Women's Leadership

Abuse of female politicians is rife online - and much of it is being directed by established far-right groups and figures, a Newsnight investigation has found.

Female politicians across Europe have been targeted with threatening and misogynist content.

On both mainstream and fringe social media platforms, analysis of selected profiles found women in politics faced frequent comments targeting their gender, race and physical appearance.

Over the last several years, debates between Republicans and Democrats have increasingly involved extremely divergent attitudes toward women.

William T. Sedgwick believed that no good could come of letting women vote.

“It would mean a degeneration and a degradation of human fiber which would turn back the hands of time a thousand years,” Sedgwick said in 1914. “Hence it will probably never come, for mankind will not lightly abandon at the call of a few fanatics the hard-earned achievements of the ages.”

In february 13, 1920, Carrie Chapman Catt stood triumphant before the opening session of the National Woman Suffrage Association convention and declared the organization’s decades-long mission finally accomplished. “Women be glad today. Let your voices ring out the gladness in your hearts,” the 61-year-old suffragist said.

Why hasn’t Japan been able to eliminate the perception that politics is a man’s world? Gender equality, women’s active participation in the workplace and female empowerment have taken root in society, but women’s participation in the all-important realm of politics remains sluggish. Is the problem structural or related to how society thinks? The election campaign for the House of Councillors that began on Thursday offers a good opportunity to explore issues related to women and politics.

Canada’s 13 provincial and territorial leaders are in Saskatchewan this week, but for the first time in years, the annual gathering won’t have women at the table.

“Symbolically, it’s very significant that there is no woman premier,” said Sylvia Bashevkin, a political-science professor at the University of Toronto, who researches women in politics and recently edited a book on the effect of women in the premier’s office.