Welcome to The Leading Question, an initiative of Internews. Each month, we explore a question about the state of today’s media and connect you to the people who are shaping the answer.
This month’s Leading Question: Online violence silences women worldwide. How can we combat it?
The data paints a clear, and depressingly unsurprising, picture: according to The Economist, 85% of women worldwide have experienced at least some type of online violence. Threats of physical harm or sexual abuse, doxing, and disinformation campaigns target millions of women daily – especially those in traditionally male-dominated fields, like journalists and politicians.
It’s time to have more open conversations about online gender-based violence – and to support the brave activists who are picking up the onus of developing solutions.