Blog by Sarah Barnbrook, SI Representative to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS Forum 2026)
At WSIS Forum 2026, held 6 to 10 July in Geneva, Switzerland, I joined a session that asked a simple but uncomfortable question: What happens to women, girls, and marginalised communities when we welcome them online without thinking through what happens to them once they arrive?
The session, Inclusion Without Safety Is Not Empowerment: Automation Is Scaling Harm Faster Than We Can Respond, took place on 10 July 2026 in Room L at Palexpo. As Soroptimist International Melbourne member and Soroptimist International Australia’s Advocacy Lead for Digital Safety Futures, I delivered the session drawing on my work in digital safety, AI ethics, gender bias, and fairness. I also brought insights from Away from Keyboard, the Australian charity I founded to support safer digital environments.
For twenty years, WSIS has celebrated progress measured in access: more people connected, more devices in hands, more communities online. That progress matters. But somewhere along the way, “getting people online” started being treated as the whole story, when it was only ever the opening chapter.
Harm is not random. It is shaped, repeated, and intensified by systems that learn and adapt faster than our safeguards do.
When we bring more people into digital spaces without also making those spaces safe, we’re not removing harm — we’re relocating it. Much of what we use every day is designed to keep us scrolling, clicking, and engaged, not to keep us well.
Safety is an environment, not a personal responsibility. Telling people to be more careful does not fix a system built to scale harm.
Soroptimist International’s Director of Advocacy, Berthe De Vos‑Neven, brought thirty‑five years of human rights and legal experience into the room and named something Soroptimists have been saying for decades, even before we had the language for it:
Women’s rights don’t stop at the door of the internet. Digital rights are human rights. It shouldn’t matter whether harm comes from a person or a platform — women deserve protection either way.
One figure she shared should stop anyone in their tracks: six in ten cases of technology‑related violence against women are never investigated. Not because the harm isn’t real, but because our legal and technical systems were never built to notice it.
Berthe also spoke about how Soroptimist International judges whether access is genuine: by asking whether something is available, affordable, understood, accessible, and something people can confidently use.
“This is where our advocacy sits most of the time,” she said. “Making sure survivors and women’s organisations help shape a system before it’s built, not review it afterwards.”
I put it simply: vulnerability is a state, not a trait. A person isn’t vulnerable because of who they are; they become vulnerable because of how a system treats them. And when risks overlap — gender, disability, isolation — harm doesn’t just add up. It multiplies.
The session also offered something practical: nine simple questions anyone can ask before they build, launch, or grow a piece of technology. Who was in the room when it was designed. What happens to the person the system wasn’t built for. Who is accountable when things go wrong, and whether that’s the same person who gets hurt.
Inclusion is the starting point. Safety is what makes it real.
Berthe closed with an ask worth repeating: treat safety as a human right, not a nice‑to‑have. Support laws that stop harm before it happens, not just report it afterwards. And bring survivors and women’s organisations into the room while a system is still being designed, not once someone has already been hurt by it.
This isn’t just a question for governments and big tech companies. Soroptimist clubs everywhere are moving more of what we do online — membership sign‑ups, event bookings, newsletters, member records. Every one of those decisions carries a little of the same risk this session explored.
So if your club is thinking about moving online, or already has, it’s worth pausing to ask a few honest questions. Who might get left out of this, and would it still work for them. Could this information ever be used in a way we didn’t intend. And if something does go wrong, who’s responsible — and is it the same person who ends up hurt.
I would genuinely love to hear from any clubs thinking through these questions. I’ve created a free tool to help organisations spot gaps before they become real problems. If your club is moving online and wants a second, caring pair of eyes on it, reach out. I’m always happy to help.
