How online abuse and patriarchy hold back women candidates
On the harassment and abuse that women candidates for the March 5 election are facing online
Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening from Kathmandu. This is Issue 227 of Kalam Weekly, the only newsletter you need to keep updated with everything happening in Nepal. This is a special edition of the newsletter in the run-up to the March 5 election. Today, we focus on women candidates and the ordeal they’ve been undergoing on social media.
But first, a short note. As we write this, the world has entered another war. The United States and Israel have jointly bombed Iran, killing much of the senior leadership of the Islamic Republic. Over 200 Iranians are confirmed dead, including at least 148 civilians in an attack on an elementary girls ’ school in the Iranian state of Minab. Iran has retaliated by bombing all of the West Asian countries that host US bases — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, and Oman. One Nepali has reportedly died during an Iranian drone strike at Abu Dhabi airport.
Our thoughts are with civilians caught in the middle of this geopolitical quagmire. While Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his mullahs have oppressed the Iranian people for decades, bombing yet another sovereign country in the name of regime change cannot be acceptable. Hundreds, if not thousands, will die, including those who have no stake in the war, like the millions of Nepali and other migrant workers in West Asian states like Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.
Even as the world goes to war, we in Nepal must turn to more prosaic matters — the election that is to be held on Thursday, March 5. Today and on Wednesday, we will bring you analysis of the upcoming election and what it could mean for Nepal going forward. Stay with us.
We hope you will continue to read us and, if you can, support us, as this is an especially crucial time for us here in Nepal. Please click the button below to support us via Substack or scan the QR code to support us with your bank app.
How online abuse and patriarchy hold back women candidates
(Design by Shrijit Rajbhandari, click to enlarge)
by Pranaya Rana & Niruta Khatri
On February 7, Nisha Adhikari, a first-past-the-post (FPTP) candidate for the March 5 election from the Gatisheel Loktantrik Party (GLP), posted a Twitter thread detailing the kinds of derogatory messages and comments she was receiving on social media. Alongside a collage of sexist and often sexualized comments, Adhikari posted her thoughts:
The hateful and derogatory words used against female candidates do not reflect the status of women; rather, they mirror the deeply rooted misogynistic mindset in our society. Such language is not disagreement. This is not debate. It is violence born out of power and fear, aimed at driving women out of public life, making them afraid, and silencing them. These comments are not just directed at me; they target all women in politics, in leadership, who dare to speak out.
Adhikari’s experience is not unique; it is shared by most women candidates this election season. Election campaigning has largely moved online, but so have abuse and harassment against women candidates, who now contend with sexualized hate speech, threats of sexual violence, and derogatory comments targeting their gender, caste, body, and profession. While social media has allowed candidates – at least of a certain class and caste — to reach a broader audience across the country, the same technology has also provided unscrupulous actors with the means to abuse, harass, and intimidate women candidates using their gender as the primary vector of attack. Such comments can be deeply demoralizing for women candidates, who are already confronting structural barriers to campaigning, including a comparative lack of social and financial capital and deep-rooted patriarchal perceptions that still see politics as a primarily male arena.
These paradigms are reflected in the kinds of comments often left under social media posts by women candidates. Comments patronizingly tell women to “stay home,” “get married,” or “have children” instead of engaging in politics. Some go as far as to say that “women belong in the kitchen.” Comments escalate into remarks about body type, clothing choices, and appearance. In extreme cases, there are rape threats and threats of sexual violence. Taken as a whole, such commentary creates a violent and unwelcoming space for women candidates, who are already in the minority when it comes to direct election candidates.
Out of 3,484 total candidates, only 395 women are contesting the direct election this March 5. This means that despite constituting 50 percent of the electorate, women make up just 11 percent of FPTP candidates.
Since Nepal introduced a requirement in 2008 that 33 percent of parliamentary seats must be filled by women, the country has been credited with one of the highest rates of women’s representation in national parliaments in Asia. But that rate of representation masks other unpleasant truths. To meet the constitutional requirement of 33 percent women’s representation, Nepal’s parties bring more women into parliament through proportional representation, which runs alongside FPTP elections, with 110 of a total 275 parliamentary seats reserved for this system. The dominant perception in this two-tier setup is that directly elected parliamentarians are politically stronger and more capable, while proportional representatives are there just to meet quota requirements. Ultimately, this means that representatives of disadvantaged groups are left reliant on proportional representation to gain meaningful legislative presence. Women, but also oppressed castes, marginalized ethnicities, and religious minorities, often end up being delegitimized, with this perception overriding their contributions to an inclusive political process.
Add to that the kinds of online abuse routinely targeted at women candidates, and the playing field of Nepali politics becomes even more skewed against women. Nepal’s latest election reveals the stark disparities they face.
To assess the volume and severity of online gender-based violence against women candidates, Kalam Weekly monitored the social media posts of eight prominent women candidates from across multiple parties — Nisha Adhikari (GLP), Renu Dahal (Nepali Communist Party), Ranju Darshana (Rastriya Swatantra Party), Nisha Dangi (Rastriya Swatantra Party), Bina Magar (Nepali Communist Party), Nanu Bastola (Nepali Congress), Juli Kumari Mahato (CPN-UML), and Mahalaxmi Upadhyay (Nepali Congress) – from the beginning of January to mid-February. We analyzed 753 posts by these candidates on Facebook and X (Twitter), which generated 92,694 comments. We looked primarily for hate speech, divided into five different categories — gendered/sexist comments, targeted misinformation/disinformation, character assassination, sexualized harassment, and violent threats.
We found that actual hate speech was relatively rare — only 346 comments from among 92,694 could be categorized as such. But that is not to discount the severity or impact of the specific kinds of abuse and language deployed against women candidates.
Out of the 346 comments classified as hate speech, 234 were gendered or sexist; 50 constituted misinformation or disinformation; 49 employed character assassination; 10 amounted to sexualized harassment; and four were violent threats. The hostility did not target the candidate’s policies or political positions. Over 60 percent of hate speech targeted the candidate’s gender. The abuse, when it appeared, was explicitly gendered. The instances of sexualized harassment and violent threats are especially concerning, as they show hostility crossing over into outright violence, intimidation, and degradation.
A correlation could also be drawn between fame and hate. Three women — Renu Dahal, Ranju Darshana, and Nisha Adhikari — received much more hate speech than the other candidates; they also have larger social media followings than the other five. Each of the three has a claim to fame: Renu Dahal is the former mayor of Bharatpur Municipality and the daughter of former Maoist chief Pushpa Kamal Dahal; Ranju Darshana has been contesting elections since she first ran for mayor of Kathmandu at the age of 21; and Nisha Adhikari is a popular actor and model.
Our monitoring offers a snapshot of the kind of abuse and harassment women candidates face online, but it was not comprehensive or absolutely rigorous. There are thus limitations to our findings. We did not look at many other social media platforms, including TikTok, which is massively popular in Nepal and has higher engagement rates than Facebook and X, but is more difficult to monitor. As Facebook remains the primary platform for candidates and elections, most of the comments we surveyed came from there. Twitter was also used as a supplementary platform due to its high level of political engagement and its institutional tolerance for hate speech under Elon Musk. As expected, among the 141 total comments surveyed on Twitter, 25 were classified as hate speech, a rate of 17.7 percent.
Our sample of women candidates was also relatively narrow and not diverse enough. Most of those surveyed were from the Khas-Arya community, Nepal’s most dominant elite group, when research has shown that women with intersectional and marginalized identities — Dalits, Indigenous Janajatis, Madhesis, and other minorities — are more likely to face gender-based violence both online and offline. UN Women has described it succinctly: digital violence mirrors offline inequalities.
Our limited research supports findings from the intergovernmental organisation International IDEA that online attacks against female politicians “revolve around fabricated personal misconduct, which fuels objectification, reinforces harmful stereotypes and undermines women’s credibility.” It also confirms broad patterns of gender-based violence and harassment against women in politics in Nepal and across South Asia.
While our media monitoring focused on women candidates before the election, similar kinds of abuse and harassment follow women even after they are elected to office. A 2022 report by UN Women found that over 30 percent of 648 local elected women’s representatives in Nepal reported experiencing some form of violence related to their political activity. Women with marginalized identities — Dalits, single or/and separated women — often reported the highest levels of harassment. A key insight from the report is that “simply exercising political power is itself a trigger” for abuse and harassment. Women candidates for the March 5 election are doing just that — exercising their political power.
Anecdotal evidence from the past years also shows how gender is weaponized to attack and belittle women politicians. In 2023, Sumana Shrestha, a parliamentarian from the Rastriya Swatantra Party, was repeatedly criticized on social media and the mainstream media for her choice of clothing. Once, it was jeans with a plain top; another time, it was a skirt. In both instances, her clothing was deemed “unbecoming” for Parliament. At around the same time, Amresh Kumar Singh, an independent legislator, disrobed himself in Parliament and yet received far less criticism than Shrestha.
Even ahead of the March 5 election, women with political ambitions were already being targeted for their identities. After the September Gen Z protests, interim Prime Minister Sushila Karki was considering inducting two women into her Cabinet — Dr Sangeeta Mishra and Tashi Lhazom. Both women became the target of online abuse, with many raising questions about their nationality and Nepali identity. Mishra was targeted as a naturalized Nepali citizen of Madhesi identity, while Lhazom came under fire for her ethnic Tibetan heritage. Both were portrayed as threats to national identity and sovereignty because of their intersectional identities. Ultimately, a corruption probe against Mishra derailed her appointment as the health minister. Similar corruption cases lodged against Kulman Ghising, however, did not stand in the way of his appointment as energy minister. Lhazom’s entry into the cabinet was derailed by social media posts she had made in the past regarding a free Tibet.
The targeting of women in the public eye is not just a Nepali phenomenon; it follows worldwide trends, especially in Asia and the South Pacific. According to UN Women, “digital violence is now one of the fastest-growing forms of abuse in the region.” A 2019 Google Research paper that studied over 200 people who identified as women from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh showed that they regularly encountered online abuse primarily in the form of cyberstalking, impersonation, and personal content leakage. Such forms of harassment and abuse discourage women from becoming public figures by, for instance, taking part in elections.
The March 5 election is unique. It is taking place in the aftermath of a revolution that sought to break with old ways of doing politics and establish a younger, more accountable political class. But politics is not limited to the electoral sphere; it pervades all social and cultural life. The candidates for the election might be younger than ever before, but they are overwhelmingly male. Balen Shah of the Rastriya Swatantra Party, one of the most popular new faces of Nepali politics and his party’s projected prime-ministerial candidate, has gained mass support in part thanks to his strident displays of machismo.
March 8, just days after the election, is International Women’s Day. It will offer an occasion for urgent reflection on whether the Gen Z protests and the March 5 vote have made significant gains for women in Nepali political life. The election might see voters break with old patterns of support for establishment political parties, but it does not seem likely to change the patriarchal codes baked into the Nepali psyche. The pursuit of fair political representation for women, and of an equal playing field for aspiring women leaders, is likely to remain a work-in-progress.
That’s all for this week. We will be back in your inboxes on Wednesday with a curtain raiser for the March 5 election.
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