‘Big Tech Sexism must end’

The technology, the method, may be new, but the issue, sadly, is not. 

Women’s health has always been marginalised, questioned, deprioritised. Victorian doctors dismissed women’s distress as ‘the vapours’ leaving space for quacks to prescribe dangerous remedies. Today, Big Tech firms see fit to ‘downrank’ content related to female health on the weird and spurious grounds that it uses anatomically correct terms. Again, leaving the way clear for grifters and scammers to take advantage of, and even endanger, women.

This shadow banning is nothing shy of Big Tech sexism. It has to be addressed.

This week I brought together activists and parliamentarians to understand the scale of this new iteration of an age-old problem and to seek solutions. The Big Tech companies – TikTok, Meta which owns Facebook and Instagram, Google and X – are all aware of this issue. We must make them understand the damage it is doing and urge them to fix it. They have the money and the expertise, they only lack the will.

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And it is a clear and growing problem. 

Earlier this year Essity – owners of period product brands like Bodyform and ModiBodi – surveyed 4000 adults on the issue. Nearly two thirds of all respondents said they look online for health advice, and half cited social media as an important source of health and wellbeing education. 

The same study revealed many find it difficult to source information on women’s health topics in the places they are active. The highest proportion was among the youngest – 34% of 18-24-year-olds said it was difficult to source information on women’s health topics via social media. 

They found that 77 % of 18–34-year-olds were aware of “shadow banning”, defined as posts being restricted, hidden or de-prioritised without explanation. That practice is impeding their approach to health and wellbeing.
When women’s health terms such as “periods”, “menopause”, “vagina” or “endometriosis” are used, posts may be mis-flagged as adult or sexual content and thereby receive dramatically lower reach. (This speaks to another age-old problem – the default sexualisation of women’s anatomy). 

Users don’t want this. Eight in 10 adults (77 per cent) said words like ‘vagina’ or ‘periods’ should not be restricted on social media when used in an educational context. If the platforms want to be responsive to their customers’ wants and expectations they ought to take note. If their algorithms are unable to spot context they need rewriting and upgrading.

The issue also impacts charities and women’s health businesses, both of which rely on the modern world for reach via social media. 

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Campaigners CensHERship have found that 95% of women’s health content creators, educators, charities, and brands, had experienced censorship of women’s health content over the past year. This has serious consequences. 

Female-led businesses and femtech innovators report major financial losses, some of up to £500,000 a year, due to blocked campaigns. Charities say their ability to reach women with vital health information has been severely curtailed. This form of online censorship prevents women and girls from accessing reliable information about their own bodies.

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And it’s biased against women. One study found a 66% drop in non-follower views and 69% fewer comments for women’s-health posts compared with men’s-health posts.

Women’s health is being censored by the algorithms. It has to stop.

We need the government to force platforms to come to the table. Big Tech must publicly explain themselves and their processes; listen to the concerns of women and girls; understand the damage that is being done; and recognise and remedy that. 

We are still up against the historic tendency to diminish and dismiss women and their wellbeing. But we have the knowledge and the power now. There is no excuse for this invisible filtering and algorithmic bias and for Big Tech to continue to fail women.

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