Gender and Violence against Political Candidates: Lessons from Sri Lanka

Abstract

A nascent body of literature has highlighted the violence (broadly defined) that women sometimes face as they enter politics. Some interpretations depict this violence as primarily gender motivated: women politicians are targeted because they are women. Another interpretation is that violence in some contexts is an everyday political practice targeting men and women alike. However, because we lack large-scale, systematic comparisons of men's and women's exposure to election violence, we know little about the extent to which—and how—candidate sex shapes this form of violence. We address this research gap by using original survey data on 197 men and women political candidates in the 2018 Sri Lankan local elections. Sri Lanka is a suitable case for analysis because it is a postconflict country in which political violence has been endemic and the number of women candidates has increased rapidly due to gender quota adoption. Overall, we find large similarities in men's and women's exposure to violence, suggesting that violence sometimes is part of a larger political practice. However, we find that women are exposed to forms of intimidation of a sexual nature more often than men. This finding demonstrates the need for gender-sensitive analyses of election violence.

Research note: Rise in violence against U.S. mayors: 2017 to 2021

“…This literature argues that some violence against women is designed to prevent their participation in politics, which can then undermine democracy (Krook 2020; Krook and Sanín 2020). Even if women do not suffer more violence than men politicians, they are likely to face different types of violence, particularly sexualized violence (Bjarnegård, Håkansson, and Zetterberg 2022).…”

Explaining Citizen Hostility against Women Political Leaders: A Survey Experiment in the United States and Sweden

“…The research field on gendered violence against politicians is dominated by studies carried out from the perspectives of politicians: focusing on how prevalent the problem is, who the most likely targets are, and what impacts these attacks have on ambition, for example. Previous research has demonstrated that powerful and visible women are at a heightened risk of violence compared to their male counterparts (Håkansson 2021;Rheault, Rayment, and Musulan 2019) and that sexualized and gender-denigrating slurs overwhelmingly target women (Bjarnegård 2021;Bjarnegård, Håkansson, and Zetterberg 2022;Erikson, Håkansson, and Josefsson 2021;Ward and McLoughlin 2020). Furthermore, previous studies have found depressed ambition (Herrick and Franklin 2019) and disrupted campaign activities among women targeted by violence in politics (Collignon and Rüdig 2021).…”

The continuum of election violence: Gendered candidate experiences in the Maldives

“… 1 One exception is a recent comparison of men and women candidates in local elections in Sri Lanka (Bjarnegård et al, 2020). Collignon and Rüdig (2020) also studies harassment against candidates in the United Kingdom, but the main focus is not on gender differences. …”