The Cost of Debating Harassment against (Women) Politicians

Politician harassment is an increasing problem, as demonstrated by studies from democratic as well as non-democratic contexts. Furthermore, it is an issue that jeopardizes gender equality in political representation since women are targeted more viciously and intensively than male counterparts (Bjarnegård, Håkansson, and Zetterberg 2022; Collignon and Rüdig 2020, 2021; Erikson, Håkansson, and Josefsson 2023; Håkansson 2021; Herrick et al. 2019) and sexism is a prominent motivation for many attacks on women politicians (Krook 2020; Krook and Sanín 2020). One key question is how violence in politics may harm descriptive representation (Collignon and Rüdig 2021; Håkansson 2023; Herrick and Franklin 2019). Several studies have investigated impacts on women’s political ambition, but far less is known about whether and how political recruiters’ evaluations of candidates are affected by political violence. This study investigates whether being associated with violence against politicians decreases candidates’ desirability to recruiters, using a conjoint survey experiment with selectors from six Swedish political parties. We find that among selectors, debating any salient or non-salient topic generates neutral or positive likelihoods of selection. The only issue that generates a negative likelihood of selection is debating the problem of harassment of politicians. While it is seen as better than not appearing in the media at all, having media visibility related to violence against politicians does not strengthen a candidate’s appeal to selectors. The most likely outcome for such candidates is that they are rejected. Furthermore, we find that it is viewed as slightly more negative for men than women politicians to be associated with the issue of violence against politicians. This study enhances our understanding for the gendered consequences of violence against politicians (see Bardall, Bjarnegård, and Piscopo 2020). Whereas much previous research has investigated whether violence makes women or men select out of politics, this study is one of the first to investigate how violence in politics may affect the demand side of political recruitment. We demonstrate that in the eyes of political recruiters, it is not more negative for women than men to be associated with harassment of politicians. This suggests that women candidates’ experiences of violence may not be directly harmful for women candidates’ favorability to selectors. However, being associated with this issue is negative for women’s as well as men’s prospects for political selection. This may hamper politicians’ willingness to raise the issue of harassment in politics, which can impede policy attention to the issue. Inadequate policy to tackle harassment in politics has severe ramifications for women’s representation since the problem is more urgent for women than men.