‘Women MPs have always been targeted’

Ingrid Leary’s car covered with dog faeces. PHOTOS: ODT FILES

Research highlighting the abuse and threats endured by women members of Parliament is concerning but sadly unsurprising, Taieri Labour MP Ingrid Leary says.

Ms Leary, a former co-chairwoman of the Council of Women Parliamentarians, said that the research, which builds on similar studies by the University of Otago Wellington academics into the pressures women MPs face in doing their jobs, confirmed earlier New Zealand research and mirrored similar studies from overseas.

"The reality is that women MPs have always been targeted," she said.

Ingrid Leary

"All MPs receive, rightly, a level of criticism and, wrongly, a level of abuse. They know that’s what they sign up for.

"However, it has become more vitriolic, more personal and the language has become more violent, particularly towards women."

The research article, by Rhiannon Watson, Lucy Hammans, Oliver Hansby, Justin Barry-Walsh and Susanna Every-Palmer, appeared yesterday in the New Zealand Journal of Social Sciences.

Based on anonymised interviews with 11 women who were MPs during the 2020-23 Parliament, it found that harassment was a particular issue for women politicians worldwide and was endemic in New Zealand.

"It was universally felt that misogyny is a driver for harassment. Many reported comments on their appearance, challenges to competence because of gender and gendered profanities including ‘slut’ and ‘b....’. Racism was an amplifier," the article said.

Ms Leary said that many of her Parliamentary colleagues, particularly women of different ethnic descents, had borne the brunt of much more atrocious behaviour than she had endured, but that her own experiences included threats to family and staff, offensive graffiti sprayed on her South Dunedin office, bomb scares and excrement being smeared on her car.

"The abuse doesn’t discriminate on party political lines - for women MPs this is more personal, more misogynistic and there is often a racial dimension as well. Women from all political parties have experienced it."

The authors said MPs had to increase security at the homes, and that the impact of harassment was severe on them, and also on Parliamentary Services staff.

"MPs described staff as having to filter harassment and therefore more exposed than politicians themselves."

Ingrid Leary's office window covered with graffiti.

The researchers recommended that Parliament do more to make women MPs and their staff aware of the dangers their role placed them in.

Experiences from overseas, particularly the murder of British Labour MP Jo Cox, meant that Parliament needed to work alongside its security staff and police to address safety concerns, they said.

Ms Leary said local body politicians faced the same pressures, and without the support of a caucus to help them. She feared that women MPs could feel inhibited from doing their job properly because of security concerns, and that potentially excellent future MPs might choose not to enter politics because of those issues.

"We will end up with a less diverse, less pluralistic House of Representatives and a less representative House of Representatives, and will not get the benefit of all of those voices."

Women MPs speaking out on the problem raised awareness, and their continuing to do their job effectively demonstrated that those who harassed or abused politicians would not achieve results due to their intimidatory behaviour, she said.