Rape and acid threats to our women politicians
A SHOCKING study on the abuse female politicians receive from the public has shown that more than one in three have received online threats of rape or sexual assault.
Others received threats of being attacked, with one representative told that acid would be thrown in her face.
But it wasn’t only verbal threats and abuse that women politicians received, as one revealed that someone threw faeces at her.
The disturbing regularity of the abuse and threats has been exposed in a just-published interim study from NUI Galway.
To date, a team f rom NUI Galway’s Journalism and Communication discipline has interviewed 69 Irish politicians. This includes 12 TDs, six senators, nine former members of the Oireachtas and 42 local councillors.
Some 96% of t he i nterviewees t old researchers they had received social media or other electronic messages that contained ‘foul language’.
Nearly three quarters (73%) of the women had been threatened with physical violence on social media, while 38% received threats of rape or sexual assault.
The abuse, however, is not contained to online platforms. Some 28% of the female politicians have been verbally abused while out in public. Of the 69 politicians interviewed, 14 reported receiving threatening or abusive phone calls. And one of the politicians reported that someone threw faeces at her while she was in a public park.
Another former TD involved in the study explained that somebody threatened to attack her with acid on numerous occasions.
‘I was repeatedly threatened by a troll who threatened to throw acid in my face,’ she said.
‘Another one said he knew where I lived and he’d be standing in my garden waiting for me.’
Divisive political i ssues also appear to cause an increase in the amount of abuse levelled at our female politicians.
Three women reported that their children, partners or family members had been subjected to verbal
‘Social media is a den of misogyny’
abuse due to their support of the Marriage Equality referendum in 2015 and the referendum to repeal the Eighth Amendment in 2018.
Just three of the female politicians reported the abuse to the gardaí, while two made complaints to social media companies.
The online abuse has led to one in five national politicians or former politicians considering stepping back from their roles, the study found. At a local level, more than a half of councillors (59%) considered quitting their jobs.
Despite the fact that the majority of women have been subjected to this abuse, it appears that some are reluctant to speak out about their experiences on the record.
One prominent female TD told the Irish Daily Mail that she was cautious of telling her story about the online abuse she has received as she did not want to be seen as a ‘victim’.
She said: ‘I’m just trying to be a female politician – I don’t want to keep highlighting that or the problems with it.
‘As far as I can see, women talking about the problems women have hasn’t made them [the problems] go away. I just want to do my job as if gender wasn’t happening.’
Tom Felle, head of Journalism and Communication at NUI Galway, said the kind of abuse noted may prevent women from running for local and national government.
He said: ‘Some of these results are truly shocking. Social media has become a den of misogyny, a cesspit of trolls, where many female public representatives are abused and bullied regularly.
‘At a time when society needs to see more women entering politics, there is a real danger that this behaviour will have a chilling effect and discourage women f r om running for public office.’