UN Transcripts — https://transcripts.un.org/ar/asset/k15/k15fwhwmct Values, Voices, and Justice in the Age of Algorithms – How Digital Norms Shape Gender Equality and Access to Justice (CSW70 Side Event) — 10 March 2026 Language: en Transcripts available through this tool are created by using automatic speech recognition and are not official records nor official documents of the United Nations. Official records and official documents are available on the Official Document System of the United Nations. --- Moderator [0:08]: Good afternoon everybody, Excellencies, colleagues, friends, welcome to the CSW 70 side event called Values, Voices and Justice in the Age of How Digital Norms Shape Gender Equality and Access to Justice. Sweener is honored to co organize this event together with Mexico. We also extend our sincere thanks to Republic of Korea for co sponsoring. Digital spaces have become powerful shapers of gender norms and social values. Platform designs, algorithm systems, content curation and online discourse determines whose voices are amplified, whose experiences are validated and whose rights are upheld. These digital norms, often invisible yet deeply influential, shape attitudes toward women's and girls credibility, autonomy, bodily integrity and participation in public life across platforms. The widespread normalization of misogynistic culture content, sexist narrative, gender stereotype and disinformation reinforces hostile and digital cultures. Constant exposure to degrading representations of women undermines equality and fuels offline discrimination and acceptance of violence. Algorithmic implication often drives such content, further embedding misogyny as a default culture script and shaping how societies understand women's behavior, credibility and values. And in the era of access to justice, these dynamics determines whether women can report violations, access legal information, document abuses or obtain remedies. Online harassment, gender disinformation and biased algorithms reinforces harmful stereotypes, trivialize and normalize violence and silences women's claims, especially those challenging well established gender norms, affecting even the judicial process. As governments and the UN system pursues inclusive rights based digital transformation and understanding how digital norms shape real world values and justice outcome is essential essential to advancing commitments under the Beijing Platform of Action, CEDAW and 2030 Agenda. This momentum also opens the doors for emerging positive pathways such as rights based digital governance and feminist tech design, stronger platform accountability and community driven innovation and gender aware judicial systems that can transform digital ecosystem into safer and more equitable spaces that actively shapes the narrative and uphold women's human rights and justice. So I would like to introduce our guest. It's a great honor to invite Her Excellency Nina Lauschen, Minister of Gender Equality of Sweden for the opening remarks. The floor is yours, Minister. Sweden · Minister of Gender Equality · Nina Lauschen [3:37]: Thank you so much, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, thank you also to Mexico and to the Republic of Korea for co hosting. As you all know, we live in a reality when digital spaces shape norms as powerfully as laws and institutions. And that means that gender equality work is as important online as it is offline. Today, women face growing risks in digital spaces. Disinformation spreads faster than facts and gender based disinformation targets women leaders, journalists, activists and human rights defenders. Its goal is to silence women to discredit their voices and to weaken democratic debate. And this is not a digital issue. It is a matter of security. Hybrid threats combine cyber attacks, influence operations and information manipulation. Gender based disinformation is part of this toolkit. No worries. When trust collapses, societies divide more easily. When women leave public life, democracy becomes weaker. Inclusive societies are harder to break. That's why gender equality strengthens resilience. AI systems also play a growing role. They are not neutral. They mirror the values built into them. And without safeguards, AI can create or reinforce inequality. In Sweden, we are taking concrete steps. My government has tasked the Swedish Gender Equality Agency with mapping knowledge on AI and gender equality across national agencies. The agency will propose capability building measures and a practical method to identify risks of gender equality inequality in AI. This is essential because AI is already influencing decisions in welfare systems, in labor markets and in access to justice. Digital norms also shape whether women feel safe to report violence, whether they are believed and whether they receive justice. Gender based disinformation undermines trust in institutions and discourages women from seeking help. It and it can even affect judicial processes when stereotypes is spread online. Sweden is also strengthening knowledge on how other groups are targeted online. The government has tasked the Swedish Defence Research Agency to map out the occurrence of LGBTIQ hostility in digital environments. We want to better understand how hostile narratives spread and how they affect the security and democratic participation of LGBTIQ people. This is why we must integrate a gender perspective from the very beginning. When designing technology, drafting regulation and building digital policies, it cannot be an afterthought. Finally, no one can face these challenges alone. AI develops globally, disinformation crosses borders and international cooperation is essential. And that is also why we are here, Sweden. We contribute through our experience in integrating human rights, gender equality, anti discrimination and broad participation into algorithm decision making. Friends, colleagues. Technology should strengthen people, not silence them. A digital future that excludes women is not a democratic future. If we build digital systems that are fair, transparent and inclusive, we build societies that are more resilient to manipulation, division and to fear. Thank you so much. Moderator [7:56]: Thank you for this strong speech and for emphasizing what Sweden is doing in this field. And your point that technology should strengthen people, not silence them, that's really important. And a digital future that excludes women is indeed not a democratic future. With that, let us turn to our panel. We are fortunate to have five outstanding speakers bringing perspective from academia, policy, civil society and the private sector. So please welcome to the stage Ms. Tabisha Gupta, Senior Research Director at Ekwemondo, Anna Corlinghill Dzombokvist Secretary General of Ekpat Sweden, Ms. Austa Johansson, Director of Women Tech in Sweden, and Mr. Vera Adoshi, Platform Safety Lead at Snap. And Ms. Kathy Martin, Executive Director, Digital Product Strategy Practice at Ernst and Young. Welcome to all of you. So, Ms. Gupta, let me begin with you. What can you tell us about digitalization and is reshaping gender norms online and how, for example, exposure to manosphere content is shaping young people's perception on gender roles and relationships? Ekimundo · Senior Research Director · Tabisha Gupta [9:32]: Yeah, thank you. Thanks for the question and thank you for giving me an opportunity to speak here today. I work with Ekimundo and we are an international nonprofit that works with men and boys for gender equality. So my remarks are going to be coming from a lot of the research that we've been doing in that space. One of the things that is popping out is that the digital landscape is not altering gender norms, it is reinforcing restrictive norms for men and women. And you brought up the word manosphere and it's very important to unpack what that is because it's actually quite complicated. About a decade plus ago, the term manosphere became a shorthand for all the kind of online spaces which were mostly male dominated, that were full of misogyny and anti feminist rhetoric. They were classified as male rights activists, pick up artists, involuntary celibates, you've heard about them as incels men going their own way. And most of them were connected by this red pill philosophy. The idea that the society is biased against men and, and that feminism has undermined traditional gender roles. Fast forward a decade later and the picture has gotten quite complex. A lot of the content that used to be in the fringe spaces has now entered mainstream spaces which are quite sometimes benign and also occupied by men and women. Our own research has shown. We did a digital scraping analysis and our research has shown that men are occupying several types of identities online. The geek masculinity, the father masculinity, the maker masculinity, the outdoors masculinity. This is defying simple classification and makes the study of the manosphere actually much more complex than originally imagined. Now let me move to your question around what are the norms that are getting reinforced online? One of the biggest ones is how the financial provider narrative that we know is tied to men's identity is pushed to the extreme. In these online spaces, the idea of success is absolutely tied with financial success. A lot of the male influencers are online talking about how rich they are and they flash their wealthy symbols like watches and cars and their homes and talk about how to make men successful only through money. Our research validates this. Men and women say that the only way to get wealthy is to get rich quick. Men and women all over the world also believe that financial provider is the main core identity of men today. These are the influencers are asking men to level up, right? And these are unattainable standards in the world in which that we live in today. So this is one norm that's being really reinforced. Another one is this explosion of this idea looks maxing. I don't know how many of you have heard about that. Looks maxing was a terminology that originated in the incel space and has now become viral in TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, etc. It encourages young boys and men to aggressively optimize their physical appearance. And this can range from basic grooming that's known as soft maxing to very genuinely dangerous spaces which is known as hard maxing, which includes things like steroid use, cosmetic surgery, even something called bone smashing which encourages young boys and men to smash their face with a hammer to restructure their jawline. Madam Excellency, you brought up AI. AI apps are now asking young men and boys to upload selfies and then rating their appearance based on the original incel categorization. They are being named things like you are low tier normie or you are Chad lite. They have gamified the entire process of physical self worth. One looks maxing influencer in 2025 gained 100, hundred million followers alone. Researchers have found that young boys comment on these, look on these looks maxer accounts and say rate my appearance and if they are deemed that they cannot ascend, are even being asked to take their own lives. Why am I bringing this up? Because I want to show to you this is what the mainstreaming of manosphere ideology looks like. The frim forum, fringe forum language of like sexual market value is now being repackaged as self improvement. It is being delivered through feeds of TikTok and Instagram into teenagers lives. And it illustrates the pattern that we see across the manosphere, which is the exploitation of genuine insecurities, men and women and all genders alike. It is the idea that we can monetize these insecurities whether it's around body image, whether it's, whether it's around relationships. But the idea that you are not enough is being monetized over and over again. And it reduces human worth to numbers, blames women for all men's struggles, and then drives men into much more isolated and deeper disconnection. The impact of These online narratives are profound. We have found that the youngest men and women are most likely to be pessimistic about their romantic future and most likely to agree with the statement I don't think anyone will fall in love with me. This is also showing up in 15% of our samples saying that they have AI companions and that they actually prefer their AI romantic companions than they do their offline relationships. So I want to end by saying that digitization is not only spreading misogyny, it is reshaping the architecture that is providing young men particularly how it means to be a man today. And that of course impacts how they show up in their relationships with women as well. Thank you. Speaker 5 [15:47]: But what role should digital governance frameworks play in addressing the ecosystem that enables this manosphere and technology facilitate agenda based on violence? Ekimundo · Senior Research Director · Tabisha Gupta [15:58]: It's a great question on understanding what the problem is to actually thinking about what can we do with the systems that enable this because the manosphere does not exist in a vacuum, right? It thrives in a dig in a in a sort of digital ecosystem that's meant to amplify it. So we need to recognize that platforms like TikTok, YouTube, Instagram prioritize engagement and props over content quality. We have AI powered curation that rewards something known as sticky content. Sticky content is content that actually evokes emotional reactions and outrage. Research from University College of London and University of Kent has shown that after five days of engagement on TikTok, the for you page starts showing 59% four times more increase in misogynistic content. Debbie Ging, who was one of the first founders of the word manosphere and trying to categorize it, found that it takes 23 minutes for young men's feed to move from neutral content to very dark negative content. So what should digital frameworks do? As your question asked, first we need to require platforms to audit and mitigate these algorithmic amplifications of misogynistic and harmful content with mandatory publication of risk assessments. Some examples that already exist. The European Union's Digital Services act has already begun this work and it's establishing comprehensive transparency and accountability requirements. The UN's Global Digital Compact has set international standards for digital rights and safety and in 2024 the UN cybercrime treaty established non consensual consensual intimate images as internationally agreed upon tech facilitated crimes. These are important foundations. We need to secondly mandate technology intermediaries to proactively detect and respond to tech facilitated gender based violence. At the moment they are only reacting particularly to harms that are quite major or when there's public outcry and this is not embedded in design and governance. An example of what works Australia's Eiff Safety Commissioner represents a world leading example model with comprehensive enforcement powers. The UK published in 2023 an online safety Act. They passed this and now after years of advocacy with NGOs, they're requiring tech companies to be the ones who are accountable for online safety safety. Finally, I want to stress that governance alone is not sufficient. We need safety by design approaches that build user protection at inception rather than as an afterthought. This can include things like privacy tools, rapid response mechanisms for content removal, transparent moderation policies, and more critically, disrupting the monetization mechanisms that reward misogyny. We need to work with tech company leadership to demonstrate that safer online spaces is not just an ethical act, but in fact it can also be commercially viable. Thank you. Thank you very much. Moderator [19:14]: Yes, Miss Hillingson Book ECPAT focuses on preventing sexual violence against children, including digital violence. Tell us about your experience of gender norms online and their effects on technology facilitated gender based violence. ECPAT Sweden · Secretary-General · Ms. Hildingham Buchvist [19:37]: Thank you very much. We are a child rights organization so I am going to talk about girls today. People under the age of 18. Technology facilitated gender based work violence is normalized in very early age. Young girls have to develop strategies to handle criminal offences from boys and men very early. If we see some numbers according to our yearly survey that's been answered by thousands of children in Sweden, approximately about 10,000 to 15. 15,000 children answer these questions every year. 1 out of 4 girls has had a nude disseminated. 8 in 10 girls have received an unwanted nude. 5 in 10 girls have been offered payment for nudes. 5 in 10 girls have received threats to send nudes. 4 in 10 girls have been offered payment for sex. So this is normalized for our children today. I will also give an example of how it could look. A very common question or theme that comes into our helpline for children is so called expose accounts. Those accounts is nude images of girls together with her name, age, school, city. It's called doxxing. Then you dox with other social medias so you can find this girl. The images are shared and soon lots of comments are coming. Most of them very misogynist threats, receiving unwanted dick pics, being offered money for more nudes, etc. When you are on an exposed account that is what happens to you. Most of the girls that we meet are 12, 13, 14 years old. We also have a difference between what we call local and global exposed Accounts local, usually connected to a specific school, town or municipality. It is your peers that sees the images and share them. The global ones that we call global are more closed environments where boys share folders of images of teenage girls with each other. And it can also be subscription services so you pay to get into the groups. And we can see the consequences on short and long term threats, extortion, further victimization, mental health issues including absence from school, self harm, suicide attempts, long term mental health issues leading to unemployment, addiction, etc. Images being disseminated forever, we know have a massive impact on an individual level, but the risks on a societal level are yet to be grasped here. Knowledge from survivors very important. For example, the group Phoenix 11 in Canada exposed accounts are driven by algorithms. Without them, the accounts wouldn't have such a reach and then not that that much of a negative consequence for girls. Girls fear of being exposed on the accounts drives the algorithms further. So the girls themselves and their fear makes the algorithm show the accounts more and more and more and more to every one of their friends. For example, this is why it's so important to take CSEM down. We can stop the dissemination of csem, but it takes the complete commitment from the industry and platforms that are used for this crime. Men are running these companies and when women and girls are victimized and there is a lack of political debate and pressure from the public opinion, the companies lack incentive to do what's necessary. But it is possible. Instead, the space for women and girls in the public debate is at risk of shrinking. We see how age restrictions are set, how parents, guardians forbid, protect girls more than boys. Girls limit themselves. Attitudes regarding gender equality differ more and more between girls and boys. Girls blame the perpetrator and boys the victim. A quote from a boy participating in our yearly online survey is Girls should stop sending nudes. Girls should stop sending nudes, not boys. Only girls. Speaker 9 [24:54]: Can you tell us, can you tell us more about ECPAT's work to prevent and to stop sexual exploitation online? ECPAT Sweden · Secretary-General · Ms. Hildingham Buchvist [25:03]: Yes, we operate a hotline, a national reporting function for suspension child sexual exploitation. 99% of the reports concern dissemination of CSAM online. We also operate a hotline to provide support to children who have been victims of child sexual abuse and exploitation, but also working with prevention through providing them with information about their rights and tools to stay safe online. Together, the hotline and helpline are also helping children directly who reach out and are worried that nude images of them are being shared online. We can, through technical means, prevent dissemination, take the material down and also report perpetrators to platforms and police. And we are also trusted flaggers under the Digital services Act since 2024. So the reports we are doing are to a large extent, extent in our role as trusted flaggers. Although we were quite successful before where we were appointed, now we are more prioritized by the platforms, especially from snap. I would say we are no longer dependent on the goodwill of the platforms. However, we see that there is a lack of funding to this important work and the message is to all taking down CSAM needs resources and it's so prioritized. If you talk to the children like we do in our support line and they say, oh, is there a possibility to get that picture down from the Internet? Is it possible to block that person on Snapchat or TikTok? I didn't think it was possible. Now you gave me all the hope back. So it's so important. But the work we do, it's a few organizations around the world that is doing all of the work and the resources are very limited. Thank you. Moderator [27:13]: Thank you. Miss Johansson, you represent Women in Tech Sweden. How does a lack of women in senior technical and executive roles shape product design and platform governance decisions? Women in Tech Sweden · Director · Austa Johansson [27:35]: First of all, thank you so much for inviting me to this panel. I know that the perspective of the tech industry and the private sector I think is a bit new to this. This is my first time here and I'm sorry, so glad that I can contribute with my perspective. Women in Tech that I represent is a non profit organization in Sweden that has a community over 32,000 women and girls into the tech industry that professionals that are working into the tech industry today. Our mission is to get more women into the tech industry and make sure that the ones that we have stay. And why is that important? Because the tech industry today are shaping the future. The industry that are developing tech, the systems, the solutions that we have are representing our society. The systems we build reflect the perspective of the persons that are building it. And if we miss the women perspective and the teams that are designing and leading these teams, the products and the government frameworks risk reflecting of only taking part of the small part of the society. But to your question, when women are missing from senior technical and executive roles, blind spots risk becoming embedded in the technology in itself. This is what I'm going to stress. Throughout today we have seen examples when AI systems reflect stereotypes and the safety systems fail to recognize gender bias, bias, harassments. There have been unfortunately stories from you I will not repeat to the content of these platforms. I think that will stand for you. I am an optimist. I hope that in the future, if we make sure that the tech teams, both the ones that leading the tech teams and the one developing our tech teams, have a perspective of the total of this society, I think the future could be optimistic and bright. I also think that the algorithms doesn't invite biases. They learn from the data and the system that already exists. So we have to be sure of what we build into our systems. Our products and our services. Have to ensure diversity and data collection, model training and testing processes. I think that companies need to treat diversity not only at the data and testing, but as a core quality and risk management issue. I know that we were going to hear about a little bit later about how the business are actually looking at the bottom line when it comes to this. If you don't have diversity in your product and services, you will be obsolete. You will not be relevant in your product and services. But the same goes for the teams. If the teams lack perspective, the products and the services will too. Responsible AI therefore requires companies to actively review the data sets, include diversity in testing groups and ensure that the team has the right perspective and the right development process. But be not mistaken. I don't think that diversity only can sit with HR and how you with talent acquisition and employer branding. It must be integrated in a technical life cycle. It has to be a strategy of your company at core. It cannot be a side event. It has to be something that is implemented from the start. If you don't do it right from the beginning, it's going to cost cost you both when it comes to norms and when it comes to the society. And I think that will make your company fall behind. Moderator [31:27]: Thank you very much. Let me Turn to you, Mr. Dorsey. How is SNAP addressing sexist narrative and gender stereotype portrayals of online? Snap · Platform Safety Lead · Mr. Dorsey [31:43]: Great. Thank you for the question and thank you all for being here and for inviting me to be part of this conversation. I work on the platform safety team at snap. So what our team's core function is is to work at the nexus of our policy and product teams working on the safety of our Snapchat community. Two, it's to work on proactive programs where we can bring in voices outside of SNAP to hear their feedback. And then three, it's to be in rooms like this where I can hear feedback from everyone, to take back to our various product and policy teams. So really, really appreciate the opportunity to be here. I'd like to answer that kind of in three different ways. One, in terms of the architecture and design of platforms, Two, in terms of new product and features that can be designed in response to feedback, and then three, in terms of kind of more proactive work that all platforms can do. So the first thing I want to say is, and I thought it was really interesting how we opened up in terms of taking back us 10 years back. Snap was Snap's founder, relatively young person, still in his 30s, who created Snap kind of in response to what was the social media landscape at the time. He and his co founder didn't really appreciate the emphasis on social comparison, on everything being public, on all of your conversations and your photos being public. So they wanted to kind of create a space that felt more natural. So kind of from the beginning of how Snap was created, there are some architectural and design differences that are different than other platforms. And I think it's important to always keep in mind of what are these platform differences, because I think that can really help inform, you know, design choices, conversations like this, and then even regulation. So some examples for those of you who don't use Snap, I sometimes walk into rooms like this. Can I just have a show of hands who uses Snap? Okay, so handful. Clearly not the majority. So just some couple examples. On Snapchat there are no public follower or public friend lists. That was a really key, important part of the architecture from the very beginning. People didn't appreciate that the founders didn't appreciate everyone knowing who your friends were or that kind of being a metric that you compared yourself against. The focus is on chats. So your chats are private and we typically see most of our users in the chat or camera feature. Another key kind of difference of Snapchat compared to other platforms is that when you open up Snapchat, it doesn't open up to an algorithmic feed of other people's content, so it actually opens up to a front facing camera. Because the point of the app from the very beginning was we want you to share kind of what's going on in your real life with your real friends and your real family, as opposed to creating content for strangers that you may actually never meet. So those are some of the kind of architectural differences that have kind of existed from the beginning of the company. But I kind of want to also touch on some of the product and design changes that can kind of come up as the landscape changes and how we should adjust, adapt, and how other platforms can adapt. So one thing that I'm really proud of that we've launched in the past couple years are in chat conversation prompts. And this is specifically geared towards teens And I think addresses some of the topics that we'll cover today. What these are is when you send. In order to start a chat on Snapchat, unlike other platforms, both parties need to proactively accept the request. That's the only way a chat can start. However, for teen accounts, we've started to introduce a new feature where if we see that you have no mutual or low mutual friends with someone and you get a friend request, we'll provide that information to the user saying, hey, are you sure you want to accept this friend request? You don't have many mutual friends with this person. I really, really am proud of this work because one, it continues to empower the user themselves with more. More information that Snap has. So arming the user with information that Snap has to make a more informed decision. We saw in the first six months of that feature led to 12 million blocks. So we took that feedback and we said, okay, what other information can we provide to our users that we think would be helpful? In that specific instance where you're receiving a friend request before you start a chat, we introduced two new conversation prompts. One focused on if the person sending you the request has been reported or blocked by other people. And then two, the other additional one was if the person was not in your geographical area and we thought it was suspicious that you would be wanting to chat with this person. Again, the decision still lies with the user to make the decision as to whether or not they want to accept the friend request, but they have that new information and it gives them an opportunity just to kind of take a second with that information, breathe, and then make a decision as opposed to making any sort of rash friend request confirmations. So that's an example, I think, of things that platforms can do to adjust the design of their platforms in response to feedback and in response to a changing landscape. As we know, tech landscape has changed quite a bit for the past 10 years. And then the third thing I just want to touch on is some of the proactive work that I think platforms can do, and I'll give a couple of examples that Snap is doing. We really, really value the voices. Not just at Snap, we're working this. There's a wide variety of people working on the safety of our community across policy, where I sit, our engineering teams, our product teams. But we really value the voices externally because. Because that's gonna help us break out of our potential narrow path. And so we've designed a few different kind of avenues to kind of receive that feedback. One is our Council for Digital well Being, which is a program focused on teens and bringing in teens from across the globe to hear their feedback directly. Not just on Snapchat, but what are they experiencing online in general? What are some of the risks that they're facing online? What do they like and what do they not like about platforms? What do adults not really get? All of us in this room talking about this and what are adults kind of misunderstanding about how teens are actually experiencing their digital lives? So we launched that in 2024 in the US we brought together 19 teens. And then as a result of the success of that program, we launched similar programs in Australia and in Europe. So we currently have around 50 teens that we engage with on a monthly basis. We met with them in person and we talk about variety of safety topics. They meet with our internal teams and we kind of, we want to give them a voice. I actually just came from an event at the UK Mission to the UN where one of our former US Teen Council members, that program just concluded, she was a guest speaker at that event. So we wanted to kind of give them a platform to kind of get their voice involved in conversations like this. So I know that I'm running up on time. I'm sure there'll be more, more opportunities to talk about everything else. Thank you very much. Speaker 15 [39:01]: Finally, over to you, Ms. Martin. You work with digital product strategy practices within Ernst and Young. What are the opportunities for transforming digital ecosystems into safer, more equitable spaces? EY · Executive Director, Digital Product Strategy Practice · Kathy Martin [39:16]: Sure. Thank you for having me today. So I'm going to kind of build on what we've been hearing from the group here, but I'm going to focus a little bit more on, you know, how to build products to support a more gender neutral environment. You know, as we've heard, products are built that are not neutral. They are. That's just the way they're built. That's the way they're measured. We measure by engagement, we measure by clicks. That has to change. And that goes all the way back to, you know, from the start of the creation of a product to the execution of the product and the measurement. Product development life cycle has evolved over, you know, the last 15 some years. The tech startup mentality of agile coming into the product development life cycle, being merged into organizations that aren't used to this type of operation. It accelerated the product development life cycle and you started to see organizations that maybe had a lot of risk built in, like digital banking and things like that, that had to grapple with how to manage controls and building that into a very rapid process. Now you're starting to see AI being introduced into the, the product lifecycle itself, which is further squeezing those moments in time in which you can evaluate and measure and make sure that you're putting the controls in place. So you know, we've got to address that. We have to think about it. So you know, I look at this and you know, the kind of, the major points in which you need to intercept at the creation stage is really, really important. As you're building your products, you need to build them with, with this in mind, you need to re establish, completely rethink the way products are built. You have to design it into the ethos of the organization, into the product teams from the top, all the way down. And so that becomes the way in which you design, measure and you build it in from the beginning. It's not something you look at at the end. You have to think about it in the way that you're defining your product, its mission. Then I'll flip to the end of the life cycle, which is the measurement side. Accountability is so critical. So if you do not have the accountability at the executive level, at the product team level, all the way down, if you don't have the incentive structure and the rewards, you are never going to get past things like clicks and engagement. You have to move it to social values, you have to change those metrics and measures, you have to reward people for it and you have to introduce consequences for, for those that don't follow and that can be measured and influenced by outside. But ultimately it has to come all the way down into the product teams themselves. Another piece is governance. So I think we heard a little bit about that with some of the other speakers putting those digital controls into the products or around the products. So we can use AI, for example, to be more real time and proactive in how we measure and analyze and process, to give the right channels for elevating and logging and saying something is not working. How can we do that quickly and be more proactive as opposed to reacting? And so that also has to be part of the whole life cycle. So fundamentally what I'm really talking about is changing how we build products and the teams in which you put together. Another aspect of this is, I think to build on your point is making a diverse team. You have to, you can't, this cannot be built with just, you know, one perspective or a handful of perspectives. It has to be internal voices, external voices that bring a diversity, that bring, you know, and women bringing their perspective again at the early stage to influence how the product is being defined. Moderator [43:07]: Thank you. But I still had another question for you. In your work with tech companies, what would be the entry points for strong right based digital governance? How do you start with this? You know, how do you do it? EY · Executive Director, Digital Product Strategy Practice · Kathy Martin [43:28]: Oh, sorry, I. It came off. So, you know, there's the entry point of the regulation and everything outside that's going to drive and change, you know, okay, we need to be measuring against it, but you really have to put it into the organizational structure. I mean, it cannot be without it. If you, you have the, the ability to say, I need to fit within the norms, I need to fit within the regulations. So think of something about like, accessibility. That was not something that we designed for early on and it became a norm, it became a requirement, and you had to make that part of your design process. So you're going to have to continue to do that and consider it as governance. And again, it goes back into, you know, starting at the top. You have to agree with this at the top. It has to come down and then you have to build it into your. Excuse me, into your life cycle where at every single moment in which you're making a decision, you're keeping this in mind and then you're building the controls throughout. Thank you. Moderator [44:32]: Thank you all for sharing. Thank you all for sharing your very interesting insights and experiences. And to wrap this up, I have some final questions. Yes, yes. Ms. Johansson, if you could implement one priority action tomorrow to advance women's leadership in tech, what would that be? Just one thing. Women in Tech Sweden · Director · Austa Johansson [45:05]: I think with my background from Big Corp, I used to work with Ericsson for many, many years. What's not measured is not going to be done. What is not put with an incentive on it will not happen in the organization. So I think if we talk about diversity, equality and inclusion into the tech industry, it's not only women and men, it's also the AI within the women in the team as well. Age, gender, of course, gender, that's why we're here. But also about your preferences, your religion and where you're from. So it's all about men measuring and make sure that you are. And why do you want to measure is because you want to be making sure that the leadership is held accountable. And if not, someone's going to be held accountable, it's not going to be done. Speaker 21 [45:50]: Thank you. Ms. Gupta, how can collaboration between civil society and advocacy groups, tech companies and governments improve responses to online misogyny? Ekimundo · Senior Research Director · Tabisha Gupta [46:01]: Yeah, it's a great. Very short, very short. I've got some very. I mean, I think it's important to see some good examples of how multi stakeholder good practices look like. I had mentioned Glitch, the UK Online Safety Act. Glitch UK did six years of sustained advocacy and centered the voices of black women and girls. And now the Online Safety act made sure that tech companies, like I said, have to report and be responsible for online harm. Another one is we need some kind of collaborative early warning system. So we need civil society tech companies and researchers to work together to kind of draw out some emerging trends on what are the narrative, the manosphere narratives. How do we actually already identify some radicalization pathways? We've got groups like the Institute for Strategic Dialogue that's using AI powered social media listening techniques to think about what are the manosphere narratives that could lead to violence and that gets escalated the most untapped potential. I would be amiss not to say this is we need to meet men where they are at and think of them as part of the solutions. And so we've got lots of examples of that. But one of the most important things is that if we want to be serious about ending online misogyny, not only do we have to work within the digital ecosystems, we also have to think about about the social conditions that are perpetuating it. Speaker 23 [47:25]: Thank you very much. Really good points, Ms. Hildingham Buchvist. From policy point of view, what are some key measures that could improve the situation? ECPAT Sweden · Secretary-General · Ms. Hildingham Buchvist [47:37]: I think we have to start with criminal law must take online offenses as seriously as offline. That is the first point. But the most important for children right now, right here, is detection and removal. When the report reaches us, the child contacts us, it's already too late. The picture is being disseminated. So service providers need to be obliged to detect, report and remove sexual abuse materials from their services. This is a basic question about the human rights of children girls to be free from violence and the harm to their personal integrity and privacy. And to do that effectively, we need to use tech for good. So you have to have a priority to develop technical tools, including AI to be developed by industry, law enforcement, civil society to prevent harm, identify children and bring perpetrators to to justice. It's possible to do this. I have four analysts that rank the pictures of children. Speaker 25 [48:48]: They made over 3 million rankings last year. Think if they were 400, how many pictures we could be ranking and get rid of from the Internet. Thank you very much Mr. Dolshi. What can be done to reduce hostile digital culture targeting women and girls? Snap · Platform Safety Lead · Mr. Dorsey [49:16]: One thing that SNAP does is we have our own research called the Digital well being index, it's publicly available. So if you Google Digital well being index, Snap, you can see all these numbers online. What we essentially do is we survey 10,000 young people and their parents across six different countries to get a sense of what are some of the online risks that they're facing and why do they experience those risks, why do they report those risks, and are parents familiar with what those risks are? I just want to quote a couple of figures from there, and then I'll answer that question more specifically. What we have seen is that 75% of the respondents said that they experienced some sort of online risk. Now, now, that could vary from cyberbullying to a more serious risk like sextortion, but 75%, so that's 3, 4, 3 out of every 4 young person that responded, 49% of the respondents were what we would consider to be sextortion targets, and 21% of them were threatened. Of that 21%, 29% actually complied with the demands. Now, there are some good, there's some good trends here in terms of what are young people doing when they find themselves in these situations, specifically girls. What we found is that reporting telling a family member, a friend about the issue that they're facing has increased significantly over the past four years that we've been conducting this research. I think that's a testament to all the great work that everyone in this room is doing to raise awareness about these issues. So for key risks like sextortion, we're seeing a big increase in the number of times people are reporting to their friends or family that this, this sort of risk is happening. What we haven't seen a similar rise in is reporting to platforms or to hotlines. And I think there's two major reasons. One, what we've heard is that there's a normalization of these sorts of risks. It's to be expected when you're online that you're going to encounter some of these risks. And then two, there's a perceived belief that there's not going to be any sort of consequence for the bad actor. And so I think it's on platforms, it's on civil society, it's on all of us, it's on adults in general, to make sure that teens and young people specifically know what sort of tools and resources are available to them, both on platforms and not on platforms like the ECPAT hotline. And also ensure that they know that these sorts of reporting systems are confidential and that there will be consequences and that you can actually protect the broader community. When you do reporting. So those are just a couple of ideas. There's a lot of work that companies need to do in terms of proactively detecting this sort of content, and there's an incredible amount of investment being put into that. But it's both. It's needing to work with our users and our community to make sure that we're giving them the tools to report content to us and then us proactively identifying content and taking it down before it can ever even reach one of our community members. Moderator [52:25]: Thank you. You will get the last word. Ms. Martin, do you see a future for feminist tech design? I should actually ask what future do you see? Not do you see? EY · Executive Director, Digital Product Strategy Practice · Kathy Martin [52:41]: I really hope there is a future. Yes. I think there's some interesting things happening. I mean, there is a strong case for female tech leadership. That's a proven thing. We get better products, better outcome with tech leadership, with women in teams, however, we're still seeing, you know, it's still not the kind of pace with which we would want. Women in tech are dropping out of the workforce too early. They are not getting the support. So startups and such, they're not getting the support that they need at the type of pace that they need. There are some interesting things that I'm curious about and want to watch, which is the evolution of, as I was talking about different ways to produce products and build products that's going to potentially provide opportunities for women to accelerate the development of their technologies, to not be so dependent on sort of the male development community. However, there's still some challenges with that as they still don't have the skills. You still need to develop the skill sets to be able to be effective with these types of tools. However, it might be an opportunity for women in tech to present their ideas more effectively to build the teams that they need to build by having those things at their disposal. So I do see positive future, but we still have some work to do to make sure that women are skilled, that they're given the opportunities and the tools to be able to be successful. Thank you. Speaker 29 [54:17]: Thank you. And it's now my Privilege to invite Ms. Begonia Lasagabaster, the Director Gender at UNESCO, for closing remarks. The floor is yours, please. UNESCO · Director, Gender · Begonia Lasagabaster [54:28]: Thank you very much. And I think it's okay. Yeah, Excellency. And I'm not going to compete with the experts, even though we have our own data and statistics in UNESCO. But I want to go a little bit down, down to earth in the sense of what this means in reality. And I think that first of all the first thing that came to my mind is patriarchy survives every age and is even upgraded because it's upgraded and how on earth we have to change what we are doing. And definitely this is not a coincidence, this is not happening per se. Of course, technology is a reflection of human beings and the people that are behind or uses, et cetera, et cetera. But in our research jointly with what the research you are doing, what we are seeing is something very clear. Colleagues in UN women research about women in politics. And it's clear, Minister, women in politics for the ones that also we have been there, we are attacked constantly and online constantly. And women leave politics because they don't want to continue. We have the research on women journalists, the Chilean the name is of the research called the chilling, because the results are chilling. 73% of women journalists are attacked online and most of them around 30, 30 something. They have to leave the social media. We are doing the research on women artists, particularly in conflicts and crisis and emergencies, exactly the same. And we are going to start hopefully the research on women in science, because science is extremely attacked and women are most attacked in science with the community of lgbtiq. And I'm very happy for the initiative. You are mentioned to the Minister of Defence. If we go to the young women you have explained, under 18, you have explained what are seen clearly. The day Fair pornography attacks, 99% of the victims are young women. 99%. This is not a coincidence. What they have in common, all these women, they have a voice. They have a voice. So the clear picture behind is we don't want women to have a voice. We want to go back to the back of the back of the age that I don't want to remember. This is linked to democracy. This is not some problems alone, coincidental or derived only from technology. This is a way to use technology against rights and against democracy. Let's be clear, because if we don't have this clear, we cannot understand how we have to deal with the problem in a comprehensive way. And that's what we try to do, at least with other people. As I said, the UN system, the research, the women in tech, the ecomundo, the tech. For instance, we had these convening conferences and more than conferences, what we call called the Internet for trust, where we put member states, tech companies, everybody, to see how it could do something for trust. But we work from education, because education, at the end of the day starts from that. What we are seeing, we are seeing boys disengagement with education. The moment we got women and we have done a very good advancement on women. SDG 4 is one of the very few, if not the only one, that has been advancing. Still, we have a lot of things to do. We have a movement of voice, disengagement of education, because they don't feel that education provides them. What is the success going from what you are saying? And this is not only in developing countries that we can say they have to needs to do. No, no. We are seeing in developed countries. Developed countries, okay. What we are seeing in women in tech, we have the whole call for science and STEM, etc. We did a research that we presented in the G20 in Brazil last year, two years ago, a young girl, before starting primary school, six years old, she already had the idea in her head that she was not good in mathematics and she had not yet to start the school. So. So, I mean, how on earth are we going to have women in Technology if since 5 years old they are telling us that we are not good? And I can tell you, because we did the whole research, the technology world is the most hostile world for women in comparison with other world, other labor works. So everything is not a coincidence. How about analyzing the algorithms and the reaction? You said it. The companies only react to what we call acute harm, is when an attack is so huge the companies had to do something, but we call it the chronic harm. It's like the pain. And we unpackage all the algorithms and everything to understand the large language model, to do pedagogy, to make people understand why it's different the attack to men than the attack to women, because the attack to men, and I'm not expert, but I can understand it and I can explain it to you. Because another thing is that we have to explain it to the people. Not for us, for the public opinion is that when in general, not always, but when men are attacked, they are attacked on the content of the conversation. The conversation lasts through days. There is no polemic that lasts more than two, three days. I was going to say even a conflict, I would say no. All of them become a protected conflict for all life and lives and lives and lives, unfortunately, but this is acute harm. But the women are attacked on their person. You cannot get away from you. You cannot get away from you. You can get away from the discussion and the debate. Because I said that about politics, I said that about artists, I said that about. I don't know what, but from you you cannot get away. So then you start like that and after there's a moment where after months you have acute harm in one side and you have chronic harm. Men less so when you have a chronic pain, what you do, you take everything in order to absolutely make this pain disappear. What is the only thing you can do to make this chronic pain harm disappear? When you are attacked online, you get offline, you disappear. You don't have a voice, you don't have decision making. You have disappeared from the world. That's it. Period. Finito. And that's what in fact the technologies saying you go out because it's normalized, you don't want to be attacked. Come on, like we went in politics. They said you have to come. Already cried. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. This is not normal. Let's try not to normalize things that are normal. So all of this to say that there is a lot of comprehensive work to do. It's not one thing here. It's education, it's communication, it's information, it's technology, it's stem, it's gender stereotype norms, is a debate about democracy, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And in UNESCO we do ethics. Well, we do, we try to do, but we talk about ethics on these things. But also now I alert you about neurotechnology. If you are worried about AI, forget about neurotechnology. And our brains, remember, health of women have not been studied in detail, just about. I think they started in a different way 20, 25 years ago. So I don't know how much they know about the brain in general and the brain in particular. And secondly, with all these stereotypes, let's be clear, we are not against technology. Women and gender equality is not against technology. But we want a technology that understands how it functions for the 100% of the humanity, not for only 50% of the humanity. So there's a lot of things to do. We have to be connected, we have to do a comprehensive work and we have to keep committed. Thank you. Moderator [1:03:50]: Thank you. Thank you so much for your inspiring closing remarks. This was a very important message that all of you gave us actually and really have to work on these boys, on the values. We have a few minutes for audience question and reflections. So if there are any questions from the audience, please be brief and introduce yourself and make a concise question. Yes, please. Security Women · Audience · Anne Mathison [1:04:27]: Hi, my name is Anne Mathison, I'm with Security Women. With everything that we've heard today, with the outsized influence that tech is having on women's lives and on democracy, are there any examples of governments that are mandating gender parity in Private tech companies Moderator [1:04:47]: who could answer that. UNESCO · Director, Gender · Begonia Lasagabaster [1:04:52]: There are incentives. Moderator [1:04:59]: I don't have any answer. Sorry, I can't answer. You. UNESCO · Director, Gender · Begonia Lasagabaster [1:05:07]: Specialize on that. I think there are a lot of incentives and I think that there are some governments that are being very serious about that. I think the fact that for instance, I think there are some, some countries where they have started by the top when you. You are obliged to have in your. I mean and my colleagues from private sector will know more. You are, you have, you are obliged to have gender parity in the boards of the companies. That's where you can see a difference. And I think that yes there are some governments that are obliging to have women at the boards and where you see the difference and when you start that. So you have. There are the two things you start down up in what is the whole picture of what is going on. Why women are not or girls and women are not getting into the STEM world, why they are leaving the STEM world. And the other part is yes, there are some measures and laws in some countries where you oblige the top decision making to have parity in their boards. And these I can tell you makes a complete difference for the role model, for the fact that diversity is good for. For everything. For governments, institutions and private sector for. Because you see things differently. And this translates the fact that in the middle maybe we can find. So yes, there are measures. Some of them are compulsory in some countries. Top down and down up still is there. Yeah. Thank you. I think we had a question here behind. Okay. UN Women Finland · Audience · Tania Biha [1:06:51]: My name is Tania Biha. I'm here with UN Women Finland and I just love the discussion that we're not doing enough. It's really, really disturbing to hear what you were telling about the young girls, what they have to experience. And also I'm a mother of a 19 year old boy who is really active on Snapchat. What we are doing in a private sector. I work in the tech private sector. In the Nordics we have to involve the companies and I'm asking you to do even more because we have to protect the young girls, young boys, the children. And also from the lawmakers perspective, in the Nordics we have all the power to do it. So please involve us. Let's change the world. Thank you. Speaker 38 [1:07:43]: Oh you and I. Oh, thank you. Rhoid Foundation · Audience · Frank Ategeka [1:07:48]: Thank you. Thank you so much. My name is Frank, Frank Ategeka and I'm from Uganda. I work with an organization called Rhoid foundation who work on digital health and economic rights. So my question is there are number of digital Rights violations across the world, particularly targeting women and girls. However, we've had challenges around access to justice for these women and girls. Reason being, sometimes the decision makers, the judges, the policy makers are not aware of the exact laws to apply while handling such cases. So from your past experience, particularly people that are working in the tech world, what legal systems are available in your countries and communities to ensure that these women and girls actually accessing justice without any form of discrimination. Thank you so much. Moderator [1:08:47]: Yeah. Who would like you want to answer? Yeah, please. UNESCO · Director, Gender · Begonia Lasagabaster [1:08:53]: I think there are two things in generally you have to intervene in the offer and the demand. Okay. The offer means that when you have a legal framework, Normally there are 156 countries already have legal framework. But the problem is that there is that there is no more administration services. There is no training of the police and prosecutors, there is no forensic that can put evidence to later on the judges be able to provide a sentence about that. And that's what you have to do from the offer. Demand, meaning that administrations cannot say okay, we approve a law. No, I'm sorry, you have to make sure that this is something that can be implemented and you have the other side that is the demand, meaning that many times women, either they don't know or they don't know that they have these, they can exercise these rights, or they don't know how to exercise these rights, or they have fear to exercise these rights. So you have to also work with the demand side because if they cannot, they don't know or they have fear, you cannot mix it. Now, how intervenes the artificial intelligence? Now artificial intelligence can have a very positive benefit for having justice on time because justice that is not timely, not sure if it is justice. So it can be helping to the evidence, the many things that can. All the paperwork that is very much in a justice administration can be reduced, the evidence can be better be selected, analyzed, etc. So it has a lot of benefits for particularly gender based violence, particularly. And also for instance in UNESCO we are training the judges in 140 countries precisely on artificial intelligence justice and within the idea that they should have their mind opened to look at, not to fall into the gender stereotype. So it's a lot of very good things. But again, it needs to have both sides to be aware of that. Snap · Platform Safety Lead · Mr. Dorsey [1:11:23]: Just real briefly, for example, I mentioned a lot of the work that SNAP does in terms of proactively identifying content. So in the case of child sexual abuse material, if we identify that content, we will supply that content through a cybertip to NCMEC in the United States who works with law enforcement to kind of track down any sort of potential law enforce or enforcement that's needed in that case. In relation to that, we have a dedicated law enforcement team that works with law enforcement around the world to process any requests that are coming in. They manage a specific portal on snap's website where law enforcement can make specific requests for information. And then they also host trainings. As we kind of saw earlier, not many people in this room even use Snapchat, right? And so a lot of times we encounter that law enforcement doesn't understand, you know, what does it mean for someone to encounter some sort of risk or to make some sort of request on Snapchat versus other platforms. So we host an annual training for law enforcement around the world where we kind of do a Snapchat 101. And then this is how you can make a law enforcement request to our team. And then the last thing I'd say isn't specifically to the law enforcement side, but another key part of this is the tech sector working together collaboratively to identify bad actors that may be hopping from network to network. Because we oftentimes see that a bad actor will start, let's say, on a broadcast app to lure people in and then we'll move to a more messaging focused app and then we'll potentially move to a more payment focused app. So there is an organization called the Tech Coalition. I highly encourage folks to look them up. And specifically their program called Lantern, it's focused on child sexual abuse. And the Lantern project allows different companies, including financial companies, to share signals with each other. So if, let's say, for example, SNAP sees a bad actor on Snap, we're able to kind of share that information in a privacy preserving way to other platforms so that they can get ahead of the problem before the problem arises on their platform. So it doesn't exactly address what you're talking about, but it kind of is part of the picture of how, you know, for these whole of society problems, we need holo society, you know, solutions. Audience · Justina Okogun [1:13:59]: Is it on? Okay, thank you very much. My name is Justina Okogun, I'm from Nigeria. I'll make it brief. What's the future of AI? Because from all the conversation, in fact, people get jittery at least those grassroots and from the south, south, you know, some tell us that at times it functions faster and better than even the human brain. And there's no maybe the question should be how we moderate the structure or how far AI can go. That's why I'm asking, what's the future of AI? If we are to address it now and maybe stop it or escalate it, in what direction should we go? What's the future of AI? Is it for the good of humanity for women and girls? Based on our conversation, is it to our advantage? I hope I'm communicating. Okay, thank you. Is it to our advantage? Moderator [1:15:13]: I'll give the. I'll give the floor. To answer your question, maybe we're running out of time or whatever to put an end to some of the abuses. What's the future? Is it for our good? Audience · Justina Okogun [1:15:27]: Is it for us or against community? Moderator [1:15:29]: Thank you, ma'. Am. Thank you very much. Some time for the answer. Speaker 47 [1:15:32]: Thank you. Thank you. Women in Tech Sweden · Director · Austa Johansson [1:15:37]: Thank you. I think that the future of AI is something that we need to take care of. Responsibility. We need to make sure that whatever is creating with the big languages going on is make sure that we are creating them in the right way. We have to be sure that we have conscious bias and we have to work against them. The structural problems and the opportunities as well. Because we talked about earlier that the future of AI could be filled with joy, but it has to be with responsibility. It has to be moderated, and it has to be done right. Moderator [1:16:16]: Well, thank you very much, honorable speakers and panelists and the audience, for your participation today. And now I'm going to close this event. Thank you very much. It.