Gendered Violence in the Digital Space

Digital platforms have reshaped how people connect, form identities, and navigate relationships. For millions of women and children, these same spaces have become sites of serious harm. Online harassment, non-consensual intimate imagery, AI-generated deepfakes, and algorithmically amplified hate have made gender-based violence one of the defining public health challenges of the digital age. Yet the institutions best positioned to respond have been slow to treat it as such.

As the nation grapples with the scale of this harm, and as new technologies continue to outpace policy and prevention efforts, there is an urgent need to bring together researchers, practitioners, and technologists who can confront digital gendered violence with the same rigor the field applies to its most established public health threats.

Join the Center on Violence and Health at WashU Bursky School of Public Health for a half-day symposium, Gendered Violence in the Digital Space, exploring how digital platforms produce, sustain, and scale gendered harm, and what can be done to stop it. Through keynotes and panel discussions, national leaders in law, public health, technology, and prevention science will examine the vectors of digital harm and the tools, platforms, and policy frameworks that can make digital spaces safer.