Lebanon: Women candidates face gendered attacks ahead of elections

Maharat Foundation and Madanyat Association work with UN Women to monitor television and social media concerning violence against women in politics in the period prior to the 2022 parliamentary elections.

This summary provides a quick overview of the findings during the months of February and March.

– The accounts of 23 candidates and activists in the public field were monitored on Twitter and Facebook in the time period between February 1 and March 31, 2022.

– A total of 723 comments, divided between 101 comments and responses during the month of February and 622 comments and responses during the month of March, included online violence against female candidates and activists in the public field on their posts and tweets on their personal Facebook and Twitter.

– Monitoring results in March showed that 8% of the comments on the posts of the monitored candidates and activists manifested some form of violence, and the other 92% of the comments did not include violence.

– The distribution of online violence during the months of February and March was between sexual violence and psychological violence, with a greater percentage of psychological violence. Most of the violence came from regular users, with the exception of two comments that included online violence against women in politics by one of the candidates.

– Online bullying came at the forefront of forms of online violence against women in politics, followed by violence based on appearance, then harassment and threats of a sexual nature, bias against women, threats and intimidation.