Based on an internal study, the European Parliament’s Committee on Gender Equality (FEMM) discussed the impact of social media on women and girls on Wednesday 19 July.
“Women and girls face a disproportionate amount of harm online compared to men and boys”, explained co-author Kirsty Park. In her view, a range of factors are involved, including “the design and the governance decisions of the platforms”, gender-targeted advertising and gender stereotyping, as well as “individual users behaviour” and “the wider context of online misogyny”.
Nevertheless, she argued, the Digital Services Act (DSA) could help to improve the situation.
Platforms will have to submit a “systemic risk assessment”, in which they will have to demonstrate that they are taking measures to mitigate a series of risks, including online violence and the protection of minors. For the co-author, not only does this force platforms to be accountable, but they could also be encouraged to set up partnerships with researchers to prove that they are tackling the issues head on.
The DSA will also enable researchers to obtain data from platforms when working on these “systemic risks”.
However, this “heavily depends” on the implementation of the regulation and the willingness of platforms to cooperate. This is all the more true because the categories of systemic risk are “very vague” and gender is not considered to be sensitive personal data.
The study therefore recommends a “gender-based review” of the legislation after 12 months, “preferably after platforms have released their risk assessments”.
More broadly, the authors call for awareness-raising on digital gender violence, the promotion of media literacy, imposing stricter moderation rules and adopting the directive to combat violence against women (see EUROPE 13221/26).
The study: https://aeur.eu/f/85y (Original version in French by Hélène Seynaeve)