The Invisible Majority: Rural Women, Digital Campaigns, and Political Violence

Abstract

Research on gender-based violence (GBV) has primarily focused on non-political dimensions, while studies specifically on political gender-based violence (PGBV) tend to be reductionist, often centering on elite women candidates running for office. This narrow focus overlooks the experiences of rural women, who represent a vulnerable majority in political spaces and are increasingly affected by political violence including, and increasingly so, within digital environments. Moreover, the study of PGBV in virtual or digital spaces remains limited. This study attempted to address this gap by examining the experiences of rural women with gendered political violence in digital spaces with the aim of offering insights to both academic and policy cycles. Using a sequential exploratory mixed methods design and inspired by Intersectional Feminist framework (Crenshaw, 1991, improved by Hawk, 2015), this study investigates the influence of gender on rural voters’ experiences of PGBV across nine identified digital domains. Data were gathered from self-administered surveys in-depth qualitative interviews and focus groups discussions with rural voters and electoral policymaker and implementers from 2 sub-counties and 4 Wards from Siaya County. The study explored specific grounds for political violence, including social media harassment and intimidation, disinformation campaigns and character assassination, cyberstalking and surveillance, non-consensual sharing of private information (doxing), coercive use of messaging platforms, exclusion from digital campaign engagement, manipulative use of deepfakes and altered media, sexual harassment in virtual campaign spaces, and exploitation via mobile money scams. Findings reveal three key insights with implications for extant literature, policy, and gender mainstreaming initiatives. First, the relationships between gender and Political violence and digital politics are more nuanced than currently understood, underscoring the need to acknowledge and transform elitist ontologies in literature, policy and programming. Second, digital spaces offer challenges that must be addressed to advance meaningful gender mainstreaming for attainment of gender parity in politics. Finally this study provides a foundational list of variables, which though are neither conclusive nor comprehensive, can inform future, nonelite-focused analyses of PGBV. Overall, the study findings contribute to a broader understanding of PGBV in digital spaces, particularly from the perspective of vulnerable rural women (and rural voters generally).