ICYMI: How to Prevent Disinformation & Exclusion of Women in the Democratic Processes | BBL event with Paulina Ibarra
3 TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS EVENT:
Online gender-based discrimination can be a serious barrier to women's political participation. Online attacks can be used to delegitimize women in their private life, as a way to discourage them from running for office or participating in public life in other ways.
Many women politicians in Chile and elsewhere have "tough skin" - they expect that being the target of online attacks is just part of the job. The good news is they feel they can tolerate such behavior; butr the bad news is that we shouldn't normalize it.
Many of us in the opengov sector work hard to empower participation from under-represented groups incl. women. But we can't empower their political participation effectively without also working to defend and protect them from targeted attacks (whether online or in-person; and whether those attacks come from private citizens or state-sponsored entities).
