While technology can empower women and girls and promote equality, it also reinforces old patterns of violence and discrimination. Artificial intelligence, for example, has made it easier to create deepfake pornography and other non-consensual, sexually explicit content. The misogynistic “manosphere” normalizes abuse and fuels gender-based violence.

Despite increasing awareness of technology-facilitated violence against women and girls, efforts to stop it confront legal, policy, and knowledge gaps. These include:

• No internationally agreed definitions and data-collection methods, making it difficult to measure, monitor, and respond to the issue.
• Existing laws that lag evolving technologies and online abuse tactics, allowing perpetrators to act with impunity.
• Weak accountability of the technology sector and ineffective self-regulation.
• Inadequate law enforcement responses and limited specialized support for survivors of online violence.
• Limited research on perpetrators and the specific experiences of diverse groups of women.
• Poor understanding of the impact of artificial intelligence.

The root causes of online violence mirror those of offline violence: gender inequality, harmful social norms, and unequal power dynamics. Yet digital platforms create unique challenges, such as cross-border jurisdiction issues, anonymous perpetrators, and weak platform accountability. Law enforcement struggles to keep up, and tools to detect online abuse are unreliable. Victims face high costs and few long-term remedies.

Action is urgent, given the speed of digital evolution. Solutions must focus on:

• prevention, including shifts in norms
• real-time responses
• stronger laws and regulations
• improved data
• partnerships and collaboration, including with women’s rights organizations and the tech sector

Above all, safer online spaces demand more coordinated action and partnerships among governments, tech companies, civil society, and communities.