The Political Party as Protector and Perpetrator

This article investigates the role of the political party in women candidates’ experiences with electoral violence. The political party plays an important role in shaping women candidates’ experiences during campaign. The party can provide support to candidates through trainings, assigning campaign teams, or providing a mentor. At the same time, the political party is a space in which gendered and racialised norms and rules dominate. Drawing on 51 ethnographic observations and 26 interviews collected during the 2023 sub-national Dutch Provincial elections as part of the TWICEASGOOD ERC project, this article examines how the political party acts as the protector and perpetrator towards women candidates. The ethnographic research identifies the dual and contradicting role a political party can take in a candidates’ experience: as protector and/or perpetrator. The party as protector refers to instances of support party officials provide to candidates. Instances of taking of social media accounts with a candidate is faces a wave of online hate, check-in phone calls from a mentor after an intense debate or rallying support and showing up to campaign events. The party as perpetrator describes the sexism and racism candidates experience within their own party. The ethnographic data captures how women candidates are discredited as candidates through whisper campaigns or women candidates undermined as political leaders. The space of the political party is not neutral. Symbols, routines, and rituals, structure the actions in the spaces and shape the movement of the bodies existing in the spaces. An important step in understanding the role of political parties and women’s experiences, is to map and analyse the ‘gender and racial regimes’ of political parties, including formal and informal rules, norms, and practices. The article demonstrates that the political party is a key shaper in the of women candidates’ experiences with violence as protector and perpetrator.