Digital violence against women is not a fringe issue.

It is global.

Harassment, intimidation, coordinated attacks, doxxing, sexualized threats — any woman who becomes visible in digital spaces exposes herself to a risk that has become structural.

Platforms respond slowly, if at all. Legal frameworks remain national and fall short in a borderless digital world. Many affected women withdraw — not because they lack competence, but because they lack protection.

This is where Sumaiyya Juma’s response begins.

With The Shield Maidens, she founded a platform that equips women, girls and persons with disabilities to protect themselves in digital spaces – through education, practical security strategies, community and structure. Not outrage, but construction.

But who is the woman building this structure?

I like the photo Sumaiyya sent me. She is on a zipline — suspended between departure and arrival. Focused rather than posing. Movement, not recklessness.

Perhaps this image captures her better than any biography could.

She does not seem like someone who wants to be spectacular. She seems like someone who has decided.

Sumaiyya is not a loudspeaker. Not a self-promoter. She speaks calmly, precisely, often in the language of the team. “We never work alone,” she says. The sentence is not rhetorical decoration. It is conviction.

Raised in Kenya, community for her is not a strategy but a lived reality. Identity is formed collectively. Responsibility is shared. Success is rarely purely individual.

This mindset shapes her understanding of leadership. She does not describe herself as a classical activist, but as an organizer of collaboration. Protection, in her view, is not an individual act — not a “you need to defend yourself better” — but a collective fabric.

The Shield Maidens reflects this approach: a collaborative structure built on shared knowledge, teams, and mutual support. The goal is not to define women as victims. It is to safeguard their room for action.

Sumaiyya did not found The Shield Maidens because conditions were ideal. She founded it because the need was undeniable.

Digital spaces are spaces of power.

Visibility there means negotiating influence, participation, and voice. Yet for many women, visibility also means vulnerability — structural exclusion, not just personal stress.

If we speak about diversity, we must speak about safety. If we speak about empowerment, we must speak about protection.

Sumaiyya recognized this gap and began closing it.

Not with a manifesto — but with infrastructure. The Shield Maidens is still in development. Financial stability has not yet been secured. Sumaiyya sustains herself through other professional work, building and organizing in parallel.

She could have waited — for funding, for institutional backing, for perfect conditions. Instead, she began.

In our conversations, what stands out is the calm with which she speaks about difficult phases. Years in survival mode. Organizational challenges. The constant negotiation of balance. No dramatic self-narrative. No pathos. Just clarity.

She learns deliberately. She works consciously on communication. She reflects on her own structures. She thinks in teams, not ego positions.

She understands digital security as an infrastructural question.

Who protects women in digital spaces?

Who ensures that visibility does not automatically mean vulnerability? The Shield Maidens is a beginning. A platform that is growing.

A network that is consolidating. A structure that treats protection not as an afterthought, but as a prerequisite.

→ theshieldmaidens

Sumaiyya Juma is not building out of defiance. Not out of outrage. Not out of self-promotion. She is building out of conviction — and in doing so, she may contribute significantly to a healthier digital public sphere.

Protection is not a luxury.

It is the foundation that allows digital spaces to be truly open. And yet this reality does not define her. She does not wait for safe spaces.

She builds them.