Women who choose to run for office are certain to face attacks online – and in person. And unlike their male counterparts, the attacks will be personal and vulgar, commenting on her personal appearance or parenting skills. One elected official is speaking out. And ignoring the trolls.

Haddonfield Mayor Colleen Bianco Bezich

Haddonfield is consistently ranked as one of the safest towns in New Jersey, but there have been moments when its mayor feared for her safety.

Colleen Bianco Bezich became a borough commissioner in 2019 – only the second woman to join the board – and started her term as the town’s mayor in 2021. Not long after that, the online abuse began. On Facebook and other social media platforms, Bezich says posters started attacking her almost constantly, and it wasn’t about politics. 

“The loudest voices were saying, ‘She’s dumb, she’s not qualified, she’s a bad mother,’” she says. “Imagine being trolled by someone in your local community – a neighbor, a small business owner you know – who starts to say you’re a terrible person, you should be ashamed of yourself, you’re unattractive, you have no friends.” 

What Bezich has experienced isn’t unusual, says Mona Lena Krook, a professor of political science and chair of the women and politics program at Rutgers University. “When women are visible in politics, they’re much more likely to face attacks,” she says. “It happens to women on all sides of the political spectrum, too – right wing women, left wing women, women in the center.” 

And though men in politics also face harassment, Krook says, it tends to be more issue-based. 

“Of course, people should be criticizing their politicians,” she says. “But the kind of criticism women get is often about who they are. It’s ‘You stupid whore, you bitch, you’re so fat, you’re so ugly, does your husband want to sleep with you?’ It’s these kinds of things – personalized attacks.” 

Misogyny-driven attacks against female politicians certainly aren’t new or unique to the social media age. In 1994, then-governor of New Jersey Christine Todd Whitman – who is still the only woman ever elected to the post – told Vogue that her co-workers thought of her as “the broad down the hall.”

“A lot of them don’t think I know it. Of course I know it,” Whitman said. “But you just can’t waste time worrying about it. You don’t forget. You know who they are. And you know never to turn your back on them again.” 

But what has changed, says Krook, is the level of access would-be harassers have to political figures. “Before, people would have to find your phone number or address. Now, they can just respond to a tweet,” she says. “It can be automated in a way that makes it possible to increase the volume of attacks. You might get hundreds of emails, but there’s like three accounts behind it.” 

It may be more intense, adds Krook, for local politicians like Bezich. “At the national level, there’s the Capitol Police and security to get into Congress. They’re somewhat protected,” she says. “Whereas, if you’re a locally elected person, anybody can come to meetings. If you’re in the community, people may know where you live and where your kids go to school. They see you in the supermarket.” 

Eventually, Bezich says, the online criticism turned to threats. “There were posts wishing for my son to go to hell, wishing me death,” she says. “It rose to a level of fear I should not have to live in. Then last year at our Memorial Day parade some of the men who trolled me online and at local meetings showed up and were giving me and my son the middle finger and screaming my name while I was walking in the front of the parade with my small child. It was terrifying.” 

Online harassment of women in politics – and women in general – is only growing more sinister. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a nonprofit focused on reducing disinformation, tracked a 4600% increase in phrases like “your body, my choice” on the social media platform X in just the 24 hours following the 2024 election. 

For Bezich, it became too much. She stopped engaging with posts on any topic on Facebook, and comments are restricted on her personal page and her official mayor profile. “We just turned off commenting because the trolling got so out of control,” she says. 

Threats to her son were part of her decision not to run for reelection locally. Instead, she’s decided to run for a seat as a Camden County Commissioner. She hopes the abuse will diminish if she’s in a position “that’s not so literally close to home.” 

Harassment Could Chase Women Out of Politics 

Online trolling hasn’t run Bezich out of politics – yet – but it has certainly discouraged women all over the world from representing their communities, says Krook. Already, the number of men who run for office far outweighs the number of women who do, and the numbers are only growing more lopsided. “There is evidence from all over the world that young women are seeing what’s happening and if they had thought about running for office, they’re like, you know what, it’s not worth it. They’ll work behind the scenes, they won’t run. It is certainly affecting women’s political ambition.” 

Experienced politicians are being affected too, Krook says. “Women who’ve been in politics for a long time are like, ‘I just can’t take the abuse anymore.’ I think it’s hitting women at the beginning and the end of their careers, too. Or women get elected, and then stand down after one term, because it’s like, ‘Wow, I would have never run if I had known that’s what it was going to be like.’ It has long-term implications. If women are leaving at lower levels or younger ages, you’re never going to see them at the top. They are opting out.”

Last year, Lisa M. Orndorf, the first woman mayor in the history of Millville, resigned the position with two years remaining on her term. She’d been attacked on social media, she told reporters, so relentlessly that it was affecting her physically. 

“I think when something affects your health, you have to step back and reevaluate, ‘Is it really worth it?’” Orndorf said at the time. “I’m very young. I never had health issues before, other than normal colds, allergies. The stress and anxiety that came along with this job, position, tends to heighten that. But now, it’s affected my daily life. I didn’t appreciate my name being drug through the mud with false accusations and lies.” 

When Bezich was weighing whether to run for reelection in Haddonfield, she says she tried to recruit other women to run alongside her or serve as colleagues in City Hall. “They are philanthropically involved. They serve on boards and commissions,” Bezich says. “But most of them said, ‘no thank you.’ The common phrase was, ‘I don’t know how you put up with it. I wouldn’t do it if I was you.’”