Whenever Rachel Watkyn’s job as a business leader thrusts her into the spotlight, she braces herself for a section of the response online: relentless comments about her appearance, misogynistic slurs, threats.
“Without doubt it’s getting worse and worse and worse,” says the founder and managing director of Tiny Box Company, the UK’s largest online gift packaging company. “If you are in the public eye, you are public bait, you are owned by them.”
As a high-profile businesswoman, Watkyn is navigating social media at a time when gender-based harassment online, particularly that targeting female leaders, is on the rise because of a confluence of cultural and technological shifts.
Data shows that online harassment is increasing across the board for internet users: research from the Anti-Defamation League, a US-based research and advocacy group, found that 22 per cent of Americans experienced severe harassment on social media in 2024, up from 18 per cent in 2023.
Entrepreneur Rachel Watkyn, who says online abuse is ‘getting worse and worse and worse’
