Geneva — UN Women and partners published a study on Tuesday that found that more than two-thirds of female journalists, human rights defenders and activists reported online violence, with more than 40% of them saying they had faced real-world attacks linked to digital abuse.
The report is entitled “The turning point” It focuses on the rise in violence targeting these women alongside the rise of social media and artificial intelligence and draws on input from more than 6,900 human rights defenders, journalists and activists in 119 countries.
The study, conducted by UN Women, the UN agency working to promote women’s rights, gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, follows a similar report issued by the UN cultural and education agency UNESCO in 2021 that highlighted the issue.
“Online violence against women has become a growing global crisis,” UN Women said. “What starts on screen can quickly lead to harassment, intimidation and even harm in the real world.”
About 41% of participants said they had experienced offline attacks, abuse, or harassment that they linked to online violence in the forms of physical or sexual assault, stalking, verbal harassment, and “bashing.” tactic To get authorities to respond to an address by making false allegations of violence occurring inside.
Women writers, influencers and social media content providers who focus on human rights are often affected by such online violence, through the use of new tools such as fake images or manipulated content, according to the study prepared with partners such as the European Commission.
Lead researcher Julie Posetti said the number of instances of real-world harm linked to online violence against female journalists has doubled over the past five years, with 42% of respondents in 2025 identifying “this dangerous and deadly trajectory.”
The authors call for stronger laws and better monitoring to identify technology-related violence against women, more accountability for tech companies and increased efforts to amplify the voices of men and others to speak out against such practices.
“Women who speak out for our human rights, report on the news or lead social movements are targeted for abuse aimed at shaming, silencing and removing them from public debate,” said Sarah Hendricks, Policy Director at UN Women. “Increasingly, these attacks don’t stop at the screen, they end at women’s front doors.”