[ 2016-10-26 ]

There is widespread Sexual harassment of female MPs- Report Reveals
Sexual harassment and even violence against female
parliamentarians is widespread, a report from a
global parliamentary grouping suggests.


The study by the Inter Parliamentary Union (IPU)
is being released during the group’s annual
assembly in Geneva.

Just 55 female MPs took part in the survey, but
they represent parliaments from across the globe.


Over 80% said they had experienced some form of
psychological or sexual harassment or violence.

Rape threats
The report from the IPU comes at a time when US
Presidential candidate Donald Trump’s comments
about his opponent, Hillary Clinton, and his
alleged sexual harassment of other women over the
years, have been making headlines.
It reveals some of the abuse female politicians
around the world face while fulfilling their roles
in elected positions.

A European member of parliament reported receiving
more than 500 threats of rape on Twitter in the
space of just four days.

Another, from Asia, received threats of violence
to her son, detailing his school, his class, and
his age.
Of the women who took part in the survey, 65.5%
said they had been the target of insults using
sexual language and imagery.

The report suggested humiliating remarks from
male colleagues were commonplace.

“In my part of the world… there is all sorts
of language that is associated with female
parliamentarians,” says Prof Nkandu Luo,
currently minister of gender in Zambia.


She recalls a male member of parliament publicly
recounting that he liked to go to parliament
because “all the women are there and I can just
point and choose which one I want”.

The remarks, Professor Luo said, were reported in
the press as something amusing and acceptable.
“It’s the way they demean women.”
Meanwhile Senator Salma Ataullahjan of Canada said
she at first thought the survey would not be
relevant to her. “I said, I’m from Canada, I
don’t need to take part in this.”


But answering the survey questions was, she said,
enlightening. “You know as parliamentarians, we
go out, we meet people, and I remember this one
gentlemen getting up very close to me.”


The ‘gentlemen’ went on to make suggestive
comments to Sen Ataullahjan, which at the time she
brushed off.
But recounting the incident for the survey brought
it home that she had experienced inappropriate,
even threatening, behaviour.

Elite ‘not immune’


Now, she says, she has become much more open with
her male colleagues.
“We have to change the mindset about what is
acceptable language, and what is acceptable
behaviour and what is not,” she says.


The report concludes that the sheer pervasiveness
of sexual discrimination, from humiliating
language to harassment to real violence is
preventing many elected women from carrying out
their duties in freedom and safety.

That, according to the IPU’s chief, Martin
Chungong, is one of the report’s most worrying
aspects.


“Members of parliament are supposed to be
leaders in society,” he says. “But we see
women members of parliament, the elite, as it
were, are not immune.
“So if the elite are victims of sexual
aggression, what about the underprivileged?”

Source - BBC

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