Ofcom’s publication of draft Violence against Women and Girls Guidance

Ofcom has today (25^th February 2025) published draft Violence Against Women and Girls Guidance, proposing new measures for tech firms to tackle online harms against women and girls. The guidance focuses on four issues:

1. Online misogyny
2. ‘Pile-ons’ and online harassment
3. Online domestic abuse
4. Intimate image-based abuse

Ofcom identified nine areas where tech firms should do more to improve the online safety of women and girls’, by “taking responsibility, designing their services to prevent harm and supporting their users.” These areas include technology to prevent image-based abuse, accessible reporting tools and moderation teams trained to deal with domestic abuse.

Andrea Simon, Director of End Violence Against Women Coalition (EVAW) said:

“We campaigned for the Online Safety Act to better serve women and girls, and in response the previous government committed to the regulator Ofcom producing guidance for tech companies on violence against women and girls. This was instead of a stronger code of practice that we and a coalition of experts strongly recommended. Over a year after the Online Safety Act was passed, we are now seeing the draft guidance that sets out the additional steps that tech companies could, and should, choose to take.

We commend Ofcom’s efforts in producing this guidance and in setting out a range of measures on taking responsibility, preventing harm and supporting women and girls. However, it remains the case that Ofcom is hamstrung by the fact that the proposals are voluntary only, with no actual requirement on tech companies to put in place any of the recommended good practice. Key to this work will be the routes through which the regulator will incentivise, and track take up of the guidance. 

In a landscape where protections for users are being eroded, with a general trend of tech providers delivering the bare minimum when it comes to safety, any next steps from the new government in securing an internet that is safer and freer for women and girls must be to introduce these recommendations into a code of practice. This would give Ofcom the power to insist that measures are introduced, and the ability to enforce against bad actor tech companies who continue to prioritise profits over people.”

ENDS

Media contact

Sinéad Geoghegan, Head of Communications, sinead.geoghegan@evaw.org.uk 07960 744 502