Manifestations of gender equality in online gendered harassment

Online gendered harassment is a problem for equal representation in all established democracies. However, how do gender equality norms in relatively equal democracies manifest in online gendered harassment against politicians? Conducting a netnography, the authors Norah Schulten, Michael Hunklinger and Liza Mügge manually analysed online backlash against European Parliament (EP) candidates preceding the 2024 European election period. We compared how the backlash was gendered against male and female EP candidates in The Netherlands and Germany. We monitored comment sections of the EP’s electoral posts on X, Instagram and TikTok. In interviews after the European elections, five Dutch and two German EP candidates reflected on their own gendered harassments. Our findings suggest that in The Netherlands, gendered harassments manifest as potentially more “gender equal”, but they are still damaging for women and non-hegemonic men in politics. Gendered harassments against Dutch EP candidates seem less blunt, more diffuse and more difficult to dissect. For instance, they target both men and women. Nonetheless, the subtle frames in the othering, sexualised, objectifying insults still devalue political participation of all women, while only men are devalued who don’t fit in the default political masculine stereotype. Additionally, they seem more complex, messy and responsive to content of the thematic post of the politician. On the contrary, online harassments against German EP candidates are mainly blunt, sexist, sexualized and objectifying, mainly target women and seem unresponsive to the thematic post of the politician. Our conclusions have implications for how we view complex gendered harassments in similar gender egalitarian societies. We speculate how subtle differences in traditional gender equality norms and sexist norms in society might explain manifestations of gender harassment. Nonetheless, contemporary gender norms in both countries fail to provide a strong explanation for our found differences in gendered harassment. Our sole conclusion therefore, for now, is that backlash could be more hidden under the radar and abused for substantive deliberation purposes in The Netherlands, while still reinforcing gender inequality. These identified differences in manifestations of gendered harassment demand a wide variety of tools and analytical lenses to push back against the anti-gender backlash.