2018 Hannah Atkins guest lecturer asks what is "The Cost of Doing Politics?"
This spring, the Hannah Atkins Endowment and the Department of Political Science is excited to bring Dr. Mona Lena Krook, Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Women and Politics Ph.D. Program at Rutgers University, to the OSU campus. Dr. Krook will be giving a guest lecture on her research titled "The Cost of Doing Politics? Violence and Harassment against Female Politicians." This event will be on Wednesday, April 18th at 4:30 pm in Murray Hall 035 on the OSU campus.
In this talk, Dr. Krook highlights how women have made significant inroads into political life around the globe in recent decades, doubling their presence in elected positions. However, increasing women's political empowerment has also sparked backlash and resistance, with a growing number of sources – including elected women, journalists, judges, academics, activists, and practitioners – reporting a rising trend of attacks, intimidation, and harassment directed at female politicians. This talk will map emerging definitions of this phenomenon and presents examples and statistics regarding its prevalence and impact. Dr. Krook concludes that violence against women in politics should not be dismissed as simply 'the cost of doing politics," but instead recognized as a serious threat to democracy, human rights, and gender equality around the world.
Dr. Krook has published widely on electoral gender quotas and women’s political representation in global perspective. Her first book, Quotas for Women in Politics: Gender and Candidate Selection Worldwide (Oxford University Press, 2009), received the American Political Science Association’s Victoria Schuck Award for the Best Book on Women and Politics. Her current work focuses on violence and harassment against politically active women and has included collaboration with the National Democratic Institute since 2015 on its #NotTheCost campaign. She was recently awarded an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship to research and write an academic book on violence and harassment against women in politics, featuring testimonies from women around the world. Her recent publications address the democratic implications of violence against women in politics (Journal of Democracy, 2017) and sexual harassment in British politics (Political Quarterly, 2018).