Engender blog

Engender launches report on women’s experience of the election process 

Today, Engender has launched a new report: Women’s political journey: Exploring the election process and women’s experiences of abuse, exclusion and bias, including vital recommendations for improvement. Find out more about the report below.

“Someone said to me [during the election] and I quote, ‘we can’t win here with someone who looks like her.” 

The political arena is becoming increasingly hostile, especially for women and marginalised women.

Engender’s new report ‘Women’s Political Journey’ explores the candidate journey—from preparing to stand as a candidate, including all the interview and vetting processes, to being elected and what happens after.  

There is still an image of the ideal candidate as white, middle-class, able-bodied, and male. For anyone who falls outside these categories, this means being prepared for additional barriers.  

Our report shows that over 70% of respondents to a question on forms of abuse reported experiencing online harassment or trolling during their campaign. Only 11% felt “very safe” during their campaign period.

A survey respondent told us:

“I have been spat on, shouted at, abused and physically shoved countless times.”  

Sexist bullying is a persistent problem within some branches and local parties, with findings indicating that disabled and minoritised women may be at increased risk. These experiences can cause women to question their positions and political futures. It is widely recognised that social media presents significant risks for women in politics, with Black and minority ethnic women at greatest risk. 

57% of our survey respondents felt that positive action measures (PAMs) like quotas or all-women shortlists are ‘resented’ by some party members who feel their use is unfair or unnecessary. As has been reported to us, white men especially refuse to make space for other groups if it means sharing their privilege. Others reported only tokenistic acceptance of PAMs, reducing the ultimate impact of measures.  

Very few parties are consistently collecting equalities monitoring information on prospective candidates. This is vital when it comes to ensuring candidate diversity and proportionate representation of Scotland’s communities. 

Equal Representation Development Officer Noomi Anyanwu states: 

“Abuse, lack of support, and biases were reported widely among our survey participants and interviewees. Nearly 30% would not recommend candidacy to underrepresented groups. It’s understandable considering what women must endure to make it as politicians, but we don’t want to settle for this.” 

“Change needs to happen, so we urge political parties, governments, councils, and other stakeholders to implement measures and commit to equal and diverse representation. I want to see at least 50% women in our parliaments—for that to happen, we need to see a real culture change first.” 

Read the full report including vital recommendations for action here.

GUEST POST: Digital abuse against feminist scholars: a case study

Engender and the Equal Media and Culture Centre for Scotland have hosted student placements from the MSc in Social Research at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Strathclyde Applied Gender Studies and Research Methods course. As part of their research outputs, the students have produced a series of blogs.

In this post, Yoke explores a case study of the online backlash and digital abuse experienced by feminist researchers and scholars.

Online abuse is used as a silencing mechanism against women and other minoritised identities in the public (online) space.

Weaponising misogyny and dehumanisation techniques, perpetrators aim to push their targets outside the public sphere, to reinstate misogynistic, heteronormative dominance. These public displays of violence also serve to remind and threaten others who might want to defy misogynist, white supremacist, and heteronormative power structures. As Gosse et al. (2021) state, online abuse causes scholars and journalists to self-censor and choose ‘safe’ topics to discuss publicly in an attempt to protect themselves, thereby upholding the status quo. Indeed, research has shown that when women speak publicly about ‘controversial’ topics, such as feminism, this triggers online abuse. This is particularly a problem for feminist scholars who use social media to spread information on feminist research. These attacks must be recognised as part of a historical pattern of violent repercussions against those who defy patriarchal, white supremacist, capitalist dominance. Women have always been the target of abuse, and while the medium is new and everchanging, the intention is not.

Gendered online harassment – what’s law got to do with it?

Claire Kish is currently in the second year of her PhD in Sociology and is based in the University of Glasgow’s Sociology department. Her PhD research explores the online harassment of women in journalism focusing on professional harms and organisational dimensions. Here she writes about a project she has been working on with Engender:

I recently completed a project for Engender which explores the legal responsibilities of employers with respect to the online harassment of workers. I specifically focused on women journalists because they face significant and severe abuse online, often as a result of performing key duties of the role. Yet the results have wider significance - especially as more work shifts online and employers increasingly utilise social media for business purposes. These changes have significant gendered and intersectional impacts as there are risks associated with being online which for women, especially minoritised women, are amplified. Given that women journalists are facing online harassment when carrying out work for their employers, we need to approach this as an employment and workers’ rights issue. So my project examined existing UK employment laws to identify and understand what legal duties employers have to uphold the rights of their women employees.

Combating online abuse: Whose job is it anyway?

Engender's Communications and Administration Assistant Maxine Blane recently attended a Glitch workshop on digital self-care and self-defence. Here she reflects on her experiences and the work being done around women's digital equality.

Being online has become an inextricable piece of how we engage and participate in public life. Even if you have proudly resisted the siren call of all the cat videos on social media, the internet is required to access information, apply for jobs and social security, enhance education and maintain contact with friends, family and professional acquaintances.

For women and girls on the internet, online abuse and harassment is not a new phenomenon. Writing in 1995, (two years before my family would get our first ‘net-connected’ computer), feminist journalist and academic Sue Innes wrote that for women, the internet “was a new medium with an old message: keep out.” Since then, online abuse and harassment have only spread and adapted, welcoming the rise of the new mediums of social media and becoming endemic across these platforms.