Institutional Power, Intersectionality, and Violence Against Women in Local Politics

Violence against women in politics (VAWiP) poses a significant barrier to women’s full and equal participation and representation, while undermining democracy and gender equality more broadly. A burgeoning body of literature in feminist political science examines the gendered and intersectional motives, forms, and impacts of political violence, providing valuable conceptual tools to study women’s diverse experiences across different contexts. At the same time, the #MeToo movement refocused attention on parliaments and legislatures as gendered workplaces (Erikson and Josefsson 2019), where institutional rules (or lack thereof) and gender insensitive cultures have enabled sexist practices, harassment and violence within political institutions. Yet, most empirical research concentrates on national politics - including cross-national comparisons - leaving violence in local and devolved political systems and institutions largely under-studied. This paper addresses this empirical and conceptual gap, bringing together feminist institutionalist and VAWIP frameworks to examine the intersectional dynamics and ‘costs’ of violence against women in politics at the local level. We make the case for focusing on local government both as an important site of representation – in relation to political recruitment, decision-making and service provision – and as a gender and diversity insensitive workplace where VAWiP may both be more likely to occur (Raney et al. 2024) and manifest in particular forms and impacts (Hibbs 2025). Drawing on a qualitative case study of women local councillors in Scotland, we investigate how different groups of women politicians at the local level experience VAWiP and the ways in which they navigate the wider institutional environment in which it occurs. While Scotland is often seen as a ‘best-case scenario’ for women’s descriptive, substantive and symbolic representation at the national level, our findings point to the continuing obstacles to women’s participation at the local level, particularly for intersectionally marginalised women. Overall, we argue that the institutional dynamics of politics ‘closer to home’ shapes both the form and impacts of VAWiP, and the strategies that women politicians adopt to prevent and respond to it, with wider consequences for women’s diverse political participation and representation.