Exploring Layers of Violence and Harassment

This article explores how women candidates experience violence and harassment during elections. As the number of women entering political spaces steadily increases. Women equally rapidly leave political spaces. Women politicians point toward hostile environments as a main reason to leave. The question however what the hostile environment for women in politics on a day-to-day look like. Political campaigns are one of the first political spaces aspiring politicians explore and where first experiences with violence and harassment occur. Using ethnographic and interview data with women candidates during the 2023 Dutch Provincial Elections, this article investigates the shapes and forms of violence and harassment against women in politics. This article bridges literature on electoral violence and patriarchal systems, expanding the understanding on violence and harassment. Sexism and misogyny are (violent) tools of patriarchal systems, punishing or rewarding women for disobeying or obeying the patriarchal script. The day-to-day experiences of sexism and misogyny are increasingly more difficult to capture as the tools are wrapped in a “cloak of invisibility” (Richardson-Self, 2021, 40). By analysing observations with eleven women candidates and twenty-five repeated interviews with women candidates, all from the entire political spectrum during the 2023 Dutch Provincial Elections, the article tries to outline what violence, harassment, sexism, and misogyny looks like on the daily life on the campaign trail. Through the repeated observations and interviews, the analysis identifies the complex layers of violence, harassment, and sexism. The article aims to conceptualize the women candidates’ affect to violence and harassment as navigation. Navigation is a state of emotional awareness anticipating and navigating a minefield of high expectations posed on the campaign trail by fellow candidates, potential voters, and campaign supporters.