A disturbing incident that sparks yet more concern for women in politics

This week’s Fresh Take column by Sabrina Sweeney

When Councillor Dakota Ní Mheanman answered a call from a private number last week, she was doing what councillors do every day.

As public representatives, they are contacted about everything from housing applications to drainage problems. Sometimes, there are people who need to discuss a personal issue who prefer not to reveal their number.

But on this occasion, the caller made disturbing comments of a sexual nature that Ní Mheanman said left her feeling uncomfortable.

He rang again soon afterwards and continued trying to contact her throughout the day and into the evening. She later learned that more than 70 women councillors across Ireland had received similar calls. No male councillors had reported being targeted.

Ní Mheanman has now decided not to answer withheld numbers, while her Donegal colleague Joy Beard has said she will screen callers. These are understandable precautions, but they show how intimidation begins to alter the way women carry out public roles and those targeted are the ones forced to adapt.

Ní Mheanman’s experience was disturbing, but it belongs to a wider pattern of hostility towards women in public life. Look beneath almost any online story involving a female politician and it rarely takes long for the discussion to move away from the issue itself.

Her appearance is scrutinised, sexually degrading language follows, or she is told to go home and look after her family.

Such comments are revealing because they are rarely about childcare or family life. Instead, they carry the message that politics is not where a woman belongs.

The abuse becomes a way of questioning her right to occupy public space in the first place.

Male politicians also receive serious abuse and some have faced threats and violence.

The evidence shows, however, that women experience political abuse more frequently. One Irish study found that women candidates experienced political violence at 1.2 times the rate of men. They were also 2.3 times more likely to face degrading talk or false rumours, while the abuse directed at them was more likely to be sexual in nature.

There is no single type of woman who becomes the target. A politician can be experienced or newly elected. She can be outspoken or measured in how she presents her views.

Yet the hostility can quickly move beyond disagreement with a political position to an attack on the woman herself.

Perhaps that is what should concern us most. The abuse is no longer simply directed at what women say but whether they should be there at all. If that begins to feel normal, then we have a problem extending far beyond individual politicians.

We sometimes speak about the abuse of politicians as though it exists in isolation. It does not. Politics reflects the society around it.

Violence against women remains a serious problem in Ireland, while harassment and intimidation continue to shape the lives of many women. It should hardly surprise us that those attitudes also surface in political life.

There is a huge cost to this. Research commissioned by the Houses of the Oireachtas found that abuse caused some politicians to hold back from expressing an opinion. Almost half said it had made them less likely to run for office again.

Women in earlier research were more likely than men to say their political involvement had made them afraid.

It is of particular concern in Donegal, where women remain significantly underrepresented in local politics; only three of the county’s 37 councillors are women.

We often ask why more women do not stand for election but perhaps we should also ask what women see when they look at those who already do.

Public representatives should be challenged. Their actions and decisions deserve scrutiny. No one is saying anger at government policy is never warranted or legitimate. But none of that justifies sexual humiliation, threats or putting a person in fear.

Dakota Ní Mheanman said politics is a place for women. It is, but it comes with a growing risk assessment and if women entering public life continue to find themselves adapting their behaviour because of intimidation, then we have a problem that extends far beyond individual politicians.

The question is no longer whether abuse exists. It’s what we, as a society, are prepared to do about it before it discourages another generation of women from entering politics in the first place.