A new report from Australia’s Office of eSafety shows one-third of professional women have been abused online. 

The study - Women in the Spotlight - found Australian working women with an online presence are frequently targeted by gendered abuse. 

Nearly a quarter of people surveyed for the study said gendered abuse made them reluctant to take a public-facing leadership position.

In a comparison of the impact of online abuse between working men and women, it found that women were more likely to stop online activity for work and step back from or avoid leadership positions after being abused.

The main perpetrators of abuse identified in the eSafety report were total strangers (50 per cent of abusive material), followed by professional contacts (40 per cent) and personal contacts. 

Over 60 per cent of the survey respondents reported abuse occuring on Facebook, with another quarter saying it came from Instagram. About 14 per cent of respondents said they had experienced abuse on LinkedIn. 

Julie Inman Grant, Australia’s eSafety commissioner, says many women are aware that high-profile people such as Julia Gillard, Julia Banks, Leigh Sales and Lisa Millar are targets of sexist abuse, and know that the same may happen to them in a leadership role.

“[They] will avoid stepping into leadership positions that require an online presence and have ceased discussing topics online they feel might come across as opinionated or inflammatory,” she said.

“People say; ‘Why are you helping famous women?’, but it’s not just famous women. For women who are running small businesses, the internet is an essential utility,” she said.

“Misogynistic abuse is meant to silence voices; what this research shows is they self-censor ... what I see is that women see online abuse as a cost of doing business if they want a leadership position - so many require you to have an online presence - but it [such abuse] shouldn’t be the expectation.”

The Office of eSafety has offered online self-defence teaching to federal female MPs and journalists at the ABC, but it does not have the funding to deliver such information to the broader public.