Silenced and Targeted: Female MSPs speak out on the online abuse they deal with

“Someone on Twitter said I was a ‘paedophile’s wet dream’ because I’m small and skinny”, Pam Duncan-Glancy tells me from her parliamentary office. Her voice is calm, but the pain still lingers in her expression.

Caught in the line of fire amid the passing of the Gender Recognition Reform (GRR) (Scotland) Bill, the Labour MSP’s decision to back the legislation brought the worst online abuse she’s every received.

However, she admits it is “utterly relentless”. “Poisoned dwarf”, “witch” and “lying c***”, are just some of the comments she is subject to on a daily basis.

 “But you can’t argue with people in 240 characters in any sensible [or] meaningful way at all. And I learned that the hard way. But even if you could, the scale of it is too much. I’d spend all day online”, she says.

Unfortunately, her experience is not unique. Exclusive Holyrood polling gathered answers from 22 female MSPs on the severity of the online abuse they face, revealing almost all of them have experienced online abuse, and more than half have been targeted by misinformation.

“I received an online threat of violence—one that said if I set foot in my own hometown of Springburn, I’d be ‘set alight’”, said Conservative MSP Annie Wells, while SNP MSP Jackie Dunbar said she has to disassociate from her political persona and think of it as “brand” to help cope with the comments.

Others pointed to rape threats, death threats and cases of severe misogynistic abuse.

I am stepping down at the next election and harassment definitely plays a big part in my decision-making

And, perhaps unsurprisingly, out of those standing in next year’s Holyrood election, more than 70 per cent anticipate a ramp up of hateful or false content in the run up to polling day.

They are not wrong to expect so. In the months leading to last year’s general election, female candidates voiced how online abuse had become a particular problem. And last month, before presenting evidence to a cross-party group of MPs on how to protect candidates in future elections, the Electoral Commission’s chief executive Vijay Rangarajan said: “It’s [abuse and intimidation] particularly targeted at women, and some ethnic minority candidates. And women get particularly vile abuse online.”

Pam Duncan-Glancy at the Holyrood's Garden Party 2022 | Anna Moffat

Social media lies at the heart of the issue. More than three quarters of MSPs agreed that abuse had got worse since they were first elected and many pointed the finger at these platforms.

Alba MSP Ash Regan says: “With the rise of social media and technology, as well as an increase in hateful views towards women, there is a narrative that online abuse of female politicians is more prominent, and often left ignored, in comparison with male politicians. There seems to be a narrative that women are easier targets of abuse, or somehow less knowledgeable, therefore such abuse is more socially acceptable.”

Deputy leader of the Scottish Labour Party Jackie Baillie, who has been an MSP since 1999, is equally clear: “[It’s]100 per cent worse, actually more than that – it’s a sewer and it’s worse for female politicians.”

Anonymity, algorithms and access have combined to create a breeding ground for misogyny.

Annabel Mullin, director of communications at Elect Her, which supports women to stand for political office in the UK says: “Now you get online, and you find your community and it feeds into your narrative. You only have your siloed conversations, so you have nobody on a more careful face-to-face level questioning some of the views and opinions.”

And the global reach enabled by these platforms can make a single post “unmanageable”, explains Dr Kiran Hassan, co-ordinator of freedom of expression and digital rights at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies. She adds: “If somebody intends to target a female politician in the online space, it works very differently. The echo chambers make it go viral and get out of proportion.”

A report co-authored by Kings College and the University of Copenhagen found that while male and female politicians face similar online abuse, abuse targeting women was “more severe”, with attacks more likely motivated by misogyny and a desire to exclude women from public office.

There seems to be a narrative that women are easier targets of abuse, or somehow less knowledgeable, therefore such abuse is more socially acceptable

And the Scottish Parliament’s social media monitoring service found that while more abuse had been directed towards male MSPs, the abuse targeted at their female counterparts was often more “belittling or of a personal nature”, causing many to stay away from social media all together.

Experts fear this will only worsen as the definition of freedom of expression becomes increasingly blurred. Elect Her has helped more than 460 women to stand but Mullin admits she can no longer support candidates being on X (formerly Twitter) due to its more laid-back approach to content moderation. “It would be asking them to do something that is putting themselves in the line of fire,” she explains.

X uses a crowd-sourcing system known as community notes to moderate content. The model relies on users to flag misleading content, but it is only when a note receives sufficient backing from other users that it appears on the post.

Studies suggest this system allows for harmful content to often go unchecked. Research by the Centre for Countering Digital Hate analysed one million community notes between January and August 2024. Identifying those relating to the US election, it found that 74 per cent of notes flagging misleading posts had not been published on the original post.

Earlier this year Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, also grabbed headlines after it decided to scrap its third-party verification process to replace it with the community notes model, claiming fact checkers had become too “politically biased”. Although only introduced in the US, the decision drew criticism from campaigners worldwide who described it as a “bow down” to US President Donald Trump – who had been critical of the firm’s fact-checking process beforehand. When announcing the change, founder of Meta Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged it meant the firm was “going to catch less bad stuff.”

And Hassan argues this more lenient approach “weaponises” the law. She says legislation has not kept pace with technological advancements, allowing tech companies to exploit “loopholes” to avoid their duty to manage content.

Similarly, Mullin cites the Online Safety Act, claiming it “has unfortunately not been what it needed to be”. She continues: “There was a moment with the online safety bill where I felt that they were going to produce a useful, impactful bill. But I think unfortunately, what we now have is not really fit for purpose.”

Last year the Scottish Government also came under fire from campaigners for failing to include women in its Hate Crime Bill. The legislation aims to prevent the stirring up of hatred based on a range of protected characteristics such as age, sexual orientation, and transgender identity but fell short of including misogyny within its scope. A decision which critics argue leaves women vulnerable to attacks.

Meanwhile legislation itself, namely the GRR Bill, has also left women bearing the brunt of increasingly toxic debates, as Duncan-Glancy pointed out in her experience.

Women on both sides of the self-ID discussion have suffered the sharpest end of online attacks.

Mary Howden, member of Women’s Right Network, says her MSP David Torrance “refused” to engage with her and instead blocked her over her critical views on self-ID. Howden explains she, along with a group of campaigners, had set up various posters around the MSP’s office around 7pm, when it was closed, to protest against biological males who had self-identified as a woman being sent to women prisons. After taking a couple of pictures, she claims she took all the posters down, except two, and went home. In the morning, she woke up to the MSP contacting media outlets claiming she and her group had been “frigtening his constituents” and “staff”.

Holyrood contacted Torrance for comment but did not receive a response.

“People are terrified to speak out”, Howden explains. “For MSPs there are different levels of abuse, and of what is free speech and what’s abusive”, she continues. “It’s kind of knowing where that balance is… It’s not just me. Other women in our network across Scotland have got experience of their MSPs blocking them. It’s quite common.”

She adds: “You have to be strong emotionally and mentally [as a woman] to be able to go forward as an MSP.”

And it is argued the surge in online threats could soon have a deep impact on democracy.

In July, 263 women were elected to the UK Parliament – the highest number ever. But Mullin reckons we’ve reached the “peak”, unless the system undergoes a “serious” reform.

Indeed, there are several examples worldwide of women in power who have decided to step down citing online abuse over the last few years. In 2021, when Jacinda Ardern resigned as New Zealand’s prime minister, political figures said her decision was largely fuelled by the “unprecedented” level of “hatred and vitriol” she had faced in social media.

This is a pivotal moment for feminism, because if you’re going to shy away from doing the best for parliamentarians, how is a normal woman going to fight her case?

In Scotland, three in 10 MSPs admitted they had considered stepping down, and more than half said they knew of women who had decided not to stand for elected office out of fear of facing online harassment.

SNP MSP Elena Whitham was clear: “I am stepping down at the next election and harassment definitely plays a big part in my decision-making.”

And several said they had installed extra security measures due to fear of abuse become physical, ranging from “panic buttons” to “CCTV cameras” and additional in-house measures.

“We can’t encourage women [into politics] if the system itself doesn’t help us to do that”, Mullin tells Holyrood.

“There is this constant tension for us because we want more women in because it is going to make better results for all of us as a whole society, but I can’t encourage more women if they think that this massive barrier to entry is going to constantly be there.”

A report by King’s College London found nations where women hold more political power are less likely to go to war and are less likely to be corrupt.

Mullin insists online abuse is “tough” but “manageable” and urges women to stand.

Hassan argues that to tackle the rise in online abuse, support must also start from the bottom.

“This is a pivotal moment for feminism, because if you’re going to shy away from doing the best for parliamentarians, how is a normal woman going to fight her case? Women parliamentarians are the ones who have the voice and the power, and if they are being targeted then what support do people like you and me have?”

She continues: “If we want to address this issue it should not be something which is just addressed in Westminster or Holyrood, it’s also a common man’s problem…We need to actually educate people from school levels.”