Gendered Vulnerabilities: The Puzzle of Perceptions about Political Violence in Mexico

Debates on the interrelationship between gender, politics, and violence ask whether women politicians face violence because aggressors wish to keep women out of the public sphere (violence against women in politics), or whether women face the same political violence as men, albeit with differences in forms (gendered political violence)? These debates encourage scholars to analytically distinguish between violence’s motives, forms, and impacts. In other words, the actual motivations for and patterns of political violence may be different from how this violence is perceived, understood, and narrated by different stakeholders. We bring these concepts to bear on the Mexican case, where longstanding violence from organized crime affects election security. We fielded two surveys to measure political violence’s motives, forms, and impacts, one to women political elites (n=20), and one to all men and women who ran for federal deputy in June 2021 (n=141). In both surveys, women respondents believe that women politicians are more threatened and more unsafe than men, and that women are attacked because of their gender. In the main survey, men also believe that women are more vulnerable to attack because of their gender. Yet the main survey reveals few systematic gender differences in the frequency of attacks. For instance, women candidates and men candidates are equally likely to receive threats and offensive comments on social media. The content may vary—women are more likely than men to report that the offensive comments use sexualized language—but women’s and men’s likelihood of receiving offensive comments is similar. Our data are puzzling. They suggest that women face the same level of political violence as men, albeit with gendered forms, but they also indicate a strong perception among both women and men elites that women are particularly unsafe. What might drive these perceptions? Our surveys allow us to explore how perceptions of women’s greater unsafety may be influenced by respondents’ political attitudes, gender equality attitudes, political ideologies or political careers. For instance, respondents who hold feminist and/or leftist views might be more aware of gendered threats and more likely to perceive women as unsafe. Or, respondents who run in single-member districts (where political violence is actually higher) might also be more aware and therefore more perceptive. Yet we also find no conclusive evidence for these relationships. To resolve our null findings, we look to feminist theorizing about violence against women. Mexico has one of the highest femicide rates in the world. Decades of significant and sustained feminist mobilization have placed the problem of male violence on the public agenda. While feminist activists focus on violence against ‘everyday women’ and not women politicians, their efforts raise peoples’ consciousness about how misogyny poses a constant, pervasive threat to women’s safety. An awareness of male violence infuses society and shapes women’s behaviors. This awareness likely influence politicians’ views of political violence. In contexts where cultural norms and political processes routinely (and rightly) emphasize shocking acts of misogynistic violence, the meaning-making around political violence may become inseparable from the meaning-making around violence against women.