Violence against Women in Politics: An Urgent Problem the Political Science Community Must Take Seriously

Kuperberg R.

Abstract Violence against women in politics encompasses physical, psychological, economic, sexual and semiotic forms of violence, targeting women because their gender is seen as threatening to hegemonic political norms. Theoretical debates over these categories and empirical applications to global cases often overlook that backgrounds and lived experiences of women in politics can differ considerably. Using the United Kingdom as a case study, in this article I analyze different manifestations of online semiotic violence – violence perpetrated through words and images seeking to render women incompetent and invisible (Krook 2020, 187) – against female, religious-minority politicians. Through a qualitative discursive approach, I identify patterns and strategies of violence in an original dataset of Twitter posts that mention the usernames of seven prominent Muslim and Jewish female politicians. Results show that multiply-marginalized politicians are exposed to both sexist and racist rhetoric online. In this case, semiotic violence functions to render women incompetent using racist disloyalty tropes as well as to render women invisible by invalidating their testimonies of abuse.

Krook M.L.

Women have made significant inroads into politics in recent years, but in many parts of the world, their increased engagement has spurred attacks, intimidation, and harassment intended to deter their participation. This book provides the first comprehensive account of this phenomenon, exploring how women came to give these experiences a name—violence against women in politics—and lobby for its increased recognition by citizens, states, and international organizations. Drawing on research in multiple disciplines, the volume resolves lingering ambiguities regarding its contours by arguing that violence against women in politics is not simply a gendered extension of existing definitions of political violence privileging physical aggressions against rivals. Rather, it is a distinct phenomenon involving a broad range of harms to attack and undermine women as political actors. Incorporating a wide range of country examples, the book illustrates what this violence looks like in practice, catalogues emerging solutions around the world, and considers how to document this phenomenon more effectively. Highlighting its implications for democracy, human rights, and gender equality, the volume concludes that tackling violence against women in politics requires ongoing dialogue and collaboration to ensure women’s equal rights to participate—freely and safely—in political life around the globe.

Bardall G., Bjarnegård E., Piscopo J.M.

How is political violence gendered? We connect the traditional political violence literature’s emphasis on categorizing attacks to the gender and politics literature’s analysis of the barriers to women’s political participation. Our framework separates gendered political violence into three elements. Gendered motives appear when perpetrators use violence to preserve hegemonic men’s control of politics. Gendered forms emphasize how gender roles and tropes differentially shape men’s and women’s experiences of violence. Gendered impacts capture the subjective meaning-making processes that occur as different audiences react to political violence. This approach offers researchers and policymakers greater analytic precision regarding how political violence is gendered.

Kuperberg R.

The field of violence against women in politics (VAWIP) is so new, it seems unfair to discuss its “gaps”; rather, the study of VAWIP is defined by its uncharted territory. The bulk of existing literature, compiled by scholars as well as practitioners, emphasizes theoretical conceptualization, empirical forms of violence, and the tracking of incidents across regions (Krook 2017; Krook and Restrepo Sanín 2016). Researchers have stressed the gendered motivations and implications of VAWIP. In short, women are targets of violence because they are women and because they are in politics.

Collier C.N., Raney T.

AbstractIn 2015, the Canadian House of Commons passed a new code of conduct governing non-criminal sexual harassment between members of Parliament becoming the first of its kind in any Westminster system in the world. Using a feminist institutional and violence-against-women-in-politics approach, we assess how the code challenges, legitimizes and upholds traditionally gendered norms and institutionalized sexism within Canada's parliamentary system including parliamentary privilege, party cohesion and party discipline. Despite its novelty, we argue this code fails to enact positive gender-friendly institutional change and may do more harm than good in its efforts to curb sexual harassment.

Piazza J.A., O’Rourke L.

Abstract Previous research has found that individuals harboring hostile sexist attitudes are more likely to support the use of political violence. In this study, we examine this relationship further. We theorize that the impact of hostile sexism on support for political violence is mediated through two mutually reinforcing factors: social dominance orientation and political illiberalism. We test this argument using an original survey we administered to over 1,400 subjects in the United States. We employ two operationalizations of individuals’ support for political violence: support in the abstract and support for specific acts of political violence. We find that individuals who exhibit hostile sexism are substantially more likely to support political violence, both abstract and specific. Moreover, we find that both social dominance orientation and political illiberalism together mediate 64.9% of the effect of hostile sexism on support for political violence in the abstract and 80.5% of the effect on support for specific acts of political violence. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings.