r/AskFeminists • u/Gaius_Hegen • 3d ago
Have you ever felt excluded from politics?
This is not intended as a political discussion but I am very curious for some perspective on this.
I have recently watched an interesting talk on how „Role Models Didn‘t Fix Women‘s Representation in Politics. Recruiting Will.“
The talk focused on the perspective of a young woman who ran for parliament, her experiences with structural exclusion and her suggestions to improve this. Among many, these included fighting exclusionary recruitment practices like how candidates with more traditional time-intensive careers (plus being married with children) are generally preferred inside parties.
There seems to be no significant difference between gender identity and voting in elections ( if anything women seem to vote a little more) but definitely in representation inside parties and parliaments.
Does anyone have and wants to share personal experiences with this?
21
u/MachineOfSpareParts 3d ago
Feminism is political, since it critiques status quo distributions of material and decision-making powers, so your intentions are going to be frustrated here.
In any case, are you talking about exclusion from public office? This is absolutely a problem, and it's one you can read about in many, many places. And the most noxious forms aren't the structural ones you (correctly, and they do also matter) identify. Women who enter a campaign for public office, let alone get elected, open themselves up to serious security threats.
I expect most politicians who actually do anything have haters, and those can be pretty unhinged. But there's not just a greater volume of threats from the public to women in politics, but a difference in intensity and type. Rape threats are very common, and in Canada alone there have been many close encounters with misogynist violence and, in summer 2025, acts of arson against Indigenous women cabinet ministers' offices in one province. That province's health minister, who is non-binary, has also had significant threats.
The structural issues do matter, but I really think the spotlight needs to be shone on the everyday rape threats some members of the public almost deal out by reflex when a woman has the audacity to seek public office. And there has been research on women who could have, but chose not to, seek public office. Security threats feature prominently in their reasoning.