Women Under AttackJanuary/February 2020 135
At its most extreme, violence against female political leaders has
become lethal. Last year in Brazil, Marielle Franco—a black, gay, fem-
inist city councilor in Rio de Janeiro—was assassinated by militia
members opposed to her political positions. Similarly, a series of vio-
lent attacks against elected female leaders across Bolivia in 2012 cul-
minated in the assassination of Juana Quispe, a councilor in Ancoraimes
who had come under fire for assisting
female colleagues in filing harassment
complaints. And in 2016, an assassin
motivated by a toxic mix of white su-
premacy, xenophobia, and misogyny
took the life of Jo Cox, an outspoken
feminist British parliamentarian.
Also distressing is the way that such
violence threatens to undermine the credibility and limit the electoral
success of female politicians. According to the National Democratic
Institute, violence against female politicians in Asian and Latin Amer-
ican democracies has led them to serve fewer terms, on average, than
their male colleagues. In the United Kingdom, several female mem-
bers of Parliament decided not to run for reelection in December 2019
in large part owing to the abuse they experienced. Caroline Spelman,
one such member, wrote in The Times of London that “sexually charged
rhetoric has been prevalent in the online abuse of female mps, with
threats to rape us and referring to us by our genitalia. It is therefore
not surprising that so many good female colleagues have decided to
stand down at this election.”
And this abuse prevents women from running for office in the first
place. In a 2014 survey in Australia by the Ywca and the University
of Adelaide, two-thirds of the women polled who expressed interest
in running for office said that threats against female politicians made
them hesitant to do so. In Afghanistan, women reported to the Inter-
national Foundation for Electoral Systems in 2019 that pervasive
sexual harassment was one of the primary factors discouraging them
from running for higher office. And in Iraq in 2018, one woman en-
tirely withdrew her candidacy for parliament after a fabricated video
surfaced online showing her in bed with a man.
These forms of harassment and violence not only damage a woman
personally; they also hinder her ability to govern effectively. In a 2016
survey by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, almost 40 percent of the fe-
Violence against female
politicians undermines their
credibility and limits their
electoral success.