Silenced with a Click
In Jordan’s 2024 parliamentary elections, more women ran for office than ever before. But many soon faced a surge of online abuse meant to shame, intimidate, and silence them.
A new IDRC-supported study from the SecDev Foundation and Karak Castle Centre documents how female candidates were targeted by digital attacks. These included bullying, defamation, impersonation, and sexualized insults—most often on Facebook, Jordan’s most popular political platform.
Some abuse came from strangers. Other times, it came from political opponents, local influencers, or even family members. In many cases, the attacks occurred in private messages, making them harder to report or resist. On female candidates’ social media pages, nearly a third (28 percent) of all comments were abusive, and only four percent were positive or supportive.
This wasn’t just background noise. The abuse had real impact. Some candidates withdrew from the race. Others scaled back their media outreach or avoided public appearances altogether. Ultimately, many women’s voices were pushed out of the political space—not by votes, but by coordinated digital harassment.
Calling for change
This research is based on interviews with women who ran for office across Jordan’s governorates. Their stories show how digital violence can shape the course of an election—and why change is needed before Jordan’s local council elections in 2026. The study calls on key actors to lead practical reforms that support women’s political participation:
- Electoral commission: Expand legal definitions of electoral violence to include digital abuse and create channels for complaints.
- Political parties: Train members in digital safety and ensure accountability for those who participate in or ignore abuse.
- Civil society & media: Promote ethical coverage of female candidates, launch solidarity campaigns, and train youth to counter online hate.
- Social media platforms: Improve Arabic-language reporting tools and work with local groups to detect coordinated attacks.
Groundbreaking DVAW research
“They created fake accounts to mimic me, spread lies, and scare my followers.”
“It wasn’t politics anymore. It was psychological warfare.”
“Even people from my own party would say, ‘You’re just a woman. You’re here for decoration.'”
—Candidate comments
This latest report is the twenty-seventh in this series—examining psychosocial, legal and other dimensions of DVAW in nearly every MENA country. Canada’s International Development Research Centre supported much of this work. Already, it’s informing policymakers, strengthening advocacy, and inspiring a growing network of women researchers and civil society allies.
Producing this report in partnership with Jordan’s Karak Castle Centre (KCC) was a special honour. When we first started working together in 2019, KCC was new to the digital resilience space. Since then, they’ve developed a unique model that blends technical, legal, and psychosocial responses to DVAW. Today, they’re a national reference point in this fight, especially in Jordan’s south.
