Gendered Aspects of Political Violence - WGP Cheat Sheet (DRAFT) by faminconnue

= when the goal of the violence is to affect political integrity and when the means by which the violence is conducted also violates the personal integrity of indivi­duals involved in politics (Bjarn­egard 2018)

trends worldwide show online abuse of public reps is person­alised

→ women tend to receive threats on their person which are often of a sexualised nature

→ men tends to be more suscep­tible to questions about their personal integrity and honesty

- 85.2 per cent of female MPs who took part in the study said that they had
suffered psycho­logical violence in the course of their term of office.
- 46.9 per cent had received death threats or threats of rape or beating.
- 58.2 per cent had been the target of online sexist attacks on social
networks.
- 67.9 per cent had been the target of comments relating to their physical
appearance or based on gender stereo­types.
- 24.7 per cent had suffered sexual violence.
- 14.8 per cent had suffered physical violence.

Three charac­ter­istics:
1. targets women because of their gender
2. it takes a gendered form (e.g. sexual­isa­tion)
3. it has the purpose of discou­raging and denying women the ability to partic­ipate equally in politics

→ political violence is gendered through: gendered motives, gendered forms, and gendered impacts (Bardall et al, 2020)

The current presence of gendered political voilence raises “questions about the progress that has been made globally toward incorp­orating women as full political actors” (Krook, 2017)

- both men and women in politics face signif­icant and increasing levels of threats, harass­ment, and violence
- Gendered differ­ences in terms of form/type of violence experi­enced by women in comparison to men
→ Women are more likely to experience violence with sexual connot­ations

- Young, single women are particular targets of political violence

- Although the volume of online threats and harassment is high for both men and women, resear­chers find that women are more likely than men to receive harassing and uncivil messages (Rhenault et al., 2019; Collignon and Rudig, 2021) and more likely to be attacked on the basis of their gender and sexuality (Erikson, et al. 202)

- Men more likely to experience physical violence while women are more likely to experience psycho­logical violence

- Visibility is a key factor, with higher levels of threats, abuse and harassment more likely to be directed at women who are in leadership positions, have high name recogn­ition, or have been active in the media (Rhenault et al. 2019; Ward and McLoug­hlin, 2020; Håkansson, 2021; Herrick and Thomas, 2022).'

- Feminist women, and women who are identified with left-wing parties and causes are also more likely to face threats and harassment (Krook, 2017), violence and abuse (Krupe­rberg, 2018), and sexualized comments (Herrick and Thomas, 2022)

- Evidence from the US and Sweden also shows that consti­tuents prefer to deal with female legisl­ators which increases the level of contact but also the risk of hostility (Håkansson 2023)

- Evidence that political violence can be impacted by inters­ect­ion­ality of gender with race, ethnicity, youth and sexual orient­ation (IPU, 2016; Kuperberg, 2018; Collignon and Rudig, 2021). Other research findings, however, find that youth, religion, ethnicity, and age (Kuper­berg, 2018; Håkansson, 2020) have limited or no impact.

→ The varied findings in this area suggest that the relati­onship between gender, identity, and violence may vary across different social and cultural contexts.