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Tag: Gender

  • Attacking Women or their Policies? Understanding Violence against Women in Politics

    Attacking Women or their Policies? Understanding Violence against Women in Politics

    Are women mayors targeted for their identity or their political actions? Daniele, Dipoppa, and Pulejo (2026) provide causal evidence that women mayors are systematically more likely to face political violence than men, driven by discrimination.

    Drawing on fourteen years of data, the authors show that marginally elected female mayors—who are similar to men and elected in comparable towns—are three times more likely to be attacked. Importantly, they find no differences between men and women in the actions they take before elections, such as their campaign platforms, or while serving in office, including their policies, performance, or corruption. Because this violence is unrelated to women’s political choices, the authors suggest that discrimination, rather than political influence, is an important driver of this violence gap. Lastly, Daniele, Dipoppa, and Pulejo find that women who suffer attacks are less likely to run for reelection, pointing to a possible link between political violence and ongoing gender gaps in political representation.

    Learn more about this just accepted article here:

    Daniele, G., Dipoppa, G., & Pulejo, M. (2026). Attacking Women or their Policies? Understanding Violence against Women in Politics. The Journal of Politics, 743456. https://doi.org/10.1086/743456

  • Varieties of antigenderism: the politicization of gender issues across three European populist radical right parties

    Varieties of antigenderism: the politicization of gender issues across three European populist radical right parties

    How do far-right populist parties adapt their gender rhetoric across different political landscapes? Reinhardt, Heft, and Pavan (2024) analyze how populist radical right parties (PRRPs) weaponize gender issues on social media to drive gendered democratic backsliding.

    The authors evaluate how context-specific “gendered opportunity structures”—shaped by national levels of gender contestation, legal protections, party trajectories, and voter resonance—influence communication strategies. Focusing on the 2019 European Parliament election campaign, the study conducts a quantitative content analysis and constructs topic networks from the Facebook and Twitter feeds of three prominent parties: Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD), Italy’s Lega, and the Sweden Democrats. Through these networks, the authors track the salience of gender debates, the broader thematic contexts in which they are embedded, and specific party positions.

    The findings reveal that national conditions heavily dictate party framing. In settings where gender and sexual equality enjoy high public acceptance and strong legal protections, parties tend to rely on femonationalist framing—instrumentalizing gender equality rhetoric against external outgroups and immigrants while muting overt anti-gender hostility. In contrast, in contexts where equality protections are weaker and public contestation is higher, parties openly mobilize antigenderist rhetoric to challenge progressive norms. Despite these national variations, a shared femonationalist discourse bridges all three parties transnationally, rooted in a common nativist ideological core.

    Learn more about this article here:

    Reinhardt, S., Heft, A., & Pavan, E. (2024). Varieties of antigenderism: The politicization of gender issues across three European populist radical right parties. Information, Communication & Society, 27(7), 1273–1294. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2023.2246536

  • Gender and Media Representations: A Review of the Literature on Gender Stereotypes, Objectification and Sexualization

    Gender and Media Representations: A Review of the Literature on Gender Stereotypes, Objectification and Sexualization

    How do media portrayals shape societal gender norms and individual aspirations? Santoniccolo et al. (2023) synthesize the literature on gender stereotyping, objectification, and sexualization across media contexts, highlighting their role in fostering gender-based hostility and obstaculizing women’s public and professional ambition.

    Despite legislative advances and broader progress in civil rights, restrictive gender-based characterizations remain widespread across contemporary media landscapes. Synthesizing scientific evidence on how media shapes cultural environments, the authors demonstrate that stereotyping representations actively reinforce rigid gender role norms and bias. For men, continuous exposure to these portrayals fosters sexist attitudes, harassment, and violence; for women, it acts as a structural deterrent that represses career-oriented goals and professional ambitions.

    Simultaneously, objectifying and sexualized representations encourage the internalization of narrow cultural appearance standards, promote the acceptance of sexist dynamics, and increase tolerance of abuse and body shame. These portrayals carry severe collateral impacts on physical and mental health, correlating with eating disorder symptomatology, intensified body surveillance, and diminished quality of life related to body image. The review concludes by emphasizing that while the harmful societal and psychological effects of these representations are evident, further empirical research is needed to delineate the specific pathways through which these harms affect diverse populations.

    Learn more about this article here:

    Santoniccolo, F., Trombetta, T., Paradiso, M. N., & Rollè, L. (2023). Gender and Media Representations: A Review of the Literature on Gender Stereotypes, Objectification and Sexualization. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 20(10), 5770. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20105770

  • Gender and Violence against Political Candidates: Lessons from Sri Lanka

    Gender and Violence against Political Candidates: Lessons from Sri Lanka

    Does election violence target women differently than men? Bjarnegård, Håkansson, and Zetterberg (2022) find that while male and female candidates in Sri Lanka face similar overall levels of violence, women experience more sexual intimidation.

    As the authors explain, an emerging body of research highlights the broad forms of violence women encounter when entering political life. Within this scholarship, two main interpretations exist: one views this violence as primarily driven by gender, where women are targeted simply because they are women, while the other sees it as a routine political tactic directed at candidates of any sex. However, because researchers have lacked large-scale, systematic comparisons of male and female candidates, little is known about how a candidate’s sex actually shapes their exposure to election-related violence.

    To address this gap, Bjarnegård, Håkansson, and Zetterberg examined original survey data from 197 male and female candidates in Sri Lanka’s 2018 local elections. Sri Lanka serves as a fitting case because it is a postconflict country with widespread political violence and a rapid rise in women candidates following the adoption of gender quotas. Ultimately, the authors observed broad similarities in the overall violence experienced by men and women, suggesting that violence often operates as part of a wider political practice. At the same time, women were exposed to forms of intimidation of a sexual nature far more often than men, demonstrating the critical need for gender-sensitive approaches to studying election violence.

    Learn more about this article here:

    Bjarnegård, E., Håkansson, S., & Zetterberg, P. (2022). Gender and Violence against Political Candidates: Lessons from Sri Lanka. Politics & Gender, 18(1), 33–61. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1743923X20000471

  • How is Political Violence Gendered? Disentangling Motives, Forms, and Impacts

    How is Political Violence Gendered? Disentangling Motives, Forms, and Impacts

    How does gender shape political violence? Bardall, Bjarnegård, and Piscopo (2020) break down this dynamic into three core elements: motives, forms, and impacts, to give researchers and policymakers greater analytical precision.

    To build this framework, the authors bridge the traditional political violence literature, which focuses on classifying attacks, with the gender and politics literature, which analyzes barriers to women’s political participation. Within this model, gendered motives occur when perpetrators rely on violence to preserve hegemonic men’s control over politics.

    Gendered forms highlight the way existing gender roles and tropes create distinct experiences of violence for men and women. Finally, gendered impacts capture the subjective meaning-making processes that unfold as different audiences react to political violence. In doing so, Bardall, Bjarnegård, and Piscopo provide a clear, structured way to understand how gender operates across every stage of political violence.

    Learn more about this article here:

    Bardall, G., Bjarnegård, E., & Piscopo, J. M. (2020). How is Political Violence Gendered? Disentangling Motives, Forms, and Impacts. Political Studies, 68(4), 916–935. https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321719881812

  • Gender, race, and political ambition: how intersectionality and frames influence interest in political office

    Gender, race, and political ambition: how intersectionality and frames influence interest in political office

    How do explanations for women’s underrepresentation shape their desire to run for office? Holman and Schneider (2018) show that framing the issue as supply versus demand changes women’s political ambition, with key differences across racial groups.

    Men continue to dominate political institutions in the United States. Media and academic discussions often focus on two types of obstacles that lower women’s representation: demand factors, such as political parties and elite networks, and supply factors, such as women’s self-confidence and political interest. Still, little is known about whether these narratives affect women’s ambition to run for office, or how they influence women of color.

    Holman and Schneider demonstrate that attributing women’s underrepresentation to supply versus demand causes clear changes in political ambition. When the lack of parity is blamed on demand factors, white and Asian women can dismiss the possibility that failure is due to their own abilities, which increases their political ambition. Conversely, framing underrepresentation around supply factors lowers ambition for white and Asian women, possibly because of stereotype threat. Black women respond in the opposite way, showing decreased ambition in demand scenarios, while Latinas are unaffected by these narratives. Overall, the authors’ findings show how framing intersects with racial and ethnic identity to shape political ambition.

    Learn more about this article here:

    Holman, M. R., & Schneider, M. C. (2018). Gender, race, and political ambition: How intersectionality and frames influence interest in political office. Politics, Groups, and Identities, 6(2), 264–280. https://doi.org/10.1080/21565503.2016.1208105