Despite being featured in 2011 and 2012 by Forbes as the third most powerful woman in the world, former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff had her competence, capacity, and skills constantly challenged and undermined back home. In one of many examples, a magazine cover portrays the former president as an unstable, crazy, and hysterical woman unable to run the country. The cover headline, translated from Portuguese, reads: “The President’s nervous outbursts.”
Brazil is certainly not alone in disparaging its female leaders, and women in politics from around the world have received similar comments from newspapers for years. The same discourse accusing female politicians of being aggressive, unbalanced, and unfit to represent their countries was used to attack Hillary Clinton in a political report that highlights her “explosive attitude,” and leveraged against Cristina Kishner, who was characterized as someone to be feared due to her aggressive actions. The resemblance between these stereotypical reviews is astonishing.
During Dilma Rousseff’s term as Brazil’s first female president, she received an unprecedented number of attacks in the form of memes, jokes, and comments, which quickly escalated into pure harassment. She began her first term in 2011 and her second term in January 2015, but the latter was not a long one: In May 2016, she was removed from office by the Senate on allegations of budgetary maneuvers to hide the country’s burgeoning debt, and had her mandate officially terminated a few months later.
However, even six years after her impeachment, memes about the politician continue to spread throughout Brazilian social media. Such jokes tend to be cruel and often rely on sexual and prejudicial approaches. As the first and only female president of Brazil, Rousseff’s competence and intellectual capacity have been greatly questioned, making her a clear example of how humor, memes, and comments from male colleagues often subject women in politics around the world to rhetorical gender violence.
Worldwide, despite increases in the number of women at the highest levels of political power, widespread gender inequalities persist, according to the 2021 edition of the IPU-UN Women Map of Women in Politics, with disparities in female representation in governments around the globe remaining. According to the World Economic Forum, the greatest gender inequalities are in politics, and, at our current pace of progress, it will take 135.6 years to close the gender gap worldwide. In a political and economic climate unfavorable to women and mostly dominated by men, it is not difficult to understand how, with the support of private media groups, internet memes criticizing both Brazil’s former president as well as female public figures around the world become successful.
It’s certainly possible for politics and entertainment — collectively known as “politainment” in some circles — to positively interact and even democratize important public debates. Internet memes, which are easy to understand, digest, and circulate, represent a large portion of politainment due to their simple and colloquial language. However, the success of this kind of entertainment depends on the attention it receives on social media and the number of shares and reactions it can trigger. Consequently, politainment can also allow for the spread of extreme and grotesque language through social media algorithms and other means of popular communication. Scientist Hilda Bastian affirms this duality, writing that “Humor can be used to create a quick bridge between people. But it can also reinforce outgroups’ otherness and relatively marginal social status.”
These ostracizing impacts of malicious political humor are exemplified nowhere better than in Brazil. In one of the worst demonstrations of rhetorical violence masked as humor, then soon-to-be-impeached president Dilma Rousseff was depicted on a car sticker in a denigrating sexual position. The image spread on Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter throughout her last months in office, during which she had her worst public approval ratings. The slander was so vile that United Nations Women Brazil explicitly condemned the act.
However, sexism can also spread in more subtle ways that, while no less violent, can be harder to identify and therefore easier to be put aside as “just a joke.” For example, in December 2021, France’s first lady, Brigitte Macron, was forced to address false claims that she is a trans woman, something that former United States First Lady Michelle Obama also dealt with back in 2017. First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon was directly attacked by a male politician who tweeted that her mouth should be taped shut along with “her legs, so she can’t reproduce.”
The worst aspect of these rumors, jokes, and comments targeting female political leaders is that they have nothing to do with actual politics or policy. Moreover, the meme format of much of these communications seems to circulate freely on social media, regardless of such posts’ misogyny or prejudice, thus normalizing cruel and offensive language. Dilma Rousseff was impeached due to accusations of poor fiscal administration, but the trending memes that disparaged her were related to her image and body rather than her economic policies. Her case and that of many other female public figures are clear examples of female objectification and sexualization, both of which only encourage continued discrimination and violence — not democratic debate.
Even though Dilma Rousseff’s story is evidence of how far-gone and extreme sexist jokes can be, it is important to understand the reasons behind their rapid and intense escalation. In an interview with the HPR, Harvard alumna and current Brazilian congresswoman Tabata Amaral expressed that she and other female politicians are constantly targeted in memes, internet jokes, and cartoons. More recently, Amaral received violent comments after she proposed legislation that would guarantee feminine hygiene products in public spaces. According to the congresswoman, sexist jokes and comments normalize denigrating attitudes towards women and allow for those comments to escalate into harassment, stalking, and threats.
This is damaging not only because it encourages society to question the competence and intelligence of highly-qualified women breaking glass ceilings in politics, but also because it reinforces unrealistic expectations related to the beauty and femininity of public female figures. As discussed at the beginning of this article, strong women who express their thoughts and opinions are pegged as “hysterical,” “unbalanced,” and less feminine. Research has already found that women who do not represent the ideal female — the stereotypical polite, empathetic, passive, and naive subject — tend to receive less appreciation from the public, and consequently fewer votes in elections.
As an example, the constant comments about Hillary Clinton’s fashion choices and appearance during the 2016 presidential election focused not on her political proposals or experience, but on her choice to wear pants. In another situation, a Fox News representative stated that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez needed to get pregnant to “further her political career,” dismissing productive political discussion by bringing a traditional expectation of women to the table.
It’s true that traditional media and political memes communicate political and civic developments to the masses in important ways and can be mechanisms for democratic debates on social media. There is no doubt people should discuss politics through fun, colloquial, engaging, and relaxed speech. However, it is important to interrogate the motive behind a joke involving political characters: Are we engaging in a conversation about public policies and decision-making, or are we reinforcing old prejudices against underrepresented groups?
Rousseff’s case in Brazil shows us that women in male-dominated areas are only a slip away from being ridiculed and attacked. Where their male colleagues can focus on their platforms and policies, women in politics are obligated to be constantly alert to ensure that their outfit choices, personal relationships, and appearance won’t become the subject of the next meme or viral joke.
This harsh reality keeps many women from staying in politics or joining the sphere at all, and as the issue of gender asymmetry in politics persists, the concerns of the world’s 3.9 billion women may remain unaddressed. The fifth sustainable development goal established by the United Nations for 2030 is gender equality for a reason: Empowering women, half the world’s population, in all fields is essential for an equal and sustainable global society, and to do so, we must start with the basics — respect and empathy toward women in the upper echelons of political power and in our everyday lives.
This goal has implications beyond politics: Master of Public Policy candidate at Harvard Kennedy School and founder of EmpoderaClima Renata Koch Alvarenga explained in an interview with the HPR that women are statistically more vulnerable to climate change due to socio-economic factors, while studies conclude that nations with higher proportions of women representatives have a greater probability of ratifying environmental treaties. In addition, Alvarenga maintains that gender equality can only be effective when women from all backgrounds are included and incentivized to participate, and we must not ignore the gender, race, and class intersectionality that reinforces the exclusion of women of color and Indigenous people.
In an effort to diminish the gap in the representation of women in politics, some countries have adopted inclusive policies. Steve Levitsky, a Harvard Professor of Government and Latin American Studies, noted in an interview with the HPR that a recent Chilean draft constitution adopted a measure to ensure that at least 50% of its Congress was female. Although the draft was rejected upon a national referendum in September 2022, there is still reason to hope: “There has been a pretty dramatic increase in representation of women — especially in Europe, North America, and Latin America — over the last 40 years,” said Levitsky, and with time, these gains have the potential to continue.
All in all, feminist non-profit organizations, female leaders, gender-equality advocates, and non-partisan political institutes are battling for more inclusive governments that truly represent voters. In the words of Nadine Gasman, president of the National Women’s Institute of Mexico and representative of United Nations Women in Brazil, “Democracy is not complete without the real participation of women. Both women and men exercising political leadership must commit to the women’s rights platform among the highest political priorities.”
