Voices of Resistance: An analysis of The Patterns and Impacts of Gender- and Race-Based Political Violence Experienced by Women Parliamentarians in Minas GeraisAbstract
Gender- and race-based political violence aims to interrupt women’s agency in the political sphere. Our work analyses the violence endured by women parliamentarians from Minas Gerais, elected in 2022, drawing on a review of the literature and interview analysis to understand the dynamics and impacts of said violence, and define coping strategies for policy frameworks. The findings indicate a variety of forms of political violence endured, the specific contours of cases shaped by the dimension of race, and the personal, professional and democratic impacts. We show that the situation in Minas Gerais emerges as a reflection of deep-rooted systemic issues and as a reaction to the increased presence of women in the political arena.
Keywords:
Gender- and race-based political violence; Minas Gerais; State legislature; Democracy
Resumo
A violência política de gênero e raça tem por objetivo interromper a atuação das mulheres na esfera política. Nosso artigo analisa a violência sofrida por deputadas de Minas Gerais, eleitas em 2022, utilizando revisão de literatura e análise de entrevistas, com o objetivo de compreender as dinâmicas e impactos dessa violência e as possibilidades de enfrentá-la. Os resultados apontam para uma variedade de formas de violência, os contornos específicos dos casos atravessados pela dimensão racial, bem como os impactos pessoais, profissionais e na democracia. Evidenciamos que o caso de Minas Gerais emerge como reflexo de questões sistêmicas profundamente enraizadas e como reação à maior presença feminina no cenário político.
Palavras-chave:
Violência Política de Gênero e Raça; Minas Gerais; Parlamento; Democracia
Context and the emergence of gender- and race-based political violence in Brazil
Gender-based political violence in Brazil is an increasingly frequent phenomenon that seeks to silence and exclude women from the political sphere. Besides the more visible forms, physical assault and femicide, there are subtler expressions of this violence, including misogynistic insults and attempts to discredit women that perpetuate patriarchal stereotypes. This is not problem unique to Brazil, it is a global issue of particular relevance to Latin America, which affects not only women, but also Black, Indigenous, and LGBTQIAPN+ persons.
These practices cause incalculable harm and can culminate in the ultimate expression of gender- and race-based political violence, the brutal assassination of City Councillor Marielle Franco in 2018, a Black woman elected with over 40,000 votes. She and her driver were killed in downtown Rio de Janeiro, in a political crime that remains unsolved by Brazilian authorities to this day.
Two other recent cases provide tangible illustrations of this issue. Áurea Carolina chose not to seek re-election in 2022, despite being the most-voted-for city councillor in Belo Horizonte (capital of Minas Gerais) in 2016, and subsequently winning a seat as a federal representative in 2018. The former PSOL parliamentarian explained her decision by highlighting the multiple forms of violence women face in institutional spaces of power and the complexities inherent in the political articulations required by taking office. Another emblematic case is the withdrawal from a Senate candidacy by Manuela D’Ávila. A former federal representative for Rio Grande do Sul (PCdoB), D’Ávila attributed her decision in part to the persistent attacks she had endured in recent years. The MonitorA project (2021) revealed that during the November 2020 mayoral election campaign in Porto Alegre, D’Ávila was the target of 90% of all recorded attacks. These concrete examples unequivocally highlight the complexity of the barriers women face in the political sphere and shed light on why men often enjoy longer careers than women and, unfortunately, why women abdicate running for office.
A report by the Instituto Alziras (2021) on the profile of female mayors in Brazil showed 53% of elected women experienced political harassment or violence simply because they were women. According to data presented in 2020 in a study on gender- and race-based political violence conducted by the Marielle Franco Institute, 98.5% of female candidates reported experiencing at least one type of violence during the municipal elections of the same year. The report highlighted that online political violence accounted for 80% of the attacks they suffered (Instituto Marielle Franco, 2021).
Legislation specifically aimed at addressing political violence against women had been making its way through the Câmera dos Deputados (Brazil’s lower house) since 2015, but was only approved in 2021 (Federal Law n. 14.192/2021). In a similar vein, the state legislature of Minas Gerais introduced a bill on the subject in 2020, which was signed into law in 2023 (State Law n. 24.466/2023). During this period, there was growing resistance to bills seeking to expand and guarantee women’s rights, including proposals for gender equality education in schools, extended maternity leave, and protections for female candidacies.
This resistance hindered the passage of legislation and characterised an offensive against so-called ‘gender ideology’, led predominantly by politicians from right-wing and far-right parties. This context largely explains why the legislation enacted to combat gender-based political violence lacked the necessary mechanisms to ensure their effectiveness.
Gender- and race-based political violence is thus emerging as a matter of global interest, notably centred in Latin America, a region that stands out as a pioneer in drafting legislation to address this issue (Krook; Sanín, 2016). Given this context, an in-depth discussion regarding the approach to and definition of this phenomenon is essential for a more comprehensive understanding of its nature. Research along these lines remains scarce, even within fields where there is a relatively substantial body of work on gender- and race-based violence, such as sociology or political science. Thus, this research seeks to fill a gap in Brazilian research regarding a topic that has recently attracted crucial national and international attention.
Against this background of conflict and resistance, our study analysed the gender-based political violence faced by women state representatives in Minas Gerais, with the aim of understanding its types, patterns, impacts, and the ways they can be addressed.
The current landscape of political violence in Brazil highlights Minas Gerais as one of the top states in number of incidents, as indicated by a survey conducted by the Grupo de Investigação Eleitoral (GIEL) [Electoral Research Group] at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Observatório da Violência Política e Eleitoral no Brasil, 2024). Recently, the state has been the scene of numerous rape and death threats directed at women city councillors and state representatives. For this investigation, we conducted a literature review on the subject, using that to develop our analytical categories and a guide for semi-structured interviews with five women state legislators. We then analysed the reports of gender-based political violence and the impact of these attacks on the legislative work of the women affected.
A conceptual discussion of gender-based political violence
The field of study regarding gender- and race-based political violence remains at an incipient stage in the literature, as theorisations and investigations on this theme only began to gain prominence from 2016 onwards. It is worth highlighting, however, that the production of academic work is undergoing significant expansion within the contexts of Latin American and Brazil.
An important part of this literature argues that gender- and race-based political violence occurs as a reaction to the increased participation of women in politics (Sen; Vallejo; Walsh, 2019). Flávia Biroli states that the practice is associated with “efforts to undermine the strengthening of feminism in society and the growth of feminist activism within the state” (2018:684). The author argues that bills that seek to suppress the “gender perspective” from public documents and policies “could be taken as political violence because they intend to exclude gender as a topic for discussion and politics and, as such, to avoid the building of a public context in which gender inequality (in society and politics) could be faced and overcome”. The types of gender-based political violence are “deepened by this suppression of gender from debate and public policy” (Birolli, 2016:583).
Nélida Archenti and Laura Albaine (2018:17) argue that, in addition to being a reaction to the greater participation of women in politics, “gender-based political violence” is also associated with “the complex reality of social and economic precarisation that Latin American societies are undergoing”. They argue that analysis of the phenomenon is not restricted to access to politics, but also to “the exercise of their political rights, considering the adverse socio-political context in which they operate”. This would enable the consideration of guarantees with regard to the continued presence and full political participation of systematically marginalised subjects. Furthermore, other structural factors contribute to this scenario, such as the double burden of work, which limits women’s political participation, and the social construction of politics as a male space. As stated by Miguel and Biroli (2014), these barriers reinforce a hostile environment in which women’s participation is constantly attacked and delegitimised, hindering women’s access to and continued participation in public life.
Despite being relatively recent, the conceptual debate on gender- and race-based political violence presents a variety of theoretical perspectives and terminologies. In the English-speaking context, the expression “violence against women in politics” and its acronym, VAWIP, is the most commonly used. This concept has the advantage of highlighting the political sphere, placing the targets and survivors of violence (in this case, women) at the centre and emphasising the implications for global democracy and gender equality (Kuperberg, 2018). In the Brazilian context, on the other hand, the predominant expression is “gender-based political violence”, a terminology that enables the inclusion of non-binary persons as potential victims of this violence (Sanchez, 2020) ‒ which it is why it is the one we use in our work. However, the absence of studies specifically focused on LBTQIA+ women in the literature reviewed here is worth noting, despite the use of the broader term “gender” rather than “women”.
In their pioneering article, Mona Lena Krook and Juliana Restrepo Sanín (2016) conceptualised political violence and harassment against women as behaviours specifically directed at women with the intention of encouraging them to leave the political arena. They also highlighted that, given the normalisation of this violence, victims may not report it for fear of being perceived as “overreacting” or “hysterical”. In a subsequent article, Sanín (2018) proposes approaching this violence as a continuous phenomenon, encompassing not only isolated acts, but a series of actions that manifest in numerous ways against the same victim over time. The author further emphasises the need to consider not only the effects on the victims, but also the damage inflicted upon democracy resulting from the restriction or infeasibility of democratically elected women exercising their terms in office.
In line with this perspective, Flávia Biroli (2018) underscores that such violence not only limits women’s political participation, but also undermines their role as legitimate interlocutors, with significant implications for democratic representation. Thus, a consensus among numerous women authors working on this theme (Krook; Sanín, 2016; Krook, 2017; Biroli, 2018; Bardall, Bjarnegård; Piscopo, 2019) lies in the understanding that political violence exerts a nefarious influence on democracy.
Krook (2017), in particular, posits that because it disseminates widely and impacts women indiscriminately, gender-based political violence constitutes an affront to the democratic essence and, consequently, should not be viewed as an intrinsic characteristic or an established practice within the political arena. The author highlights that gender-based political violence demoralises women in politics, leading to a reluctance to seek re-election and less effective terms in office. She also emphasises that the use of violence to obstruct women’s political participation violates international commitments, such as those established in Article 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979). This underscores the need to recognise such violence as detrimental to democratic integrity, encouraging measures to curb its advance.
Marlise Matos (2021) argues that gender-based political violence is an extension of traditional forms of gender-based violence, which encompass violations of a physical, sexual, psychological, and moral nature. In other words, it is yet another manifestation of patriarchal power. Matos also aligns with the interpretation that this violence can be defined by its explicit intent to restrict women’s participation in the public, political, and party-political spheres.
An intersectional approach plays an important role in understanding gender-based political violence by highlighting that dimensions like age, race, religion, social class, ethnicity, disability, education level, sexual orientation, and ideological identification, among others, can influence its manifestation. This perspective highlights that gender-based political violence does not affect all women equally and that different forms of discrimination and oppression can overlap and exacerbate each other (Matos, 2021; Kuperberg, 2018; Sanchez, 2020). Matos (2021) advocates for this approach to highlight, acknowledge, and address the multiple forms of oppression that women face in the political sphere.
In this discussion, it is pertinent to revisit Silvia Walby’s (1990) discussion on public patriarchy. Walby argues that patriarchy is not a monolithic block, but rather a set of six social structures that operate interdependently to maintain male domination. Alongside the labour market, sexuality, family, and culture, there is also the state—with public policies and institutions that marginalise or exclude women—and violence, understood as the exercise of control over women through physical, psychological, and symbolic aggression. Thus, while the patriarchy exercises domestic forms of domination in the private sphere, in the public sphere, it involves forms of institutionalised domination in spaces like the labour market and the state. For Walby, both coexist and adapt historically, rendering patriarchy flexible and persistent. Among other issues, what the literature on gender-based political violence introduces as novel is a shift in the debate regarding the structures of domination inherent in such violence ‒ previously conceptualised primarily within the private sphere ‒ to the public sphere.
The theoretical-conceptual debate also focused on specifying different types or manifestations of gender-based political violence. Krook and Sanín (2016) used an already predominant taxonomy, that of the types of gender-based violence or violence against women adopted by the OAS Convention of Belém do Pará (Organization of American States, 1994): physical, psychological, economic, and symbolic violence. Physical violence affects the personal integrity of the woman or her family members, whereas psychological violence causes harm to mental or emotional health, including through threats. Economic violence refers to actions that control women’s access or behaviour in politics, while symbolic violence seeks to delegitimise women in politics through gender stereotypes. Furthermore, the authors argue that it is important to distinguish gender-based political violence from electoral violence. Electoral violence aims to influence the electoral process and can affect both men and women, whereas gender-based political violence is not restricted to the election period and targets women active in politics, like the parliamentarians.
In her categorisation, Matos (2021) addresses forms of violence by considering their intersectional aspects. Thus, she identifies “sexist political violence”, linked to gender-based mechanisms, within the context of political violence against women. In addition, she discusses “racist political violence”, when political violence takes racial bias into account, and “racist sexist political violence”, which is perpetrated against Black women, and considers the intersectionality between race and gender.
Thus, political violence against women can be broken down into and experienced as: sexist political violence; racist political violence, when the aggression is driven by ethno-racial hatred; and homophobic political violence, when the aggression stems from homophobic hatred. Moreover, it may involve two or more of these motivations for aggression, ultimately characterising it as intersectional political violence (Matos, 2021).
Methodological approach
This article stems from qualitative-exploratory research. George Gaskell (2000:39) states that qualitative research aims to understand “beliefs, attitudes, values, and motivations” regarding individual behaviour within specific social contexts. This type of research contributes to the knowledge of baseline data, which can foster the development of insights into a local situation and the relationships established among social actors. For Jill Collis and Roger Hussey (2003:10), exploratory research is conducted to provide an overview of a specific phenomenon and to seek “patterns, ideas, or hypotheses” (authors’ emphasis), since the goal is to gain a deeper understanding of the subject matter. It is a type of research oriented towards discovery.
The initial purpose of this research was to conduct interviews with the 15 women parliamentarians elected to the Assembleia Legislativa de Minas Gerais [Minas Gerais (MG) Legislature] for the legislative term beginning in 2023, seeking to understand their perspectives on gender-based political violence and the state responses provided to them. As highlighted at the beginning of the article, Minas Gerais is a relevant case study, given its consistent presence at the top of rankings identifying the occurrence of gender- and race-based political violence (Observatório da Violência Política e Eleitoral no Brasil, 2024).
Our focus encompassed parliamentarians from several parties across the state’s political spectrum, aimed at investigating how political positioning might influence their perceptions and understandings. However, the group included no trans legislators elected to the MG Legislature, raising the hypothesis of a research gap in understanding with regard to how gender-based political violence impacts these women. To broaden the research scope, trans woman federal representative for Minas Gerais, Duda Salabert, was included in the study population, together with the 15 women parliamentarians elected to the current term of the MG Legislature.
We selected semi-structured interviews as the primary data-gathering method. This type of interview is configured as a way of obtaining information based on a pre-established guide, which is followed during the interaction with the interlocutor, while allowing for variations and interventions that may arise during the dialogue, whenever the interviewer deems appropriate (Aragaki et al., 2014).
The process of contacting the parliamentarians began with emails to all 16 offices, followed by contact via WhatsApp numbers listed on the parliamentarians’ social media profiles and calls to their respective offices. Parliamentarians from seven parties ‒ PL, PSDB, PT, PSOL, REDE, PDT, and PV ‒ expressed interest and availability to schedule interviews. However, it was only possible to conduct interviews with five of them (from the PT, PSOL, PV, PDT, and REDE). Two Workers Party representatives had difficulty keeping to their allotted times, and they were unable to rearrange their schedules for the interviews. Despite further attempts to make contact, we had no success with the others.
The interviews were conducted as follows: three took place in person at the parliamentarians’ respective offices, and two were held via Google Meet. It is worth noting that the parliamentarians who agreed to be interviewed come from a similar part of the political spectrum, affiliated with centre-left and left-wing parties. Hence, the initial goal of taking a comprehensive approach that included different political stances was limited in scope.
The questions for the interlocutors were organised into three thematic blocks, aimed at covering the women’s political trajectories, the violence they experienced during their terms in office, and their access to mechanisms of justice and protection. The questions were formulated based on the literature reviewed regarding gender-based political violence, as well as women’s participation and inequalities within the political-institutional sphere.
The first section sought to reconstruct the interviewees’ party-political trajectories, identifying their motivations for running for office, the support and obstacles encountered within their families and respective parties, and the difficulties faced during the campaigns and their terms in office. The impacts of such violence on each legislator’s term in office, their political careers, personal lives, and their mental health were also investigated, in order to deepen current understanding of the effects of violence on women’s continued participation and agency in politics. The complaints process was addressed, the effectiveness of institutional responses, and the parliamentarians’ perceptions regarding the justice system’s capacity to tackle gender-based political violence. The third and final section gathered information on the parliamentarians’ profiles: age, marital status, parental status, education, profession, party and electoral history, racial identity, gender and sexual orientation. This information was essential for analysing how social markers shape specific inequalities and vulnerabilities for women in the exercise of institutional politics.
The following sections of this article are organised to present the results on the key themes identified in our analysis of the interviews, particularly those concerning the types of political violence experienced and their dynamics, the personal and professional impacts, and potential initiatives to address these issues.
Brief profiles and trajectories of the interlocutors
Currently, women make up only 19.5% of the MG Legislature; there are 15 women among the 77 parliamentarians. This low level of representation highlights the exclusion and the lack of equal access for women to the political sphere, which in themselves may be considered forms of gender-based violence (Biroli; Miguel, 2014).
The profiles of the five parliamentarians, all from centre-left or left-wing parties, may indicate greater sensitivity and openness to discussing the issue of gender- and race-based political violence. Duda Salabert (PDT) is the first trans federal representative from Minas Gerais and was the highest-voted city councillor in Belo Horizonte in 2020. Bella Gonçalves (PSOL), who also served as a city councillor, brings her experience in grassroots movements to politics, prioritising issues like housing, human rights and the environment. Andreia de Jesus (PT) is serving her second term as a state representative; she is a lawyer, a former domestic worker, a community activist, and an advocate for public policies benefiting minorities. Ana Paula Siqueira (Rede) is also in her second term; her career focuses on public participation, and she is engaged in several wide-ranging legislative projects. Lohanna França (PV) was the youngest and highest-voted city councillor in the municipality of Divinópolis, Minas Gerais, before being elected as a state representative.
Andreia and Ana Paula are Black women from the periferia. With the exception of Lohanna, who is 29, the others are between 35 and 45 years old. Two of them are divorced and two do not have children. These data suggest a potential intersection between personal and political life, reflecting the challenges of reconciling family demands with political responsibilities. Furthermore, the diverse professional backgrounds of the women parliamentarians ‒ a lawyer, a social worker, a political scientist, and two teachers ‒ together with the presence of two Black women and three who identify as lesbian or bisexual, underscore a reconfiguration of the political landscape that challenges traditional patterns of legislative representation.
From vulnerability to gender- and race-based violence
Women face vulnerability to violence from the very beginning of the process leading up to running for public office. In interviews, the women parliamentarians pointed out numerous difficulties related to their candidacy and electoral competition, such as a lack of family support during the decision-making process. Campaign financing emerges as one of the primary challenges to women’s effective participation in party politics and elections; the lack of financial resources makes it difficult to compete against influential political leaders and constitutes a significant obstacle.
Legislator Lohanna França highlights this scarcity of resources as a key challenge during her campaign, noting the additional difficulties she faced in gaining respect from opinion leaders, who were predominantly men and financially privileged. She views her victory as a triumph over the lack of the structural support traditionally available to men, and emphasises the limited backing she received, which came from just three city councillors, two of whom were women with similar life stories.
For her part, Bella Gonçalves emphasised the importance of domestic support, material conditions, and backing from a political party in running a campaign. She noted that the electoral process exacerbates the difficulties women face, including threats to their mental health. In addition to dealing with sexism and daily attempts to disqualify them, female candidates must also secure material resources and organise their campaigns.
Representative Andréia de Jesus emphasised the challenge of being a Black woman in the political arena, highlighting the need to convince people of the importance of diversity in that environment:
Convincing people, telling people that politics is a space that needs diversity, that a Black woman from the periferia could occupy this space to help build public policies that bring people out of invisibility (Andréia de Jesus).
Campaign financing and the lack of adequate financial resources are cited as key challenges hindering women’s effective participation in party politics and elections. This situation compromises their ability to compete on a level playing field with established political leaders, who are predominantly men. An analysis of women’s under-representation in spaces of power reveals a historical structural disparity regarding women’s access to resources. Although women constitute the majority of the population and the electorate, they continue to occupy positions of lower visibility and power, revealing deep-seated structural barriers.
These barriers limit the development of women’s political capital and restrict their ability to compete on equal terms in the political arena, thereby perpetuating gender inequalities in this field (Miguel; Biroli, 2014).
Women parliamentarians have identified several situations they had experienced that constitute gender- and race-based political violence. As previously noted, Krook and Sanín (2016) and Biroli (2016) argue that one form of this is symbolic violence, a means of reinforcing societal hierarchies by delegitimising women’s participation, particularly within the political context:
My microphone was actually cut off in the middle of a discussion on a bill, while I was a city councillor. It was quite scandalous. The City Council President cut me off because I criticised the council’s actions [...]. There was also the ‘menstrual dignity’ bill during my time as a councillor [...]. Me and [another] councillor formally introduced the bill together, and we were accused of simply ‘whining’. I can’t forget when a councilman said: ‘It seems like women have only started menstruating now that this issue has come up’ (Lohanna França).
I’ve heard remarks like: ‘Shut up! The person speaking is someone who has held office longer than you have.’ I think this is very aggressive, really violent, don’t you think? Just because you have served more terms than anyone else, doesn’t mean you have a better grasp of the subject (Ana Paula Siqueira).
‘Jackass! Go and study.’ Attempts to silence me happen repeatedly [...]. [I was discredited] as part of the actual project of political violence against women, to the point where a fellow legislator claimed such violence doesn’t exist. To the point where fellow representatives mobilised others to remove the article detailing exactly what constitutes political violence against women from the bill, driven by the absurd argument that it’s neither permissible or appropriate to introduce a discussion on gender into the political arena (Andréia de Jesus).
Based on the examples provided by the women parliamentarians, a reaction mainly with regard to gender-related issues becomes perceptible, as emphasised by Representative Lohanna França: “Colleagues are very critical of issues involving gender, especially the older male representatives”. This statement aligns with Biroli’s (2018) argument that the criminalisation of gender is a form of political violence rooted in the notion that gender issues are illegitimate or harmful to society. This, in turn, can result in the criminalisation of political practices and discourses that advocate for women’s rights, while simultaneously legitimising violent acts against women and women’s rights activists.
Psychological violence, as defined by Krook and Sanín (2016), involves harm to mental health and threats of physical violence. Of the five female parliamentarians interviewed, four reported receiving death threats via email. A notable example is the case of Representative Lohanna França, who, following the approval of a bill on the “State Week of Atypical Motherhood”, received a threatening message accusing her of “promoting female irresponsibility’ and affirming that she ‘had blood on her hands”. The aggressor claimed to know the addresses of the parliamentarian and members of her family, threatened to break into her home to commit rape, and to storm her office in Belo Horizonte to shoot her in the head and “machine-gun” her staff.
This incident illustrates gender-based psychological violence, which causes significant harm to the parliamentarian’s mental health through severe threats, intimidation and objectification, thereby exacerbating the impact of physical and sexual violence.
Representative Bella Gonçalves reported receiving a death threat with an LGBT-phobic undertone during her term as a city councillor in the capital of Minas Gerais. The message, received via email while she was still in office, read: “We’ll be brief: you are a lesbian and therefore your presence in the City Council of our Belo Horizonte, capital of Minas Gerais, will no longer be tolerated”. The legislator was ordered to resign and threatened with sexual violence as a “lesbian cure”. The threats were accompanied by praise for Colonel Brilhante Ustra, an infamous figure convicted of acts of torture during the Brazil’s civil-military dictatorship. The message was signed by the Comando de Caça aos Comunistas de Minas Gerais [Minas Gerais Command for Hunting Communists], a reference to a paramilitary organisation active from the 1960s to the 1980s, known to include individuals involved in acts of torture during that period.
Lastly, over her two terms in office, State Representative Andréia de Jesus has 40 police inquiries and 16 lawsuits on record due to threats, including those made online. One of the messages received stated that the actions of the parliamentarian were an assault on the traditional Minas family and announced the intention to eliminate her. It included a description affirming the act would be carried out by shooting specific parts of her body and that she would not know what hit her, and further asserted that her days were numbered. The message also referred to Marielle Franco, suggesting a connection to the 2018 assassination of the Rio de Janeiro city councillor while she was in office.
An additional form of violence emerged primarily during the most recent elections, in 2018 and 2022. The spread of fake news intended to undermine candidacies disproportionately affected women and persisted throughout the terms of those who were elected.
During the pandemic, I was the only city councillor to publicly support medical measures against COVID-19. This triggered a wave of fake news in the region, falsely accusing me of shutting down local businesses. My WhatsApp number was leaked, and a protest took place at my home, where I received threats of rape and even death, as well as obscene one that included training for healthcare professionals to better serve trans people. Recently, at the Assembleia [MG Legislature], questions were raised regarding the veracity of the threats I faced, with insinuations that I might be fabricating them to gain visibility (Lohanna França).
This form of violence is situated within the context of the phenomenon known as ‘fake news’ ‒ a topic that garnered significant attention during recent global elections, particularly since fake news was identified as favouring Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election to the detriment of his opponent, Hillary Clinton, a woman (Gadelha; Kerr, 2019). Women are identified as the primary victims of this phenomenon, which is not limited to the mere dissemination of false information, but also encompasses threats, violence, and verbal abuse published on digital platforms.
Against this backdrop, Congresswoman Duda Salabert raises significant concerns regarding her personal exposure and the death threats she faces due to her political positions and activities on social media. She highlights the need to restrict her presence and the topics she handles online, steering clear of controversial topics on her social network to avoid attracting further threats.
I only post things [on social media] that won’t cause too much controversy, because I can’t really post otherwise. Every time I post something controversial, I get all these death threats.
So, I need to have a social media presence that isn't too big, just your average social media, and steer clear of controversial topics due to the price I’d have to pay (Duda Salabert).
The congresswoman recounts sharing an image on social media in which she wore a top bearing the words “Teacher, Travesti, Lesbian, and Vegan”. Within a short time, she was targeted by hundreds of offensive messages, most of which expressed revulsion. The volume of hate messages escalated alarmingly after two members of the Bolsonaro family shared the image on their social media accounts. Due to the high frequency of these messages, her Instagram account was blocked, preventing her from posting content on Instagram and Facebook for ten days, in the midst of her election campaign.
The suspension of social media access during an election campaign can have significant impacts on the campaign’s effectiveness and the public image of any candidate. Use of social media is essential in the contemporary political landscape (Braga; Carlomagno, 2018), given these platforms constitute a central tool for communication, voter engagement, and building an online presence. Such a restriction represents a direct interruption in communication with voters and supporters. Absence from social media can undermine the effective dissemination of campaign messages, voter mobilisation, and the cultivation of a positive image.
In short, our findings indicate various forms of violence that can be categorised according to the types proposed in the literature, particularly by Krook and Sanín (2016). Notwithstanding, additional gender- and race-related obstacles within the political environment were also identified, including a lack of family or party support, which have been ascertained in other works. It is salient to highlight the dissemination of false information for the purpose of attacking the personal image of women parliamentarians, a fact that further illustrates the complexity of the issue.
These results attest to the importance of an intersectional approach to the topic, as advocated by Matos (2021), Kuperberg (2018) and Sanchez (2020), given that when the victims are Black women parliamentarians, this reality takes on deeper and more intricate dimensions due to the intersection of racial and gender inequalities. Attacks against them were not limited to attempts to restrict or invalidate the exercise of their terms in office, but also included an intensification of racist manifestations—expressed through speech, conduct, and threats—aimed at portraying them as ‘unfit’ for political office, thereby disregarding their rights and competence.
Impacts
In addition to those already mentioned, all the women parliamentarians listed numerous consequences of gender- and race-based political violence. The most frequently cited is the disruption of the routine of their legislative work. This aligns with the literature which affirms gender-based political violence serves as a tool to prevent women from engaging in politics (Matos, 2021; Biroli, 2018; Bardall; Bjarnegård; Piscopo, 2019; Sem; Vallejo; Walsh, 2019; Krook; Sanín, 2016). The research findings shed light on exactly how this occurs.
The parliamentarians report that when such violence occurs, their activities come to a virtual standstill, whether due to the red tape involved in filing a formal complaint or because their routines are disrupted by the need for state-provided security details. Though intended to ensure their safety, the security simultaneously restricts their privacy and their political activities:
It’s a way to shut down our work. On the day I received the threat, I spent three days unable to work, dealing with police matters, sorting out a security detail and giving statements. I gave statements to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the local police, state police and federal police [...] (Lohanna França).
Representative Bella Gonçalves shares how political violence not only diverts attention from her political activities, but also limits her interactions with the public and shapes people’s perceptions of her term in office.
When we’re targeted by political violence and respond to it, the energy of our term in office revolves around that issue. So, that consumes a lot of time, an enormous amount of energy we could otherwise use to champion social causes, for instance. I was just starting to collect signatures for a parliamentary inquiry into transport when I received the latest death threats. I couldn’t even approach people to talk about the parliamentary inquiry into transport, because all they wanted to know about was gender-based political violence. Just to give you one example, but it’s always like this. Worrying about not having your term revoked, worrying about responding to fake news, worrying about not being killed. Not to mention the security detail situation, which scares many people off and severely limits our daily routine. I no longer do the things I used to do; not in my personal life, nor in politics (Bella Gonçalves).
The following account by Andréia de Jesus deepens our understanding of what a police security detail means for a parliamentarian who holds a popular mandate, and whose electoral base is located in areas deemed unsafe by law enforcement.
This whole issue of having a security detail or being accompanied by police, to keep me from being killed, is like a slow death. Because it strips away your freedom, it gradually wears you down, and exposes you. The police presence entails a very high level of exposure, whether it’s because the left questions the police presence, or because the right and far right also question the police presence for a popular leftist representative. [...] When you come from the periferia—in a Brazilian context where Black men and women are constantly marginalised, living in devastated areas and targeted by the police themselves—having to walk around with them all the time was extremely contradictory, hard to assimilate (Andreia de Jesus).
The conspicuous presence of a police security detail not only acts as a constraint on the performance of legislative duties, but also serves as a significant factor exposing the parliamentarians’ personal lives. This phenomenon transcends mere reduction in work pace and participation in public events, it demands a profound reconfiguration of the personal and social dimensions of the women parliamentarians’ lives.
The presence of a police security detail is the worst [consequence], because I used to participate in all kinds of spaces. Nowadays, I try to cut back on that, not going to small family gatherings, keeping my distance from family dinners and lunches, going out to a club. But in the past, I did all those things, with them present the whole time. My own family couldn’t grasp it. My mum’s illiterate; she started working as a domestic helper at the age of seven. She has no idea. She said, ‘My daughter, why don’t you quit that job?’ I’ve thought about quitting, but it’s not exactly just a job, is it? [We need] to understand what we do and why we stay (Andréia de Jesus).
Representative Ana Paula Siqueira analyses gender- and race-based political violence, and the bureaucracy associated with reporting it, as deliberate strategies designed to wear out female parliamentarians, thereby compromising their ability to perform their legislative duties, and impacting their family lives:
It’s exhausting for us to have to keep engaging in this confrontation, while [...] our fellow colleagues, most of them, are dedicating time to their terms in office and their legislative activities. One day, a reporter asked me: ‘Representative, how do you view having to keep talking about and repeating the same situations over and over?’ I said: ‘Look, it actually seems like a strategy of theirs to wear us down, because we get tired, we become emotionally and psychologically drained. I’m not alone; I have family, I have a child.’ So, we are constantly thinking about the impact this has on those close to us. [...] You have to shake up a lot more structures [...]; I hired someone to drive my car, which I used to drive myself. A person seconded here from the Department of Public Safety, a state employee, who accompanies me and handles my transport so that I can move around safely. These are the people who control the logistics of my term of office 24 hours a day. So, the violence is constant, it takes on new disguises, and the state reacts to ensure security. Yet in doing so, it strips away your privacy, curtails your capacity for action, and too often alters your discourse. I feel, nowadays, we think much more before we speak. We calculate more carefully which issues to tackle and how. So, right now, my term of office is constrained (Ana Paula Siqueira).
Thus, the experience of having a police security detail transcends the primary function of providing security, becoming a decisive factor that impacts both the public and private spheres of these parliamentarians’ lives. The need to redefine their personal and social lives thus becomes a complex, multifaceted issue, requiring an in-depth analysis of how of this security measure affects the identity, social relationships, and quality of life of women parliamentarians.
Another implication of gender- and race-based political violence frequently highlighted by the women parliamentarians, and detailed in our investigation, concerns the significant influence this form of violence exerts on the victims’ personal lives and mental health. This phenomenon not only amplifies adverse consequences for individual psychological well-being, but also resonates at broader socio-cultural and political levels.
I ended up having physical symptoms of anxiety, which I hadn’t felt since 2018, when I faced the onset of a recurring depressive episode. [...] Sweating due to nerves and anxiety, from thinking, for example, that my staff had an appearance representing me at a demonstration. [...] I had given them the go-ahead to attend, and I called the police to request patrols. I couldn’t ask for a security detail for them. With two hours to go, I was so anxious, afraid something might happen to one of them, that I said: ‘Don’t go. I’m going to say the office won’t be sending a representative’ (Lohanna França).
I had a terrible problem with emotional burnout, to the point of developing an autoimmune disease, damaging my thyroid, and experiencing hair loss. It was horrific. And what was the medical assessment? Extreme stress. Linked to what? Tension. Not about the work I do here, but about things I have no control over, the external threats (Ana Paula Siqueira).
Lastly, the parliamentarians’ views align with those of authors who emphasise that this violence directly impacts democracy (Krook; Sanín, 2016; Krook, 2017; Biroli, 2018; Bardall; Bjarnegård; Piscopo, 2019; Matos, 2021). Representative Bella Gonçalves states that this is the primary effect of political violence: sending a message to all women.
They threaten us because we’re involved in politics, and they consider it unacceptable for women to be in politics. But, in a narrower sense, [...] they believe a woman’s role is to serve men, a woman’s role is to procreate. They even state this explicitly in the bodies of the emails they send us. So, I understand that when they threaten us, they’re sending a message to all women. And they send messages, in fact, to many women who wish to participate in politics. More and more, I’ve heard people say, time and again: ‘No, I’m not getting into that whole politics thing, because I’m afraid of dying’. And it is sad to hear that, because we realise that their threats have had some practical effect. Practical in the sense of driving women away from political engagement (Bella Gonçalves).
In summary, based on the interviews conducted for this study, we identified four main impacts generated by political violence (Table 1).
The Impacts of Gender and Race-Based Political Violence on The Women Parliamentarians Interviewed in The Study
Proposals for addressing gender and race-based political violence
The accounts provided by the women parliamentarians interviewed revealed an alarming picture of political violence, highlighting the urgent need for institutional approaches to tackle this phenomenon. However, one key finding of our research concerns the difficulties the state faces in addressing the violence experienced, which were emphasised by the interlocutors.
While seeking recourse through institutions of justice was a unanimous initiative among the interlocutors, emphasising their perception of the relevance of state legal systems in addressing and resolving these issues, for the most part, this path proved to be arduous and largely ineffective. Seeking recourse through local or state police, state or federal public prosecutor’s offices, or even the MG Legislature itself, all of them recounted difficulties in reporting the abuse and receiving specialised support, and the absence of dedicated channels or staff trained to handle this type of violence, among other challenges.
Moreover, since the pattern of attacks against the parliamentarians is predominantly centred in the cybersphere, this creates additional challenges related to a lack of training and adequate equipment to deal with violence perpetrated in this domain. The challenges inherent in this issue include: the ease of online anonymity, which hinders the identification and legal accountability of perpetrators; the incredibly fast spread of harmful content on social media platforms, exposing victims to substantial harm within a short timeframe; the lack of awareness regarding the severity of online gender-based political violence, leading to underreporting and minimisation of the problem; the inadequacy of existing regulatory structures, which are often incapable of effectively addressing these forms of violence; and the technical challenges inherent in identifying perpetrators, holding them accountable, and removing harmful content within a globalised digital context.
Finally, the lack of institutional preparedness to effectively address gender- and race-based political violence discourages victims from reporting incidents—yet another challenge amidst the various complexities they highlight, and one that constitutes to a form of re-victimization. Faced with the limitations of the state responses provided, the women parliamentarians outlined their understanding of what must be done for the state to more effectively respond to gender-based political violence.
Representative Andréia de Jesus emphasises the need to foster progress within legislative bodies, particularly regarding the behaviour of male parliamentarians. She highlights the perception of abuses on their part, as they exploit what they interpret as ‘parliamentary immunity’ or “freedom of expression” to transgress ethical boundaries. The parliamentarian argues that legislative institutions have so far failed to impose appropriate sanctions or corrective measures for these abuses, making it necessary to implement effective regulatory mechanisms to curb such behaviour.
Aligned with findings from this research, which identified this issue as a substantial challenge for nearly all the women interviewed, Representative Ana Paula Siqueira proposes a reporting channel specialised in gender-based political violence. This issue, highlighted by several interlocutors, reveals a significant gap in the institutional framework available to address manifestations of political violence specifically targeting women and other vulnerable groups.
A straightforward channel... so that when faced with a situation of violence, we have a way to report it. And then, internal work involving the actual investigation and punishment of the perpetrators, as well as publicising the fact that this is taking place. I also think it is crucial to more clearly define who the... let’s put it this way, the chain of procedures that must be followed to ensure the conclusion of the cases is also very important. You need a clear outline of the parties involved until the end of the process, along with an immediate communication channel for receiving reports (Ana Paula Siqueira).
Representative Lohanna França proposes a set of additional measures to combat violence against women. First, she highlights the need to bolster local police staffing to improve case handling and resolution, emphasising that the erosion of public services undermines this capacity. Secondly, she advocates for investment in appropriate tools to combat online hate speech, with a view to improving the response to crimes committed in this manner. Finally, she proposes the implementation of training and capacity-building programmes for police and judicial staff, focusing on standardising processes to recognise and properly address specific threats like gender-based political violence and femicide.
Representative Bella Gonçalves elaborates on this last point:
I think we need to establish a specialised court and also expand the scope of the TREs [Regional Electoral Courts], to enable working in co-operation with civil, criminal, and other courts, to handle this workload. A working group needs to be established within the judiciary to understand the institutional design and procedural flow for these complaints (Bella Gonçalves).
The interviews conducted reveal the existence of certain legislative and administrative initiatives; however, the parliamentarians’ aspirations extend far beyond those already adopted. Table 2 lists the proposed actions, classifying them into measures of a legislative, administrative, educational, and investigative nature.
Contributions and perspectives
Persistently low female representation in the political sphere of so-called “liberal democracies” reinforces the notion that the domains and positions of power belong to individuals fitting specific profiles, predominantly White, cisgender men. For this reason, the long tradition of feminist studies on political representation has spent decades highlighting the importance of centring demands for “presence”, particularly those from subjects and population groups that recognise themselves as marginalized, silenced, or systematically excluded from the public sphere. This perspective constitutes a crucial democratic criterion, since it promotes a significant reframing of the challenges pertaining to political equality in contemporary times.
The rising wave of gender- and race-based political violence poses a threat to this ideal. It not only hinders the deepening of democracy, but also interrupts or reverses the historical gains made by social movements that have resulted in a larger, more substantive presence of women of diverse backgrounds in the decision-making spheres of Brazilian society and politics, which represent significant, albeit partial, ruptures in the public patriarchy (Walby, 1990).
In this study involving five women parliamentarians from Minas Gerais, we identified varied manifestations of gender- and race-based political violence. We were able to categorise these according to the typologies outlined in the literature, drawing on the pioneering work of Krook and Sanín (2016), Krook (2017), and Matos (2021), namely, economic, psychological, and symbolic violence. However, our research also identified other forms of attacks, such as the dissemination of fake news to smear reputations or deflect from the debate of ideas, the imposition of restrictions on topics addressed by women, the lack of space within political parties, and discursive delegitimisation. These expressions of political violence attest to the complexity of the challenge in addressing a problem that, while historical, has only recently been recognised and named. Moreover, it is frequently underestimated. Its impacts are not merely personal or specific to a given term of office, rather they extend to the legislator’s family and team, and, as we have stressed, represent an attack on democracy itself.
During the investigation, certain patterns of violence against women parliamentarians were clearly demonstrated, such as limited family support, insufficient material resources for election campaigns, and a lack of backing by political parties, besides the additional challenges stemming from race and gender in the political sphere. These patterns closely resemble those identified in studies conducted in other regions of the country, and thus transcend geographical boundaries. We can affirm that the discussion generated by this research extends beyond the context of Minas Gerais, it emerges as a reflection of systemic issues deeply rooted in Brazil’s social and political structures. The persistence of these patterns indicates the existence of cultural norms, discriminatory attitudes, and institutional structures that permeate the entire political spectrum, purposefully perpetuating women’s vulnerability in the public sphere. The findings thus reinforce that the violence against the women parliamentarians interviewed is not an isolated phenomenon, but rather a symptom of broader structural challenges related to gender inequality and the resistance to the presence of women in the political arena.
When the victims are Black women, this violence assumes even more complex and profound dimensions due to the intersectionality of race and gender. For the Black parliamentarians interviewed, the forms of violence manifest not only through attempts to delegitimise and curtail their terms in office, but also by intensifying the racism they face ‒ through rhetoric, practices, and threats that seek to relegate them to the status of “unfit” for political life, with complete disregard for their competence and legitimacy. As Black women in prominent political and social roles, they challenge racist and patriarchal norms, becoming targets of violence that assails both their racial and gender identities.
Our research also showed that another significant challenge lies with the state, and in the continued inefficacy and ineffectiveness of existing channels and services designed to address this type of violence. Thus, in addition to reviewing and improving legislation aimed at combating gender- and race-based political violence, these women parliamentarians are seeking measures that go beyond the initiatives already in place, the existing laws and reporting channels. In their view, gaps persist in the training and education of public servants on the front lines of addressing political violence, and in the structural measures within the investigative and judicial spheres, such as improving the acquisition of essential equipment to advance proceedings and the creation of workflows within the justice system capable of providing adequate responses.
In this regard, our research may prompt further studies within the context of gender- and race-based political violence. A relevant line of inquiry is an in-depth analysis of the racial and intersectional dimensions, aimed at a more comprehensive understanding of how this violence affects Black, Indigenous, and LGBTQIA+ women, together with other individuals who challenge gender norms. A more detailed approach to transformative coping strategies and the effective application of existing legislation is crucial. Future studies should investigate the efficacy of such strategies, identifying challenges in the implementation of the laws and proposing practical improvements. Assessing the actual impact of legislation on the reduction of gender- and race-based political violence, and its influence on political culture, is also a promising area of research.
Given the prevalence of online harassment, future studies could focus on developing specific protocols to combat online violence. This includes guidelines for identifying, ensuring accountability for, and removing harmful content on digital platforms, as well as strategies to raise awareness regarding the severity of this type of violence. It is critical that any protocols consider the amplified impact of political violence on social media, where the reach of messages, their immediate large-scale replication, and the persistence of content, can intensify the harm caused to victims and reinforce cycles of violence and silencing.
Be that as it may, this work contributes to the discussion of a relevant issue that not only threatens the deepening of democracy, but also reverses hard-won gains. It can also support the generation of knowledge that informs effective public policies for preventing and addressing this specific form of violence.
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