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Protecting women and girls online is a priority for both the UK government and Ofcom. What steps are they taking and what does that mean for you?
On 25 November 2025, Ofcom published its statement and guidance: a safer life online for women and girls. This was followed on 18 December by publication of the government's strategy and action plan to tackle violence against women and girls (VAWG), a consultation on children's wellbeing online which concluded on 26 May 2027, and new legislation which includes protective measures.
Ofcom guidance on online safety for women and girls
This sets out nine areas for tech firms to improve online safety for women and girls, with a focus on safety by design and user support. The guidance supplements Ofcom's final Codes and risk assessment guidance on how to tackle illegal content and content harmful to children and sets out how providers can take action against harmful content that disproportionately affects women and girls.
What is in the guidance?
Ofcom has published:
These cover relevant parts of the Codes and provide practical examples which focus on:
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'abusability' testing to identify potential misuse of services
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working with experts on gender-based harms when designing policies and features
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greater transparency including on harms, user reports and outcomes
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prompts that ask users to reconsider before posting misogynistic abuse
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technology to detect and remove non-consensual intimate images
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stronger account security to protect user privacy
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allowing users to track and manage reports and tailor their reporting experience.
What kind of content does the guidance apply to?
The guidance applies to the following types of content (in relation to which definitions have been clarified):
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misogynistic abuse and sexual violence (replacing 'online misogyny')
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pile-ons and coordinated harassment (replacing 'pile-ons and online harassment')
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stalking and coercive control (replacing 'online domestic abuse')
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image-based sexual abuse (illegal content covered by intimate image abuse and cyberflashing and self-generated indecent images).
Where to start
The 'guidance at a glance' sets out a table of foundational steps and who should implement them with references to the relevant Codes. This is followed by a table of good practice steps recommended in the guidance. The guidance for tech companies then provides more detail around compliance steps with practical examples.
What are the nine actions?
Ofcom's safety by design approach focuses on nine actions:
Taking responsibility
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ensure governance and accountability processes address online gender-based harms
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conduct risk assessments that focus on harms to women and girls
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be transparent about women and girls' online safety.
Preventing harm
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conduct abusability evaluations and product testing
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set safer default settings
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reduce the circulating of content depicting, promoting or encouraging online gender-based harms.
Providing support
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give users better control over their experiences
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enable users who experience online gender-based harms to make reports
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respond appropriately when online gender-based harms occur.
These actions are supplemented by a range of good practice steps.
Government action plan
On 18 December 2025, the government published its Violence against women and girls (VAWG) strategy and action plan. The section of the action plan which covers online spaces commits the government to a variety of OSA-related actions (many of which had been previously announced) including:
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Building on the OSA and utilising the government Statement of Strategic Priorities (SSP) for online safety to embed safety into platform design with a specific focus on protecting women and girls. Ofcom is required to take the government's priorities into account as it exercises its regulatory functions.
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Introducing new criminal offences including criminalising strangulation pornography, cyberflashing, and sexually explicit deepfakes, and making at least two of these priority offences under the OSA.
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Banning nudification apps and similar tools.
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Exploring routes to ensure that intimate images that are taken, created or shared without consent are removed online.
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Introducing new legislation to ensure AI models cannot assist VAWG offending with a testing defence to allow AI developers and child protection agencies to carry out safe and secure testing of AI models.
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Assessing whether priority content that is harmful to children should be upgraded to primary priority content under the OSA.
Growing up in the online world – a national consultation
On 2 March 2026, the government published a consultation on further measures to protect children online. While this is aimed at protecting children in general, not just girls, the results are likely to feed into further protective measures which are aimed at tackling harms predominantly experienced by girls. In particular, it will inform secondary legislation planned to plug perceived gamps in the OSA.
Crime and Policing Act 2026
Many of the issues which disproportionately (although not exclusively) impact women and girls are covered in the Crime and Policing Act 2026 (CPA) which was finalised in May this year. The legislation introduces a range of new criminal offences and regulatory duties aimed at tackling online child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA) and related harms. These include a new offence of facilitating CSEA content online, with senior executives personally liable where their company commits the offence with their consent or connivance, as well as mandatory reporting obligations for those engaged in relevant activities. User-to-user and search services are placed under a new duty to take down intimate image content (including identical copies) within 48 hours of receiving a report, with courts also empowered to issue image deletion orders. Further new offences are created in relation to non-consensual intimate images — including taking or recording such images without consent — as well as pornographic images depicting strangulation, suffocation, incest, or sexual activity with under-16s.
The legislation also places obligations on the Secretary of State to review the role of internet service providers in verifying the age and consent of individuals appearing in pornographic content, with a report due within 12 months of the Act being passed and powers to introduce age and consent verification duties on regulated providers. Additionally, the Secretary of State is given powers to amend the Online Safety Act to address harms arising from illegal AI-generated content, including by extending CSEA reporting requirements and Ofcom's powers to cover AI-generated material, with a progress report required by 31 December 2026.
What does this mean for you?
It was already clear that online safety of women and girls will be an enforcement priority for Ofcom under the OSA, acting on clear direction from the SSP and government policy and on 8 May 2026, Ofcom published its Online safety priorities for the year ahead, reinforcing this. Plans cover reports on effectiveness of age assurance, and on trends in content harmful to children; policy work to bring recent or upcoming legislation into effect including work on new priority offences, work on implementation of the new rules on takedown of non-consensual images under the CPA, and as a result of the current consultation on children's online safety. Harmful content targeting women and girls, and intimate image abuse were confirmed as enforcement priorities.
Much of the detail will now come under secondary legislation and the government is required under the CPA to publish a variety of reports and regulations although the detail remains unclear. This means that relevant businesses will need to ensure they stay up to date with new developments and changes.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
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