Accelerating Action to End Digital Violence Against Women and Girls

As the world marks the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, feminist movements and women’s rights activists united under the ACT to End Violence Against Women and Girls Programme are raising a powerful call: to end digital violence against all women and girls!

In an era where technology shapes daily life, violence against women and girls is evolving rapidly. Digital spaces – once celebrated as platforms for connection and empowerment – have increasingly become sites of abuse, harassment, dis-information, and misogyny.

Rapid technological change is reshaping patriarchal masculinities and enabling misogynistic and authoritarian actors to mobilise violence and surveillance. A recent study found that 38 percent of women have personal experiences of online violence, and a staggering 85 percent of women online have witnessed digital violence against others. The rise of the manosphere and other harmful online ecosystems demonstrates an urgent need for stronger, smarter, innovative solutions and gender-transformative work with men and boys.

In the words of Nobel Peace Prize winner and activist Maria Ressa, ‘there is no difference between online violence and our physical world. They are one in the same. Online violence is real world violence’.

Yet even as digital spaces present new challenges, they also hold unprecedented opportunities for hope, solidarity, and transformative change.

Across the world, women and girls are harnessing technology to build feminist communities, amplify survivor voices, mobilise collective action, and reshape public narratives in ways that were once unimaginable.

Digital tools are enabling real-time reporting of violence, expanding access to lifesaving information and services, and creating platforms where people can challenge misogyny, champion equality, and model healthier norms. Innovative tech solutions – that range from evolving AI-driven safety tools to online bystander- intervention campaigns – are demonstrating that the digital world can be reclaimed and redesigned as a place of humanity.

Far from being only a source of harm, digital spaces create vital opportunities for prevention, accountability, and feminist movement-building, offering new pathways to accelerate progress toward ending gender-based violence.

To ensure women and girls are protected from online violence and to enable safe digital spaces that offer hope, solidarity and transformative change – ACT is calling on governments, donors, technology companies and communities to champion three transformative shifts:

Eradicating gender-based violence requires fully funded, fast, comprehensive
action – action that keeps pace with the digital world. This requires:

• Including digital violence against women and girls in whole-of-government national action plans, ensuring these plans are fully costed and prioritised.
• Strengthening interventions that prevent and respond to digital violence against women and girls, using technology and innovation to foster positive norms, counter misogynistic narratives, and protect online spaces from harmful ideologies.
• Expanding specialised support for victim-survivors, ensuring access to justice; protection for girls, adolescents, youth and young women in all their diversities; and tailored services for groups facing multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination.

Bold action and financial commitments are the backbone of effective prevention,
ensuring transformational change in a matter of years, not lifetimes.

Women’s rights organisations are the frontline responders, movement-builders and innovators leading solutions to gender-based violence. Yet they continue to be severely underfunded, and increasingly they are under targeted attack. Activists
call for:

• Stronger digital resilience for women human rights defenders and feminist activists, who increasingly face online harassment, surveillance, and threats.
• Increased quality, long-term, flexible funding to feminists and women’s rights organisations, allowing them to build sustainable movements, deepen community mobilisation, and expand coalitions.
• Enhanced protection and rapid response mechanisms to prevent and address online–offline violence targeting women human rights defenders.

At a time of rising backlash and targeted attacks, backing feminist movements is not a choice – it is the line between progress and regression.

Rights written into law are only realised when backed by sustained resourcing, accountable institutions and meaningful enforcement. To ensure women and girls are protected in both physical and digital spaces, activists urge:

• Adoption, enforcement and full funding of comprehensive laws aligned with global standards, including legislation that specifically addresses digital violence against women and girls.
• Strengthening institutional cultures and capacities so all actors, including police, prosecutors, and justice systems, can effectively investigate and prosecute digital crimes.
• Robust accountability for technology companies, AI, and social media platforms, requiring them to detect, assess, prevent and address technology facilitated abuse; create safe, respectful online environments free from misogyny; and face sanctions for non-compliance.

Technology companies now act as global gatekeepers of public discourse, and their unchecked power undermines States’ ability to meet human rights obligations to prevent and address digital violence against women and girls. Urgently needed are strong, gender-responsive regulations aligned with international standards to ensure transparency, accountability, and effective remedies – rather than reliance on Big Tech’s voluntary self-regulation.

Our message is clear: ending violence against women and girls requires investment, innovation, and unwavering political will.

The 16 Days of Activism is not only a moment for awareness – it is a moment for accountability. It calls us to confront the persistence of violence against women and girls both online and offline, and to recognise how deeply interconnected these harms are: abuse in digital spaces often fuels, mirrors, or intensifies the violence women and girls experience in their homes, communities, and institutions. It is a reminder of the growing dangers and harms of digital misogyny and the urgent need for broader structural transformation.

It is also a moment to find hope and solidarity in the actions of women and girls who are harnessing technology to build feminist communities, amplify survivor voices, mobilise collective action, and reshape public narratives.

By committing to bold investments, supporting feminist movements, and strengthening justice and accountability systems, the world can take decisive steps toward a future where women and girls in all their diversities live free from violence, everywhere, including online.

The time to act is now. The solutions exist. The courage to implement them must follow.

Through direct investments in feminist movements, strengthening intersectional alliances, and coordinating a shared advocacy agenda, ACT is supporting women’s rights movements as they coordinate their push for justice. The ACT shared advocacy agenda is elevating the priorities and amplifying the voices of feminist and women’s rights movements, providing a collaborative framework focused on common priorities, strategies and actions. The co-authoring organisations of this article support the implementation of the ACT shared advocacy agenda as members of a global Strategic Advocacy and Communications Working Group.