CPWO responds to the Women and Equalities Committee consultation

The Centre for Protecting Women Online has recently responded to the Women and Equalities Committee’s call for evidence on the manosphere and online content relating to misogyny. The consultation sought to identify the prevalence of misogynistic attitudes and behaviours, how social media content and influencers contribute towards these attitudes, and what strategies and interventions need to be implemented to tackle misogyny.   

Feminist theory explains misogyny as a range activities from hostility towards women to physical, psychological and systemic violence against them. Misogyny can include, but is not limited to, degrading comments, threats and the spread of regressive views. Technology plays a significant role in reinforcing and spreading these attitudes and behaviours, with increasing prevalence observed among younger people across both online and offline environments.  

Prevalence  

Misogynistic language is commonly used by young people, whether this be in an educational setting or online. Whilst there is, of course, misogyny prevalent in other sectors, CPWO focused on the impacts of online misogyny, whilst citing a 2024 study from Unison on misogyny in schools.  

This study highlighted the instigation of sexual harassment as well as ‘sexist’ language from male pupils towards female students and staff. The report included quotes of what teachers had witnessed, this ranged from male pupils inappropriately touching female staff members, playing games such as ‘rape touch’ and making comments on how ‘women belong in the kitchen’ or ‘women should dress sexy for men’. However, there was also instances of gender-stereotyping from male staff members. A quarter of respondents had witnessed this, with one female teacher quoting they had been told by a male pupil ‘they could not use power tools because she was a woman’, and ‘she was too emotional’ whilst using the same tone and strategies as those of male colleagues. As technology becomes more integrated into the daily lives of young children, it can be expected that these behaviours and attitudes will only intensify.  

Farrell et al analysed 6 million posts across 300 thousand conversations on Reddit between July 2011 and December 2018. These posts were uploaded by communities such as Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW) and IncelTears. MGTOW was created as an anti-feminist and extremist violence movement, whilst IncelTears was developed for individuals to share screenshots of misogynistic and sexually violent content created and shared by Incels. IncelTears was found to contain the most sexually violent content whereas MGTOW showed the highest percentage of hostility and physical violence towards women. The results validated existing feminist theory that violence and hostility aimed at women was increasing in the online sphere.  

Online content and algorithms 

The glorification of misogynistic content creators, such as Andrew Tate, is detrimental to young people’s views of themselves and others, ultimately impacting their understanding of healthy relationships. Women’s Aid found children and young people who were exposed to misogynistic online content were almost five times more likely to believe physically hurting someone was acceptable if you apologised after. The normalisation of these attitudes and behaviours is extremely dangerous for women and girls’ safety both online and offline. 

Vodafone, in 2024, released a campaign to highlight the use of AI algorithms to promote harmful content to young children. It was reported that six in ten boys between the ages of 11 and 14 have been subjected to content promoting misogyny and violence. These young children were exposed to harmful content within thirty minutes, on average, with one in ten boys seeing misogynistic content in as little as 60 seconds. The majority of this content was unsolicited, with the users interacting with content related to fitness or gaming. Regardless, this resulted in algorithms pushing misogynistic and other harmful content.  

This was further evidenced in a study by Regehr, who analysed TikTok videos and the gamification of misogynistic content. And again, by Baker, but with YouTube Short videos. Andrew Tate was the most recommended male influencer by both TikTok and YouTube Shorts. The impacts of algorithmic pushing to women and girls’ safety is alarming and needs rectifying for a safer space both online and offline.  

Financial gain 

Content creators and companies are those who financially benefit from online misogyny. Content creators are often paid for engagement; however, some offer online courses or ‘life coaching’. For instance, Andrew Tate offers a membership to ‘Hustler’s University 4.0’ for a fee of £37.23 at the time of writing. Even with the current legal issues he is facing, his fourth venture has not been deplatformed. One of the frequently asked questions on Andrew Tate’s website is whether there is an age limit to becoming a member, there is not. This highlights the extensive range of his target audience, notably including young people who are impressionable. It is quoted there are over 220,000 members in the community, indicating a high income from this site alone.  

Social media platforms, such as X, will benefit from having these creators on their platform. Since Elon Musk has taken over, X has reinstated numerous banned accounts leading to high views and more interaction with targeted ads. The Centre for Countering Digital Hate analysed Tate’s online views since being reinstated and the estimated revenue ad accumulated by this interaction. At the time of the research, Tate had almost 35 million daily views resulting in an estimated ad revenue of over $12,000,000. Of course, both Tate and X will benefit from this revenue. This highlights how profitable online misogyny is and how it attracts a substantial following.  

The porn industry follows a similar pattern; there is a substantial revenue from targeted ads deriving from algorithm pushing. Aylo is a company which owns many popular pornographic sites such as PornHub. The combination of these sites has an estimated annual revenue of $347.4M⁶⁰, with a significant portion of this being made from ad revenue. If online misogyny and other harmful gender-based violences are trending, the algorithm will push videos and other ads relating to this, meaning profit occurs from these trends. This will also heighten the normalisation of violence towards women.  

Strategies and interventions 

The Centre compiled a short list of recommendations that could assist the prevention of online misogyny. The first was the regulation and adaptation of algorithms used to push specific harmful content. Ofcom previously released guidance to ensure companies were using algorithms in a way that was not harmful to young people. This is clearly ineffective, as evidenced by studies mentioned above. The swiftness of harmful content being pushed is very concerning and unbelievable. Social media providers need to be held accountable for the systems they are developing. 

Wide-scale research needs to be funded to fully understand the scope of misogyny and how it can be effectively prevented. However, research of who is pushing online content, what the benefit is for them, and the intentions of content creators promoting harmful content. Research conducted should take an intersectional approach to capture a wider extent of impacts, prevalence and perpetrators. Following this, policies and additional measures can be shaped and refined.  

Education and awareness need to occur within multiple sectors. Funding should be provided for adequate teaching of online misogyny and other forms of VAWG in schools. This will ultimately lead to young girls being able to identify these issues and access appropriate support whilst, hopefully, allowing young boys to reflect on their behaviours towards women.  

Misogyny, both online and offline, remains a growing global concern for women and girls. Effective strategies need to be adopted to combat these harmful attitudes and behaviours to deter violence targeting women and girls.  

The full call for evidence response can be found here - Open Research Online 

Authored by Iona Black on behalf of the Centre for Protecting Women Online