Like many, I was dismayed last month to witness Taylor Swift become the latest celebrity victim of an insidious new form of sexual abuse involving ‘deepfakes’ – digitally manipulated video footage in which one person’s likeness is replaced convincingly with that of another.
As deepfake technology has become more widely available, its use as a tool of sexualized violence has increased dramatically, with 90-95% of all online deepfake video content now consisting of non-consensual pornography, the vast majority targeting women and girls.
While such egregious transgression of privacy and dignity is unacceptable, it is sadly also unsurprising. Because, as Equality Now’s Digital Law & Rights Advisor Amanda Manyame explained to journalists last week, the gendered violence of deepfakes mirrors the historic patterns of all sexual exploitation and abuse, which is itself rooted in the same system of misogyny that perpetuates the subordination of women and girls elsewhere in our society.
Given the circumstances, our recent briefing paper on the laws currently regulating deepfake image-based sexual abuse could not have been more timely. As our report highlights, we urgently need the law to define and respond to deepfakes and other emerging forms of tech-facilitated sexual abuse. After all, if celebrities like Taylor Swift can’t protect themselves from public humiliation and violence at the hands of digital bullies, neither can any of us.
With this in mind, as a founding member of the Alliance for Universal Digital Rights (AUDRi), Equality Now will be joining representatives from across government, industry, academia, and civil society at the 2024 UN Summit of the Future. By collaborating between sectors and across borders towards a Global Digital Compact, we can secure a fairer, safer digital future.
Meanwhile, I’ve been reflecting on how this huge election year is likely to shape our shared future.
With over two billion people in more than 60 countries due to take part in crucial elections this year, we must consider what any changes might mean for women and girls.
Over the course of a few short years, seismic geo-political shifts in every part of the world have rocked the very foundations of democracy, and we now stand at the edge of a precipice, beyond which lies an uncertain future. The ideological direction and economic alignment of the new global order that emerges during 2024 will have profound consequences, which will inevitably be most acutely felt by those with the least political power, fewest material resources, and lowest social status.
It is therefore more vital than ever that we strive to empower, equip, and elevate women and girls through legal equality. Because legal equality is at the heart of democratic society: to protect and uphold the law for every citizen is to protect and uphold democracy itself.
Nowhere is the connection between gender equality and democracy more apparent than in the field of international law and policy.
It is no coincidence that the resurgence of far-right populism across Europe has been accompanied by an erosion of feminist foreign policy, even among historically gender-progressive countries such as Sweden and the Netherlands.
But a reversal of progress towards gender equality is far from a foregone conclusion. With the structure of UN Women and other bodies under review, civil society organizations are presented with new opportunities for cross-sector collaboration. Now, as the necessity of realizing our shared vision becomes ever more apparent, we must collectively seize the day.
We must center the voices of women as leaders, innovators, and peace-builders, and we must recognize that the ability for women to aspire to, inhabit, and uphold these positions is reliant on economic equality – which in turn requires global, and sustainable, legal equality.
Want to learn more about the importance of legal equality for women and girls? Listen now to Equality Now’s new podcast, We Change the Rules, hosted by award-winning journalist Samira Ahmed on Apple and Spotify.