

In the United States, a coordinated campaign of disinformation and harassment was at work against then-Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris throughout the 2020 election cycle, disseminating lies about her record as a prosecutor and claiming she used sex to gain power — the oldest, tritest tune in the misogyny playbook.

What happened to Harris is not an exception — it’s increasingly become the norm. Online gendered disinformation attacks are a well-known tactic that illiberal actors in many countries developed to undermine opponents. Discussing the importance of Philippine journalist Maria Ressa’s recent Nobel Peace Prize win, her lawyer Amal Clooney highlighted the online attacks and trolling that women journalists get while simply trying to do their job.

Gendered disinformation pervaded the German elections as well, playing an oversized role in the character assassination of Green Party candidate for Chancellor Annalena Baerbock. Even more concerning, one of the two main groups currently behind attacks on Baerbock are from pro-Russian accounts, and the Kremlin has been known to interfere in foreign elections to cause political discord and instability in the West, to the benefit of their geopolitical and economic interests.

Sexism on the campaign trail is sadly nothing new. Yet what is new is that digital technology has made it much easier for gendered disinformation campaigns to be organised and amplified, and cheaply financed, reaching millions of people and changing the course of history. Through cross-channel repetition, coordinated sharing and means of simulating artificial topic momentum, attacks to undermine women can easily be taken to scale.

The truth is that the way digital media platforms are designed does not only reflect the sexism and bias against women in politics that are pre-existing in society - it increases it.

Tech’s role in promoting hate

Because Facebook's recommender systems are built to maximise attention, the spread of disinformation is automated for profit. Harmful narratives are boosted and artificially amplified through algorithmic preferences that make such content sticky and often viral.

The recent Facebook Files from the Wall Street Journal, whistleblower Frances Haugen’s testimony, and whistleblower Sophie Zhang’s account demonstrated the ways in which Facebook prioritises profit over protecting both users on their platforms and democratic systems.

Unless they are forced to by public outcry or legislation, digital platforms won’t do the right thing by women, as their most recent commitments at the UN Generation Equality Forum showcased. Little more than a PR stunt, these commitments have been criticized by women’s rights groups as cosmetic at best, harmful at worst.

Globally, there is growing interest on addressing gendered disinformation and online harms against women in politics, and this issue is increasingly being looked at in the context of upcoming bills in the EU, as shown by the recent #WomenTooDSA campaign, which prompted European legislators to include a risk assessment for the “right to gender equality” in the upcoming Digital Services Act. Similar conversations are happening around the UK’s Online safety Bill.

A window of opportunity

There is a small window that has opened up showing the responsibility of platforms for not acting sooner to address the harms their products cause on women, and democracy. We must take advantage of this moment by highlighting what the actual evidence demonstrates, shape the global conversation on online harms against women, linking them to the broader democracy agenda. For that to happen, we must make sure that women leaders and activists are deeply involved in the conversations on establishing new internet and social media standards and regulations, and that their unique perspectives are reflected in the Summit.

Similar to how women’s participation in peace negotiations is essential for successful outcomes, women’s leadership in designing a new digital social contract between tech companies, governments, and citizens will be key in building an online world that works for everyone.

Globally, women leaders online face relentless abuse, threats, and gendered disinformation campaigns, promoted by a lack of regulation on social media platforms. As a result, women are becoming discouraged from entering public leadership and authoritarian regimes are utilizing this deplatforming as a tool to dismantle democratic systems. The Summit for Democracy provides a unique opportunity to promote a new digital social contract that upholds democratic values and promotes women’s rights. With the Biden administration organizing the Summit and the need for regulation falling on American companies, the administration needs to take a stronger position on centring the harms of gendered disinformation while leading the creation of a new digital social contract.

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