Harassment Of NZ’s Female MPs – Expert Reaction

New Zealand’s female MPs are subjected to assaults,
rape threats, and death threats in the course of their work,
a new study finds.

Eleven MPs from across the
political spectrum talked
to researchers about their experiences of
harassment, misogyny, racism and online trolling. They said
responding to harassment took mental and administrative
work, with some MPs experiencing flashbacks and suicidality
afterwards. The participating politicians highlighted this
could have an impact on who represents New Zealanders in
Parliament.

The Science Media Centre asked third-party
experts to comment.

Associate Professor Lara Greaves
(Ngāpuhi, Pākehā, Tararā), political scientist, Victoria
University of Wellington, comments:

“This is an
important study with some sobering insights. While we know
politicians have always been harassed by the public, this
work shows just how horrifying the political environment can
be in the current day, not only for politicians but their
whānau, children, and staffers. These accounts are much
worse than I expected, and it made for shocking reading.
Women MPs put in a large amount of emotional effort and
strategic thinking to maintain their own
safety.

“There were two other points of interest.
First, that anecdotally, these threats have decreased with
the change of government, showing the contributions context
and environment make to threatening behaviour. Second, that
women MPs are still experiencing considerable sexism, both
from the public, but also from their colleagues.

“It
is now clear we are at the point where public harassment
will stop great candidates from putting themselves forward.
Ultimately, this means less representation for some groups,
and we should all be considering how we can make our
democracy better here. It is great that this work has
created a clear record of how bad public harassment can be.
The next steps for our society, institutions, parliament,
and political parties is the figure out how to best fix
this.”

Conflict of interest statement: No
conflicts.

Dr Dougal Sutherland, Clinical
Psychologist at Umbrell Wellbeing, comments:

“This
study is shocking in its description of the abuse, death
threats, and threats to family that our New Zealand female
politicians have to endure. The emotional and psychological
impact on these MPs should be plain to anyone who reads the
paper. The state of fear that these people were, and likely
still are, living in is demonstrated by the extent to which
some of them have gone to to protect the safety of
themselves and their family (e.g., hiring of personal
security services).

“Adding to the gravity of these
findings is the fact that this abuse has occurred in the
context of these women’s places of work. All New
Zealanders have the right to go to work and not be harmed,
and this includes not being mentally harmed. This has
patently not been the case for the MPs interviewed for this
research, nor for staff in their parliamentary and
electorate offices.

“Participants in this research
had mixed experience of how parliamentary services and their
own political parties provided support during times of abuse
and threat. But a common theme across all was the sense of
having to fight to be taken seriously or end up having to
protect themselves out of their own pocket. Parliament and
its associated support services need to take this matter
much more seriously and more effectively support the mental
and physical health of MPs. We can only hope that New
Zealand doesn’t have to experience an incident like the Jo
Cox murder in the UK before action is
taken.”

Conflict of interest statement: No
conflicts.

Dr Sarah Bickerton, lecturer, Public
Policy Institute, University of Auckland,
comments:

“These findings are no surprise
unfortunately, for we are seeing this occurring around the
world. It is also no surprise unfortunately that such
harassment occurs along lines of race and gender, because
they are structural lines of oppression. Women, non-binary,
and/or people with non-white ethnic backgrounds are
perceived as incorrectly existing in spaces that are coded
by our society as white and male (not to mention, similarly
along other structural lines in our society; sexual and
gender minorities, disabled folks, etc). In at least part,
these attacks aren’t about the individual women MPs, but
what they represent: challenges to traditional gendered and
raced norms and history. Women by existing in political
spaces are threatening the norms of power. You will see that
in how much of the attacks, in addition to being violent
threats, involve reasserting traditional gender norms;
they’ll focus on what are considered appropriate gender
presentation styles for women, or reasserting traditional
(domestic) roles for women.

“We don’t think about
attacks like these being akin to hate crimes, terrorism,
hate speech, etc because those are seen as being massive
things. But make no mistake that these are about silencing
women, non-binary, and non-white people from our public
spheres. And as such groups take more and more of their
rightful space in our public realms, the challenges are
getting more and more. Unfortunately, despite these attacks
occurring along structural lines, the problem is
individualised, and the solutions similarly. This is seen as
something for these individual politicians to manage, not to
mention that even mentioning the harassment existing is
perceived as an admission of weakness and confirmation that
they aren’t strong enough to be in
parliament.

“Note this isn’t about saying that men
and white people don’t experience harassment, but rather
that for women, non-binary, and non-white people the attacks
are over the population, worse. We also see that
particularly in how men have their gender questioned or
challenged when that harassment occurs. We need to stop
individualising this problem and relying on individuals to
manage it and protect themselves, or else we will continue
to see what happened to Jacinda Ardern.”

Conflict
of interest statement: No
conflicts.

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