Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has become a target for white supremacists and right-wing extremists. Congresswomen Pramila Jayapal was stalked outside of her house by a man with a gun and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez receives an “astronomical” amount of threats on a daily basis. Maine Sen. Susan Collins said she “wouldn’t be surprised” if a member of Congress was killed after her window at home was smashed.
And, of course, an armed assailant who said he wanted to break House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s kneecaps brutally attacked her husband in their San Francisco home just last week.
These are just a few examples of the rising threats female politicians in the U.S. face. Now, a database out of Princeton University and the Anti-Defamation League is tracking these kinds of threats, starting at the local level, where they have found women to be more than three times as likely as their male counterparts to be targeted.
“Threats and harassment against local officials present a significant challenge to American democracy,” said Oren Segal, vice president of the ADL Center on Extremism, in a statement. “This dataset shows the pervasiveness of threats and harassment around the country. We urge policymakers and communities to use these data to better understand this dangerous phenomenon and create better policy to more effectively count and counter future incidents.”
The Threats and Harassment Dataset was developed by Princeton’s Bridging Divides Initiative, which tracks U.S. political violence, and The Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, which follows both domestic and international extremism, terrorism and hate. It will eventually expand to include state and federal officials.
The current dataset was produced from a review of over 10,000 data points from public sources and was narrowed to over 400 unique observations between January 2020 and September 2022. Women officials were found to be targets 42.5% percent of the time. When adjusted for the proportion of women in local offices, women are 3.4 times more likely than men to be on the receiving end of threats and harassment.
The study is just the latest in a growing body of literature on gendered political threats and violence. Last week, the Center for Democracy and Technology shared findings that women of color running for elected office faced higher rates of sexist, racist and violent abuse online. A September report by the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, which looked at mayoral races, found alarming rates of violence, harassment and threats, with a disproportionate effect on women and women of color. An analysis of the 2020 U.S. congressional races by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue revealed comparable findings.
On the global stage, a similar pattern has emerged. Data from The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project released December 2021 pointed toward an increase in political violence targeting women in nearly all regions tracked by the group, including Africa, Central Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, South Asia and Southeast Asia. In recent years, other research groups have identified similar gendered patterns of threats and abuse in Canada, India, the U.K., Ukraine, and across Africa and Europe.
In response, Bolivia passed a standalone law criminalizing political violence and harassment against women, and Mexico has similarly strengthened legal sanctions and amended national laws. Advocacy campaigns have been launched in Germany, Kenya and the U.S. Assembled international coalitions. The UN has also drawn up guidelines aimed at combating political threats of violence against women.
“Threats and harassment of local officials occur at a time when partisan rhetoric has grown increasingly strident and in some cases violent,” the report reads. “Reducing space for threats and harassment is a critical step for protecting democratic norms and institutions.”
In June, the Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin warning of an increase in “calls for violence by domestic violent extremists directed at democratic institutions, political candidates, party offices, election events, and election workers” heading into the midterm elections.
