Still unsafe: what’s holding us back on online safety for women

Abstract Online Violence Against Women (OVAW) is a persistent and evolving challenge, encompassing AI-generated sexual content, cyberstalking, sextortion, and online harassment, among other emerging forms of abuse. Despite growing scholarly and policy attention, interventions remain limited in effectiveness. This article presents findings from the Towards a Safer Web for Women (TSWW'25) workshop, held at the ACM Web Conference, which convened researchers and practitioners from computer science, law, social sciences, and civil society to examine the systemic drivers of OVAW. Through participatory methods and thematic analysis, we identify two interrelated challenges: (1) systemic failures in platform governance and public regulation that undermine accountability, and (2) socio-technical dynamics that normalise misogyny and discourage bystander intervention. Our analysis highlights how profit-driven platform incentives, algorithmic optimisation, early socialisation into harmful norms, and the persistent shifting of responsibility onto victims interact to sustain OVAW. The paper articulates a set of recommendations that emerged through convergence across disciplinary perspectives. These recommendations are significant because they reflect shared priorities across fields that typically approach the problem from divergent epistemic standpoints. We argue that such cross-disciplinary consensus identifies actionable intervention points, including: protection-by-design approaches, early educational and social interventions, and sustained cross-disciplinary and cross-sector collaboration. Addressing OVAW requires an ethical re-evaluation of algorithmic governance that moves beyond isolated technical, legal, or cultural fixes toward a coordinated socio-technical framework.