Paul Hosford: Abuse of female politicians is unsurprising. That's the shocking thing

That 96% of female Oireachtas members have experienced online violence ought to be surprising. But such is the toxicity amplified by social media is 'systemic, pervasive, and embedded'

Aldagh McDonogh (Women for Election), Senator Alison Comyn (Irish Parliamentary Women’s Caucus), and former Garda commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan launching the report into ‘Gender-based violence against women politicians in Ireland’. Picture: Paul Sharp

Some 96% of female Oireachtas members have experienced online violence, and two thirds have changed their social media behaviour as a result.

That finding published this week by Women for Election is shocking, but not surprising.

The research on the prevalence and impact of gender-based violence experienced by female TDs and senators was part of a five-country European comparative study funded by the EU CERV (citizens, equality, rights, and values) programme.

The results of the anonymous online survey reveal what the authors call “a troubling pattern of online, psychological, sexual and physical violence which threatens the safety and security of individual women politicians and the health of Irish democracy itself”. The report found:

• 96% of female parliamentarians have experienced online violence — almost universally through social media;
• 88% experienced psychological violence, including sexist remarks, harassment, and threats;
• 71% received threats targeting themselves or people close to them, including children, elderly parents, and family members with disabilities;
• 63% have experienced sexualised violence — yet only 20% of those affected reported it;
• 65% have changed their social media engagement as a direct result of abuse — some delegating accounts to staff or deleting them entirely;
• 46% have altered their behaviour, including avoiding lone canvassing and checking in with staff while out in public.

Threats managed and endured

Participants describe an environment in which abuse has become normalised — where death threats, rape threats, and threats targeting children are managed and endured rather than reported.

Two thirds of participants have increased security measures at home or in their workplace. More than half report that family members worry for their safety and 38% report negative impacts on their physical or mental health.

One participant described receiving messages specifying “how much enjoyment they will take in seeing me die a painful death”. Another was threatened with a rope and told people “had a rope for around my neck”. A third received threats of sexual violence while canvassing during an election campaign.

Social media and misogyny

And, of course, social media emerges as the primary vector of abuse, with three quarters of respondents receiving a substantial volume of abusive or threatening content through social media platforms and private messages deemed more threatening that those written in public.

The research found that 79% of participants believe that gender is a factor in the abuse they receive online, and respondents described a “consistent pattern of misogynistic language, unsolicited commentary on their physical appearance, and sexually demeaning content”.

This content goes largely unreported, with only 39% of those who experienced online violence having reported it to any authority.

One can pathologise and theorise that traditional Irish society was built on highly traditional and patriarchal ideas about women’s roles and that, for much of the 20th century, women were expected to remain in the home, act as carers, and defer to male authority in politics, religion, and family life. 

We can attempt to climb into the head of a man who would threaten a woman online over her appearance or politics — but the truth is that a small minority of people now simply feel empowered to threaten, demean, and abuse others online or, in too many cases, in person.

A woman's place....

Women in Ireland still encounter expectations to be modest, agreeable, and non-confrontational, while leadership and authority are more readily accepted in men. When women enter political life, they challenge these assumptions, and that challenge can provoke hostility.

Look at the comments under any female politician’s Instagram posts and you will see a demand for them to be smaller, to take up less space, to demand less. This kind of treatment reveals that women in politics are often judged not simply as politicians, but as women who have stepped outside the boundaries that some people still believe should define female behaviour.

The under-representation of women in politics also contributes to the problem. To some, women are still not fully accepted as equal participants and power: Violence and intimidation have become tools to remind them of that fact.

Political violence against women in Ireland is no surprise because it grows out of the same social conditions that continue to devalue women more broadly. Until Ireland fully confronts misogyny, gender inequality, and the cultural acceptance of violence against women, abuse in political life will remain a predictable consequence rather than an unfortunate anomaly.

Shocking but not surprising 

That the report is something that both shocks but doesn’t surprise is itself an indictment of just how normalised violence against women, men, politicians, and female and male politicians have all become. Because violent language, threats, and abuse are not limited to one sector of society. Of course women in politics are targets of violence and abuse; there’s not a class of women who isn’t.

Political violence against women in Ireland is, sadly, not a surprising development when viewed against the wider position of women in Irish society. Violence directed at women in politics does not appear in isolation; rather, it reflects a society in which women continue to face harassment, exclusion, and unequal treatment in both public and private life.

Litany of abuses  

• According to Women’s Aid Femicide Watch, 284 women have died violently between 1996 and today in Ireland; 187 of those were killed in their own homes and — where the case has been resolved — 87% of those women were killed by a man known to them. Just 13% of women were killed by a stranger.

• Earlier this week, the Irish Examiner reported that, according to Safe Ireland, some 850 adults and 324 children in Ireland accessed frontline domestic violence supports on just one day in January this year. 

• A week earlier, Women’s Aid recorded an “utterly appalling” 33% increase in disclosures of domestic abuse last year, but has warned these figures are just the “tip of the iceberg”.

Of course we are seeing violence against those women in elected office, because we are seeing it across society.

'Systemic, pervasive, and embedded'

Week to week to week, our courts and our papers are filled with cases of male violence visited upon women, and of sentences and reactions left worryingly incomplete.

The report concludes by saying that violence against women in politics is “not isolated, episodic or context-specific but rather it is systemic, pervasive, and embedded”.

While political systems, levels of women’s representation, and institutional frameworks differ between countries, the findings reveal a striking commonality: Gender-based political violence is experienced by the vast majority of female parliamentarians, particularly psychological and online violence. The incidence of online abuse, combined with high levels of psychological and sexualised violence, underlines that such experiences are not exceptional but constitute a routine feature of women’s political participation

Tellingly, the report quotes one Irish respondent as saying “I do not bother doing anything with the online stuff except turning comments off and blocking users”, because the prevalence of online abuse is so high, it has become acceptable.

But we as a society cannot shy away from the reality of violence against women, whether in politics or not.