The Call for Evidence is now open.
In November 2025, Ofcom published guidance for online services providers titled: A Safer Life Online for Women and Girls. The Guidance sets out how service providers can tackle online gender-based harms that disproportionately affect women and girls, including image-based sexual abuse, misogynistic abuse and sexual violence, stalking and coercive control, and pile-ons and coordinated harassment.
Ofcom is committed to monitoring how service providers choose to protect their users, including women and girls, and how they are implementing the good practice steps set out in the Guidance.
As part of this commitment, we will publish a report in Q2 2027 to shine a light on what service providers are doing – or not doing – to create a safer life online for women and girls since we published the Guidance. The report will highlight areas of progress as well as where we think further improvements are needed. It will also provide a snapshot of whether women and girls’ experiences of the online gender-based harms covered by the Guidance have changed since November 2025, based on the information available to us at the time.
Through this Call for Evidence, we are seeking evidence in the form of research, data, and insights, for the period from November 2025 to date, on the following:
- evidence of changes in the prevalence, incidence, nature or severity of the online gender-based harms covered in the Guidance,
- evidence of how women and girls' experiences of these online gender-based harms have changed, and
- evidence of actions taken by services, including implementation of the good practice steps or alternative approaches, and the impact these actions have had on users' experiences.
Responding to this Call for Evidence:
Please submit responses using this response form.
You can also respond by email or post to the address provided in the response form.
The Call for Evidence closes at 5pm on 4 November 2026.
For questions, email: womenandgirlscfe@ofcom.org.uk.
Support resources
If you, or someone you know, have been affected by these harms you can find further information, support or advice from any of these organisations:
- Revenge Porn Helpline or StopNCII for intimate image abuse.
- Refuge for domestic abuse support.
- Suzy Lamplugh Trust for stalking.
- You can also find support services through the Domestic Abuse Commissioner and the Victim and Witness Information.
Contact details
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