This is not new: women and men are not equal when it comes to digital representation. On the other hand, was such a deterioration of the situation to be expected in recent years? Unfortunately, the decline of gender equality on screen is well and truly a reality, as evidenced by a report "Digital: sexism in freedom – The representation of women in the most viewed videos on Youtube " over the period 2019 /2020 .

If we get straight to the point, or to its conclusion, the study paints a rather worrying picture of the place of women in the digital world, and more particularly on YouTube, " the most consulted platform among 15-24 year olds and the second most consulted, all ages combined, in France ", according to Médiatrie.

Thus, first of all, there is an underrepresentation of women compared to their male counterparts on the platform: 62.1% of leading roles are male, compared to 16.2% of female leading roles. In addition, of the four videos classified as "humorous," no women play the lead role, while women have the lead role in 57% of the videos classified as "tutorial," and in 25% of the "personal content" videos and 16.67% of the "music" videos. Finally, in videos that feature inactive or aesthetic secondary roles, 28.6% were women, 46.9% were mixed and 22.4% were men.

But that's not all: the study raises another major problem, which is that of stereotypes – " cognitive automatisms that lead to characterization and therefore potentially stigmatization " – namely that on average, " 68.2% of the content studied presented stereotypical content", an increase of more than 10% in gender stereotypes" between 2019 and 2020. All this, knowing that 61% of the content presented masculine stereotypes, associated with positive characteristics, whereas female stereotypes were associated with characteristics with negative connotations. More specifically, " hyper-virile ", " protector " and " macho " are the three most frequent stereotypes for male characters, while " the sentimental ", " the doll ", " the seductress " and " the venal " are the four most frequent stereotypes for female characters.

In addition to being stereotyped, female characters are often reified and sexualized, and when the videos observed by the study featured a man and a woman, 38.8% of the relationships observed over the period were seductive relationships between male and female characters, 4.4% of the relationships observed were submissive relationships and 14% of the relationships observed were " stereotyped marital relationships" " involving everything at the same time a mothering attitude on the part of the woman and a dominant attitude on the part of the man "... But that's not all, since in the videos observed over the period, 18.6% of the videos " offered violent and/or sexual or sexist remarks." 

As a result, while a CSA study that focused on the period 2017/2018, highlighted the fact that " 15.5% of videos presented a degrading image of women ", this percentage rose to 34.7% over the period 2019/2020. It should be noted that the successive national lockdowns are not for nothing: firstly, there has been " a 400% increase in calls received by the 3919 platform" – dedicated to domestic violence – according to the MIPROF and secondly, the digital consumption of the French has also increased considerably  during this period, according to the DEPS.

Far from being satisfied with raising these frightening data, the authors of the study propose levers to be activated for a better future, such as the amendment to the law of 30 September 1986 on audiovisual communication – by integrating the image of women on the Internet into the CSA's regulation -, equal conditionality for works broadcast on the Internet – by depriving works conveying images that are too degrading for women from funding -, the establishment of a charter of good conduct for platforms, and finally the self-regulation of GAFAM (these are the web giants: Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft). All that remains  is for us to act.