Illustration of a young woman on her phone. Image by Neha Dhillon
A sponsor of an amendment to the Online Safety Bill that seeks to boost protections for women and girls fears the government will block its passage through parliament.
Lord Knight of Weymouth, a Labour frontbencher in the House of Lords said: “The people who are not in favour [of the amendment] are, broadly speaking, the government.”
Referring to the protections the Online Safety Bill already outlines for children, and other bills being debated to make sexting and cyber-flashing illegal, Knight said: “I think in the end, they may well say ‘no, we have made a decision that we’re going to protect women and girls in these ways’”.
Baroness Morgan, the Conservative peer who tabled the amendment, said that despite these proposed provisions, it was necessary for more specific measures to keep women and girls safe online.
She remains hopeful that the amendment has garnered enough support, as, “the desire to make sure that women and girls are safe online is shared across the government”.
“It’s incumbent on those of us who are in a position to do something about it, to say, hang on, we’re not going to put up with this for the younger generations.”
Research carried out by charity Refuge in 2021 revealed that 62 per cent of young women in the UK had experienced online abuse. This figure is almost double the number of older women, and six times the figure for men.
The amendment would require media regulator Ofcom to draw up a code of practice which the largest social media platforms and search engines would need to comply with.
Companies that fail to demonstrate that they are carrying out their duty of care towards women and girls would face fines, and the people in charge could be jailed.
Morgan asserted that the government wants, “women and girls [… as involved…] in our digital spaces as we do in our physical spaces. It’s really important they don’t feel harassed off certain platforms, or that the onus is on them to guard themselves against certain harmful content.”
Knight states that the amendment has now entered into the negotiation stage with the government, and that a decision will be reached in the coming weeks.
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