Our CensHERship campaign
CensHERship is a campaign started by Clio Wood, &Breathe’s Founder, and Anna O’Sullivan, Founder of FutureFemHealth, to tackle social media censorship of women’s health and sexual wellbeing content. This censorship happens across all social media platforms (and elsewhere in the digital and financial world). It silences and suppresses brands, educators, charities and content creators.
CensHERship tackles digital suppression through advocacy, legislative action, partnerships, education and consultancy. We are a mouthpiece and beacon of connection for those affected.
We also work to achieve equal access to investment, financial services and ecommerce platforms for female-led women’s health and sexual wellbeing businesses.
Support and contribute by filling in our surveys:
Why Censhership matters
Clio first experienced social media censorship when a her reel promoting body positivity featuring Clio in a bikini had its reach limited on Instagram. This was quickly followed by three other innocuous reels being restricted. After appeals, the ban was lifted but not without a lot of time wasted. After further investigation, she realised that this censorship and suppression is widespread, with certain words associated with women’s health (period, vagina, vulva and others) being restricted and their use impacting the reach of content, ads featuring women’s health and sexual wellbeing products or campaigns routinely banned, taken down after launch or suppressed, and many posts, comments and even profile bios being censored.
Women are not being allowed to own the narrative around their own bodies, female bodies are viewed through the lens of male sexuality and female-led brands cannot grow. Women are missing out on potentially life-saving information from charity and women’s health campaigns. The situation also leads to self-censorship and body/health shame. None of this is true for men’s health issues or bodies. It’s hypocritical and must stop.
What can you do? Fill in our survey below to help us collect data on your experiences of censorship.
What we’ve done so far
In January 2024, Clio decided to act upon the censorship that she’d been seeing consistently for years on social media. She asked Anna to Co-Found a campaign with her to tackle this and called it CensHERship.
In four weeks, Anna and Clio put together a survey to collect data and experiences from a broad range of organisations, launched their campaign on (ironically) Instagram and LinkedIn and organised an inaugural CensHERship roundtable event to bring together a selection of women’s health and sexual wellbeing brands, campaigners, charities and educators experiencing censorship on social media
By 23 February 2024 (the day of the Roundtable) over fifty organisations had responded to our survey and the results were reported on in The Times, Daily Mail, The Express, Glamour, and other outlets. To date (Sept 2024) we have received nearly 100 survey submissions.
9 out of 10 organisations we surveyed have experienced at least 1 incident of censorship on social media in the last 12 months. Nearly 4 in 10 of those have experience 10 or more incidents of censorship on social media in the last 12 months. This is a problem affecting the vast majority of women.
“9 out of 10 organisations we surveyed have experienced at least 1 incident of censorship on social media in the last 12 months”
aims of Censhership campaign
To reach dialogue with all main social media platforms (including Meta (Facebook, Instagram), Google (Youtube), and Tiktok) by February 2025
To raise awareness of social media censorship and digital suppression as an issue that affects women globally
To be a mouthpiece for brands, charities, content creators and educators experiencing this issue
To bring parity of use for female and male social media users
To support pressure for legislative change to effect equality of use on digital platforms
Who’s involved?
We welcome input from charities, brands, medical professionals, educators, and campaigners - or anyone who is experiencing social media censorship! We need to collect as many examples as we can to make our voices heard! We have already had input from Hanx, Smilemakers, SheSpot, Bloody Good Period, Eve Appeal, Daye, Dame and other high profile women’s health creators and brands.
Want to help? Email censhership.campaign@gmail.com
Feature CensHERship
Clio and Anna welcome appearances on radio, podcasts and TV or to create content in partnership with others. Please also get in touch if you’d like comment on the campaign for articles, interviews or for us to write articles for you.
Clio is a journalist and author of Get Your Mojo Back, Sex, Pleasure and Intimacy After Birth. She has bylines in The Telegraph, iNews, The Independent, Metro, Grazia, OK magazine, Huffpost amongst others and is a regular speaker on podcasts, radio and at events of all scales.
Anna is the highly-regarded creator of Future Fem Health newsletter and an experienced PR and communications professional.
