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Author: Inessa De Angelis, PhD Student, Faculty of Information, University of Toronto
Original article: https://theconversation.com/growing-threats-faced-by-women-candidates-undermine-our-democracy-254371
As Liberal MP Pam Damoff prepares to leave politics, she joins other Canadian women MPs in warning that growing threats and harassment are driving them out of politics.
Their call adds to the voices of other politicians in Australia and the United Kingdom who caution that misogyny and threats of violence, especially on social media, have caused them to refrain from seeking re-election.
With the Canadian federal election approaching, campaigns expose politicians to increased online incivility and abuse. Nearly 19 per cent of tweets analyzed by the Samara Centre for Democracy during the 2021 campaign contained harassment.
Harassment undermines democracy and threatens the equal participation of women in politics. When women politicians don’t seek re-election, we lose key voices advocating for a more equitable future.
Despite threats to our democracy being a key theme of the ongoing federal election campaign, barely anyone is talking about the threat harassment poses.
Harassment is a threat to representation
Women remain underrepresented in Canadian Parliament. Canada currently ranks 70th out of 190 countries for representation of women in politics. Following the federal election in 2021, women held only 30.9 per cent of the seats in the House of Commons.
While research shows women who run for office are just as likely to win as their male counterparts, women require more convincing to step up and put their name on the ballot.
Once women politicians are elected, they face more barriers in Parliament. Some of these barriers include family obligations and fewer promotions to high-profile roles.
However, gender-based heckling, violence and harassment are additional barriers.
Shaping voter behaviour
Violence against women politicians aims to silence and exclude women from participating in politics simply because they are women.
And while men and women politicians receive similar amounts of online harassment, online attacks against women politicians tend to be more personal and sexist in tone.
Online harassment isn’t just driving women out of politics; it’s also shaping voter behaviour.
In fact, research shows that women voters are less likely to participate in political discussions on social media because they fear getting harassed as women politicians are.
These findings align with outgoing Liberal MP Jennifer O’Connell’s letter to her constituents that cites online threats of sexual violence fuelled by misinformation and disinformation as rationale for not seeking re-election.
Increasing security
The rising threats of harassment against all politicians led the Privy Council Office to offer private-sector security services for candidates who feel intimidated and threatened during the 2025 campaign.
The goal of private security is to offer an extra level of protection when the threshold for police protection is not met. Through the program, candidates can get an unarmed guard to watch their surroundings and manage risks.
Which metrics are used to determine if the threshold is met? Private security services should protect all candidates equally. However, the lived experiences and concerns of women politicians are often discounted and not taken seriously.
A new way to measure harassment
Defining and quantifying types of harassment is hard. Hate speech is recognized as explicit harassment, but this raises questions about who gets to decide which less explicit incidents count as harassment.
There are more subtle forms of harassment like sexist microaggressions that threaten women candidates just as much as blatant hate speech. But these subtle microaggressions are often brushed off as not being harassment.
With no single definition or agreed-upon way to measure harassment, I developed a seven-point scale to categorize nuanced forms of online harassment. This scale takes into account more subtle forms of harassment, including social media comments that question the authority of women politicians to explicit hate speech.
I found that 86 per cent of replies to tweets sent to women MPs contained some form of harassment.
We cannot view each incident of harassment such as threatening social media comments, volunteers being screamed at or signs being vandalized as isolated events. Understanding all of these incidents, regardless of their severity, as being connected allows us to track the growing forms and impacts of violence.
Legislation needed
Steps have already been taken at Parliament to fight harassment through Bill C-65, which strengthens federal workplace protections against violence and sexual harassment. But more should be done on the campaign trail.
The Privy Council Office’s new private-sector security service is a start. However, candidates should not be expected to quantify how threats make them feel to receive help. Political parties and the Privy Council Office should proactively offer more support to all candidates.
Social media platforms must take greater responsibility for applying their terms of service to minimize harmful content.
New legislation should be drafted to address threats faced by politicians. Regardless of who forms the next government, all parties need to work together to pass online harms legislation.
Harassment is used as a barrier to stop women from running for office. This is fundamentally about making sure their voices are heard in our democracy.
Inessa De Angelis receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Province of Ontario.
