Racist and misogynistic abuse suffered by Man City forward Khadija 'Bunny' Shaw is totally unacceptable with stronger action required by the football authorities in order to stamp it out of the game, Nikita Parris and Jordan Nobbs have told Sky Sports' Pitch to Pod podcast.

City reported abuse directed towards Shaw to the police following their 4-3 Women's Super League defeat to Arsenal on February 2, with the forward not taking part in the club's League Cup win over the Gunners a few days later for her mental wellbeing.

City have promised to fully support Shaw - who made her comeback in Sunday's Women's FA Cup win against Leicester, coming off the bench to score in the 3-1 win - over the "disgusting treatment" she received.

The incident happened on the same weekend Chelsea captain Millie Bright heard expletive insults directed her way after the WSL champions' 1-0 win at Aston Villa, taking to social media to remind fans that players "are not robots".

Aston Villa midfielder Nobbs believes there is still lots of work to do to educate people that there is no place for this type of abuse in the game.

"It's just unacceptable, isn't it? We don't want that in the women's football world," she told Sky Sports' 'Pitch to Pod'. "Well, in any part of life. But it's so sad to see a player have to stay at home, miss a game because of that type of abuse and racism.

"We want it nowhere near our game. And we've always spoken about the media platform being so big for women's football and pushing the game. And clearly, we probably need to be a lot stronger on just saying that this is not acceptable. And we don't want these people involved in football. And, you know, we've got to protect the game and protect players.

"We need to clearly keep reiterating and making powerful messages to inform the game and make sure it's still made so that it's inappropriate."

Brighton forward Parris agrees with her England international team-mate, saying it is "frightening" a player could be forced to miss a game due to the abuse they suffered and that should set off "alarm bells".

"The players can say as much as they want," she said. "We can continue to campaign and show our measures of support. But when is the institution going to take any action? Because if you're Bunny, imagine the level of that abuse to stop you from going to play the next week? You can only imagine what she's been sent.

"The messages have obviously taken an emotional toll on Bunny that's forced her to stop doing the one thing she's loved and take time out of it to be able to re-evaluate and take a breather. To me, that's frightening and should be huge alarm bells in itself."

In fact, the England forward says she would even be prepared to walk off the pitch if such abuse happened during a game.

"I would," says Parris. "I think depending on what type of person you are, your reactions will be different. I just think if in the moment I felt the abuse was just way overboard, I would say something [to the referee]. I know what I'm like. I know what I'm like as a person."

Parris says that while football players open themselves up to public scrutiny and exposure, that still does not give people the right to abuse them.

"We know we play a public sport," she added. "We know we open ourselves up to people's comments because of the sport in which we play and the platform in which we want our sport to grow to become bigger and better.

"But it still doesn't give people the right to be able to openly say whatever they are feeling straight from the brain to the mouth and out. It's just not acceptable - there has to be a level of respect for people."

Meanwhile, Parris is also keen to remind people such incidents can have a debilitating effect on players' mental health, as seen when Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka were both racially abused online after missing penalties in England's shootout loss to Italy in the Euro 2020 final at Wembley.

"We highlighted young players," she said. "I think it's a very difficult situation to come into football as it is today with the amount of opinions, both online, offline, on the pitch, in the stands, to be able to deal with the level of abuse that you could possibly get just by having a bad game.

"Simply missing a penalty can cause incidents that could change the course of the rest of your life. Because people don't think it happened on Friday, by Tuesday they'll be all right. No, the level of the gravity of what you're saying can change the course of someone's life.

"That is the difference. But some people just don't see it like that. They just see it as only a flippant comment. I only said it in the heat of the moment. But what you say in the heat of a moment can change the course of someone's life. And it has done, it has done.

"We've heard well-documented by Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka, these people have told you repeatedly what one incident, them missing a penalty, literally helped derail their mental health. And luckily, they were able to rebuild themselves. But some people might not have that.

"They had the support, resources, family members that could help them rebuild and make them see the strength in themselves and help them overcome the challenge in which they faced. But what if you don't have that support?

"It's actually quite frightening what can happen to a person's life based on one person's comment - many people will say it's a job, but ultimately it's a football game. It's a game of football."

One course of action that could be taken to help reduce the online abuse suffered by players is for regulators to use their powers in order to hold the Social Media companies to account, says 'Kick it Out' CEO Samuel Okafor.

And as part of this, Okafor is also calling on Ofcom and the regulators to ensure these various companies provide more user-empowerment tools.

"You can see the impact that online abuse is having towards players," he told Sky Sports News. "And Bunny Shaw is just one of those examples that we've seen over the years and also over recent weeks. So we believe that this is an opportunity for the regulators to step up and to hold social media firms to account, to use their powers to ensure that there is accountability within social media firms.

"We believe that the social media firms need to be able to provide more user-empowerment tools as well. We're calling on Ofcom and the regulators to really step up and do that.

"We're really supportive of a new regulator in football. We believe that it will help to protect the long-term future of the game, make the game more sustainable, put fans at the heart of the game. But also, we believe it will help to tackle some of the cultural challenges and the representation challenges that the game has had on both on-field roles and off-field roles as well.

"In addition to that, this year will be the first year The FA are introducing the mandatory workforce diversity reporting, which means from the June 1, clubs will have to publish their workforce data. We've been calling for football to be more transparent with its data, to bring its data into the light, which is really important to drive cultural change as well.

"There'll be more questions that will come out when that data is public in terms of clubs reflecting their community, which is a key message for us because football is at the heart of so many communities."

Ultimately, however, it comes down to education, with Okafor saying more work still needs to be done in this area both from a players' and fans' point of view.

"We believe the game should be open to everyone and this is a growing area of concern in terms of discrimination and we believe more work needs to be done here in terms of education," he said. "It's not just about campaigns or armbands. This is about actually how do you increase education, both at player levels and fan levels, but I think there's more work that needs to be done in this area of discrimination for sure."