Women are less comfortable expressing opinions online than men and report heightened fears for safety: Surveying gender differences in experiences of online harms

2024-03-27

arXiv.org

AI Summary

Online harms—including hate speech and cyberharassment—exacerbate gender inequality in digital spaces. Method: Drawing on a nationally representative UK sample (N=1992), this study employs structured surveys, hierarchical regression, and mediation analysis to systematically examine gendered patterns of exposure, perception, and behavioral response. Contribution/Results: Contrary to assumptions, men and women report comparable frequencies of harmful content exposure; however, women face significantly higher risks of targeted harassment. Crucially, fear—operating as a key psychological mediator—directly suppresses women’s political expression (comfort: 23% vs. 40% among men), image sharing, and overall platform engagement. Although women adopt safety tools at higher rates, their participation remains constrained by structural barriers. The study identifies an implicit exclusion pathway—“exposure → fear → withdrawal”—providing causal evidence and a theoretical framework for understanding how online harms reproduce digital gender inequality.

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science
• Computer Vision: Bias, Fairness & Privacy
• Natural Language Processing: Safety and Robustness

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Mitigating online harms, including harassment, spam, and fake reviews
• Social Networks and Social Media: Fairness and bias in social network and social media analysis
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Web data quality in the era of algorithmically-generated content

Abstract

Online harms, such as hate speech, trolling and self-harm promotion, continue to be widespread. While some work suggests women are disproportionately affected, other studies find mixed evidence for gender differences in experiences with content of this kind. Using a nationally representative survey of UK adults (N=1992), we examine exposure to a variety of harms, fears surrounding being targeted, the psychological impact of online experiences, the use of safety tools to protect against harm, and comfort with various forms of online participation across men and women. We find that while men and women see harmful content online to a roughly similar extent, women are more at risk than men of being targeted by harms including online misogyny, cyberstalking and cyberflashing. Women are significantly more fearful of being targeted by harms overall, and report greater negative psychological impact as a result of particular experiences. Perhaps in an attempt to mitigate risk, women report higher use of a range of safety tools and less comfort with several forms of online participation, with just 23% of women comfortable expressing political views online compared to 40% of men. We also find direct associations between fears surrounding harms and comfort with online behaviours. For example, fear of being trolled significantly decreases comfort expressing opinions, and fear of being targeted by misogyny significantly decreases comfort sharing photos. Our results are important because with much public discourse happening online, we must ensure all members of society feel safe and able to participate in online spaces.

Problem

• Examining gender disparities in online harm exposure and impact
• Investigating women's heightened safety concerns and psychological burdens
• Analyzing how online participation constraints reinforce gender inequality

Innovation

• Surveyed UK adults on gender-based online harm exposure
• Analyzed psychological impacts and safety tool usage differences
• Identified online participation constraints reinforcing gender inequality