The "gendered price" of press freedom in the digital age: Documenting threats and challenges for female journalists in western media systems

Maniou and Papadopoulou start from a gap: the question of whether gender shapes press freedom is well studied in authoritarian regimes, but little examined in western media systems, where press freedom is constitutionally protected and discrimination is prohibited. The literature review traces the historical barriers faced by women intellectuals and journalists, from antiquity to the 20th century. It then turns to the digital age, covering online harassment and “gender-trolling”, AI-generated deepfakes, populist “mob censorship” and gendered SLAPPs. It also notes that many women do not report online abuse, and that harassment has become normalized as “part of the job”.

The study is qualitative and asks which types of press-freedom threats have been imposed on female journalists in the digital age. The authors first compiled all incidents recorded by Mapping Media Freedom between 2020 and 2024 in which women journalists were targeted. These involved 582 women and 4 non-binary journalists, with gender unknown in 190 cases. Verbal attacks were the most frequent category (409 incidents), followed by physical assault (218) and interference with journalistic activity (143). Because these data capture only part of the picture, the authors also analyzed the monthly, quarterly and annual reports of the Coalition For Women In Journalism (2020–2024), supplemented by other organizations’ reports and news articles, to examine individual cases in depth.

The authors argue that women face many of the same threats as men, but that each category takes on a gendered character, and that new, distinctly gendered threats emerge. They organize these into a nine-part taxonomy:

• Online/technological threats: sexualized abuse, doxxing, coordinated trolling campaigns, and rape threats against journalists and their children. Politicians sometimes incite these campaigns. The authors also cite an ICFJ finding that 73% of women journalists surveyed had experienced online violence.
• AI and deepfakes: sexualized deepfakes, fake pornographic profiles, manipulated images and disinformation designed to discredit women journalists.
• Physical attacks and sexual harassment: harassment during live broadcasts and in the field (particularly affecting sports reporters), harassment by figures in authority, and harassment inside newsrooms, sometimes accompanied by institutional cover-ups and retaliation against those who speak out.
• Body-shaming: appearance-based criticism, sexualized public remarks, pressure on women after maternity leave and marginalization in on-air roles, especially in television.
• Economic threats: dismissals linked to ageism and pregnancy discrimination, and retaliatory reassignments.
• Penalties for outspokenness: disciplinary action or dismissal warnings for women who denounce sexism or censorship, where the same behavior in men is read as leadership.
• Social/cultural bias: racialized abuse and Islamophobic institutional bias, such as the denial of a press card over a hijab, intensified by nationalist rhetoric.
• Transphobic violence: physical assault during protests, online misgendering and targeting by public figures, with the authors stressing how scarce data on transgender journalists are.

The research confirms that women journalists face a “dual vulnerability”: they are targeted both as public watchdogs and because of their gender. They stress that this does not mean women are targeted solely for their gender. They maintain that these threats are qualitatively different from those men face, not simply additive. Treating them as sub-categories of male-centered classifications dilutes their severity, which the authors link to feminist concepts of “alienation” and “pseudo-inclusion”. They call for an intersectional vocabulary, covering gender, race, sexuality, religion and class, that can document these experiences and support inclusive policy and institutional reform. They conclude that women journalists in western democracies do not enjoy equal press freedom, and they present the findings as a starting point for further work on transgender journalists.