In Europe and Central Asia, social norms and expectations around gender follow the global norms, with women shouldering the vast majority of domestic work and care work, and men in the role of breadwinner and head of household. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), women on average across the ECA region allocate almost five hours a day to unpaid care work, compared with two hours a day for men. Some of these national ratios skew heavily towards women shouldering this burden, such as in Tajikistan, where as of 2019, women contributed 7.5 hours a day to unpaid care work, in stark contrast to less than one hour a day for men. In Belarus, Kazakhstan, Moldova, and Kyrgyzstan, averages show women contributing approximately double the amount of time as men on a daily basis.   

Many factors – including health, economics, education, social protections, and more – contribute to the compounded challenges women face when exercising their right to political participation, and explain the lack of political empowerment among women and girls. Women who seek to enter politics, whether on the local or the national level, must overcome traditional gender norms, limited access to resources, and discrimination and harassment that comes from being a woman in the public eye. Compounded by media coverage that often reinforces these harmful practices, women in politics face double standards, trivialization of achievements, sexism, and stereotypes of lesser competence, professionalism, and leadership potential than their men counterparts, as well as higher scrutiny and judgment based on their appearance, personal lives, and family choices. Men are more likely to be portrayed as strong, decisive, and competent, while women may be depicted as emotional, weak, or lacking leadership qualities, thus undermining their credibility and effectiveness. In Armenia and Kazakhstan, for instance, one in two people believe that men make better political leaders than women, while in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan this share reaches a combined more than 70 percent, with 39.1 percent and 42.5 percent of people strongly agreeing with the assumption that women are less fit for politics than men.  

Within politics, the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) points out that women are often held to different standards than men and face criticism for not conforming to traditional gender roles. While the Europe and Central Asia region has made strides in reducing legislative barriers to women accessing education and employment, largely influenced by former Soviet policies, social norms and expectations still present major hurdles to women and girls’ equal political participation.  

Violence against women and girls – in both online and offline spaces – is another major barrier for women all over the world, and especially for women in politics. According to a UN report on violence against women in politics, women are targets of violence particularly because of their gender; sexist threats, sexual harassment and gender-based violence add a dangerous dimension to any opposition they face.  

Serbia’s former Prime Minister, Ana Brnabic, faced persistent sexist and homophobic portrayals in the media, which set aside her skills and qualities and focused on her personal life. Maia Sandu, Moldova’s first woman President, faced an onslaught of misogynistic and sexist comments during her campaign trail in 2020.  

Studies show that online harassment, documented as being considerably higher for women in public offices than for men, creates or reinforces toxic environments that do not only have a devastating effect for the women they target, but also discourage young women from seeking political careers and change behaviours and norms. Social media platforms – while they can be a highly useful tool for women politicians - are often weaponized with disinformation and gender-based abuse, such as the use of gender-based insults, and the spreading of humiliating or sexual images, or deceptive or inaccurate information about women politicians and candidates. For women who are also part of other marginalized or vulnerable groups, such as ethnoreligious minorities or women with disabilities, these threats are often compounded further. In the IPU 2016 global survey of women parliamentarians, 41.8 percent of the respondents reported having seen humiliating or sexual images of them spread through social media. Most recently, the UN Secretary-General expressed concern over the so-called “gender-trolling”, which is specifically aimed at silencing women and forcing them out of public life, and causes significant harm. The adverse impacts of gendered disinformation on women and girls have been recently exposed in the ‘Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right of freedom of opinion and expression’, focusing on gendered disinformation, and prior to this, in the #ShePersisted study ‘Women, Politics and Power in the new media world’, both of which have highlighted the particular harm posed by this phenomenon to the aspirations of young women and girls, often dissuading them from engaging in politics and activism. 

Harmful narratives are boosted and amplified through algorithms used by for-profit social media to make such content sticky and often viral, through recommender systems built to maximize attention and profits, and features that facilitate its rapid and widespread distribution. 

With women on the frontlines of the fight to protect the most essential rights and liberal values in many countries, gendered abuse is also often strategically deployed as a political strategy to weaken democracy. Weaponizing social media to silence them is one of the most effective ways to undermine those efforts and erode democratic institutions. Through social media, misogynistic and racist language and narratives that had been latent in society find new strength and reach, to the point of weakening social cohesion and civil discourse, and normalizing abuse and impunity for its perpetrators.   

Online violence can also translate to offline actions, with women the targets of real-life verbal abuse, threats, stalking and physical violence. As rhetoric in online spaces becomes increasingly polarized, violent, and demanding, users can feel emboldened to translate those online eco-chambers into real world consequences, with women in the public eye targeted directly – particularly those in positions of power or those calling for changes to traditional systems of inequity. In Montenegro, a recent study prepared by the Women’s Political Network with support from UNDP found that seven in ten women politicians experience some form of violence during their political mandate. Afro-Brazilian human rights defender and city councilor, Marielle Franco; the UK Labour Party MP Jo Cox; and Honduran environmental activist Berta Caceres, were murdered for their political beliefs and grassroots leadership. 

Since the signing of the Beijing Declaration in 1995, the challenges and threats to women’s rights have evolved and grown increasingly complex. Increasing recognition of intersectionality has further nuanced the discussion around gender equality and women’s rights, intertwining with movements for rights and equality around race, class, sexual orientation, and other social factors. Increased access and amplification of women’s voices has been met with backlash and backsliding. Impacts of major global events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, outbreaks of violence like the war in Ukraine, and the rising phenomena of online gender-based violence and gendered disinformation have highlighted just how far women’s rights, representation, and roles in decision-making still have to go to reach true gender equality.