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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.
Science Media Centre NZ
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The Science Media Centre is New Zealand's only trusted, independent source of information for the media on all issues related to science. Thousands of news stories providing context from and quoting New Zealand researchers have been published as a direct result of our work.
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