‘Gender trolling’ is curbing women’s rights – and making money for digital platforms | Lucina Di Meco

Online hate has become a tool of the right and a lucrative business. It's driving women out of public life, putting democracy and human rights at risk

Listening to the resignation speech of Scotland's first minister Nicola Sturgeon this week, it was impossible not to think of the all-too similar words from former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern just a few weeks earlier.

Politicians are humans, too, as Sturgeon and Ardern reminded us, but the abuse women face online - greater and more vicious than that faced by male politicians - seem to dehumanise them, leaving some to wonder if the problem is a reflection of millennia-old misogyny, or an issue with technology.