Girls assume they will be attacked online and are no longer reporting it, according to the head of the UK’s first centre dedicated to stopping digital violence against women.
A £7.7 million hub that will carry out research to help to tackle the problem is due to open this summer. Leading the project is Olga Jurasz, a professor of law at The Open University, who has produced some of the most comprehensive research into the epidemic.
“We’re facing a barrage of online violence against women and girls. It’s no longer a new issue and what’s worse is that it’s become normalised,” she said. “Women, especially young women, assume that this will happen if they go online. They assume that they will be abused, attacked in one way or another, sent inappropriate messages or sexually explicit photographs.”
Jurasz hopes to bridge the gap between current research into preventing violence against women and the work being done to regulate the tech sector. “The two rarely meet,” she said.
Her team is recruiting from Big Tech for several placements at the new centre that aim to change the industry from within, and big players including Google, IBM and Deloitte have accepted invitations to be on the advisory board.
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Last year Jurasz released early findings from the largest survey into violence against women and girls. It showed that one in ten women in England have experienced digital hate and one in eight have been victims of online abuse that has developed into offline violence.
The survey of 7,500 adults across the UK found that young women aged 16 to 24 are the least likely age group to report online abuse, which Jurasz said was “concerning because it feeds into the idea that it is something that is normalised and to be expected”.
She warned of the “silencing effect” of online violence, when women who are attacked for expressing themselves withdraw from those digital spaces, which the research discovered happened in four out to ten cases.
Building on this work, the Centre for Protecting Women Online will examine the behaviour of the men who abuse women online and also the reactions of those who witness it. Jurasz’s research team will include experts with backgrounds in law, policing, psychology and computing, and they will present their findings to government and law makers.
Her previous study, the results of which will be presented in full next month, has already helped to inform Scotland’s Equally Safe policy to protect women and girls.
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Research England has awarded the Open University £7,730,000 to fund the project in Milton Keynes for five years. “I would love to be in a position to say that in five years’ time we will not need a centre for protecting women online because we will be safe online,” Jurasz said.
“But I am also a sceptic, and these issues are so deep rooted in societal attitudes. It is going to take some work.”
