Sixteen-year-old Poppy loves video games but has learned never to turn her mic on. “If they hear that I’m a girl, I get literal death threats,” she told Stylist a few weeks ago. Fourteen-year-old Aimee has been warned by her school not to walk home in her PE kit in case it attracts predators, though as 17-year-old Shantae explained, when strange older men bombard you with DMs at all hours, “nowhere feels safe.”

In a bid to understand how the next generation of women are navigating this increasingly hostile landscape, Stylist has spent eight weeks touring the country, speaking to girls in cities including Newcastle, Swansea and London. Aged mainly between 10 and 17, their testimonies reveal a world where self-censorship is the norm, harassment is expected, and safety is never guaranteed.

The voices of girls themselves must be at the heart of any conversation about gender equality because their lived experiences expose the stark reality: the work of feminism is far from finished. The stories shared with Stylist highlight a world where fear dictates behaviour from an early age, and where young girls are forced to adapt to a culture of harassment rather than expect meaningful change. 

A few years ago, it felt like things were getting better for women and girls. In the workplace, companies had started reporting their gender pay gap; MeToo was normalising painful conversations not just about sexual assault but about the complexities of power dynamics, coercion, and the murky hinterlands of behaviour where abuse can flourish; intersectionality was finally, firmly on the feminist agenda, and the future looked, briefly, as if it might be brighter for the generations to come.

One pandemic later, though, and that hopeful spark has all but burned out. The world that girls stand to inherit seems more hostile to them than ever before.

New research paints a grim picture. A recent study by Girlguiding UK found that the proportion of girls who feel “unsafe” because of sexism has more than doubled in the past decade to 47%.

The End Violence Against Women Coalition reports that 85% of young women aged 18-24 in the UK have experienced sexual harassment in public. Meanwhile, the NSPCC found that online child grooming offences have risen by 82% over the past five years, with girls making up the vast majority of victims. Social media only amplifies these dangers: a 2023 study by Plan International UK revealed that 1 in 4 girls aged 14-21 had experienced at least one form of abuse, bullying or sexual harassment online. 

Furthermore, in schools, misogyny is becoming deeply ingrained. A report from Ofsted found that sexual harassment and abuse are so common in UK schools that many girls simply “do not see the point in reporting it.” Instead, they learn to endure it. 

Black girls in particular face even more intense scrutiny – and are offered less support than their white peers. A landmark 2023 study by the group Milk Honey Bees found that “Black girls are adultified and stereotyped by teachers which denies them the protection and care usually afforded to children, instead they often experience harsher punishments and limited emotional support.” Of the girls they spoke to who had struggled with their mental health or emotions in school, 74% said they “pretend I’m okay,” only 9% indicated they would “tell a teacher or staff member I’m not feeling good.”

Despite all this, girls are far from passive victims. The young women we spoke to were angry, informed, and determined to push back against the culture they’ve inherited. They are fighting for a world in which girls don’t have to shrink themselves to survive.

Find out what they had to say – and what you can do – in the new issue of Stylist magazine, out 19 March.

Images: Getty