ABSTRACT
This article considers how women’s public allegations of abuse by men have been limited by defamation and privacy law during a period of important changes to the media legal landscape in England and Wales. We consider the implementation of the Defamation Act 2013; the embedding of the misuse of private information tort; and restrictions imposed in family and criminal proceedings, as well as global cultural phenomena such as the #MeToo movement. Curiously, the UK-based campaign for libel reform in 2010–2013 did not feature the gendered aspects of defamation law, although a series of recent defamation and privacy cases have gendered dynamics at their core. This article re-visits earlier accounts of the ‘chilling effect’ to describe deterrence of speech, and, using a series of more recent cases, re-assess both the definitional aspects, as well as any available empirical evidence for a ‘gendered chilling effect’.
Judith Townend and Julie Doughty, Cold comfort: To what extent is there a gendered chilling effect in England and Wales?, Journal of Media Law. Published online: 17 December 2025.
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