Whenever Rachel Watkyn’s job as a business leader thrusts her into the spotlight, she braces herself for a section of the response online: relentless comments about her appearance, misogynistic slurs, threats.
“Without doubt it’s getting worse and worse and worse,” says the founder and managing director of Tiny Box Company, the UK’s largest online gift packaging company. “If you are in the public eye, you are public bait, you are owned by them.”
As a high-profile businesswoman, Watkyn is navigating social media at a time when gender-based harassment online, particularly that targeting female leaders, is on the rise because of a confluence of cultural and technological shifts.
Data shows that online harassment is increasing across the board for internet users: research from the Anti-Defamation League, a US-based research and advocacy group, found that 22 per cent of Americans experienced severe harassment on social media in 2024, up from 18 per cent in 2023.
Women, however, are disproportionately affected. According to a 2024 UN report, misinformation and defamation are the most prevalent forms of online violence against women, with 67 per cent of women and girls experiencing it.
“It goes right back to the very early days of the internet,” says Lisa Sugiura, associate professor in cyber crime and gender at Portsmouth university in the UK. But she notes the more recent spread of “manosphere ideologies” promoted by cliques of “anti-woke” podcasters and influencers who are often critical of feminism.
The prevalence of this material means some individuals may feel validated or even encouraged to conduct harassment against women online.
“Technology is reinforcing misogynist norms”, while “anti-rights actors are increasingly using online spaces to push back against women’s rights”, says the UN report.
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On top of this, platforms such as Elon Musk’s X and Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, have relaxed their moderation policies around areas including hate speech and misinformation.
“You’re allowed to do more harassment now than this time last year — it started with Twitter [now X] and now other companies have followed suit,” says Jen Golbeck, a professor at the University of Maryland, who focuses on social media.
Meanwhile, advances in new technologies such as generative artificial intelligence have made it easier for perpetrators to carry out image-based abuse. This might include creating deepfake intimate images of a woman to discredit her reputation. A recent Oxford university study found that 96 per cent of deepfake models targeted “identifiable women”, including celebrities and social media users with niche followings.
Women in power, Golbeck says, face a “special threat” from male trolls online. At its most insidious, harassment can include bombarding women with horrific posts, including rape or death threats, or hacking leaders’ accounts to find and share intimate images of them. “It’s all about shaming, humiliating, driving women off those platforms,” says Sugiura.
This can sometimes be accompanied by so-called doxxing — sharing personal information such as a person’s address — which raises the threat that the victims could come to physical harm.
Harassment can also take a toll on the mental health of women and, in turn, their careers. “It’s not just what happens to the individual, but what might happen,” says Heidi Tworek, a professor of history and public policy at the University of British Columbia.
She notes the secondary effects on victims — for example, making them more reluctant to accept a new role over fears about what “the visibility of a promotion might do in an online world”.
While Sugiura agrees that the onus should not be on the victim to adapt their behaviour, she recommends “trying to keep your professional and personal life as separate as possible”.
But for businesswomen who might be reliant on their personal brand, this may not be possible.
“Traditionally you were a celebrity for being on the television. But now, with social media and because the most successful brands are the ones that have a person and presence as a leader, you then become a minor celebrity in your own right,” says Watkyn.
In addition to concerns about physical safety, some female leaders will lean on others — assistants or social media hires — to monitor their social media comments and direct messages simply in order to protect their mental health.
Golbeck notes that some trolls get a thrill from being blocked by people in power, as it means they have spurred a reaction.
Instead, she points to features such as Instagram’s “restrict” feature, which can, for example, discreetly limit someone’s ability to tag a victim or monitor them when they are online. “It gives the user a lot of control and power back,” says Golbeck.
Experts recommend businesswomen seek communal support, because the aim of these campaigns can be to isolate. “What we need to do is support these voices and build a strong online community they can turn to,” says Timothy Caulfield, a professor of law at the University of Alberta.
Having a plan is also key. “When it happens, you really need to react fast and not knowing where to go can throw people off,” says Tworek. “As businesswomen online, you’re going to have to decide: what’s going to be your potential protocol?”