By Yousra Feriel Drioua –
In 2022, Vice President Leni Robredo stood as the only female candidate in a ten-person Filipino presidential race. Her campaign quickly devolved into a digital warzone. An analysis of 1.2 million tweets by Capuyan and colleagues revealed a coordinated smear campaign using hashtags like #LetLeniLeave. Her daughter, Aika, was targeted with deepfake sexual content. Trolls labeled her “lutang” (absent-minded), “boba” (dumb) and the attacks amplified on Facebook and rooted in hostile sexism. President Duterte himself legitimized much of this violence, mocking her love life, her femininity, and even her physical appearance.
However, Robredo didn’t stay silent. “Even if I know the trolls will criticize me, I still call it out,” she said. But calling it out doesn’t mean it goes away.
What could a Southeast Asian democrat share with a North African jurist? Or with a Latina reformist or a European Green minister? More than coffee, colonization, and complex cuisines, these women share something more deceptive. Every time a female politician announces her candidacy for president, digital armies rise, deploying misogyny as their most reliable weapon.
This isn’t just a regional phenomenon. It’s a global strategy of suppression. Gendered disinformation doesn’t debate ideas, it demolishes identities. In response to a press inquiry, Germany’s Federal Foreign Office stated that disinformation is “deliberately used to destabilize and weaken democratic societies,” noting that “those who want to damage democracy often target women’s and minority’s rights.” The ministry emphasized that Germany, alongside international partners, is committed to identifying disinformation, sanctioning those who spread it, and protecting its victims. A 2023 report on electoral disinformation echoed this, noting that “those who want to damage democracy often target women’s and minorities’ rights.”
In Algeria, where women make up nearly 60% of the health workforce and dominate university enrollment, their presence in political leadership remains minimal. Out of nearly 60 political parties, only three are led by women; including Louisa Hanoune, Naima Salhi, and Zoubida Assoul. When lawyer, former magistrate, and political leader Assoul announced her intent to run for president in 2024, she didn’t just enter a campaign, she stepped into a highly constrained political space. Her online portrayal was riddled with misogyny and moral panic. In several campaign visuals shared online, Assoul’s image was cropped out entirely while male candidates remained clearly visible, an omission that reinforced a broader pattern of sidelining women in Algerian politics.
But Assoul refused to retreat. In our interview, she described how she first aspired to become a judge as a child, believing in the law as a tool for fairness. At 25, she was already presiding over courtrooms. But working within the justice system revealed its limitations. “Private law can’t solve public crises,” she said. “Real change goes through politics.”
That realization came with experience. As a judge, she dealt with victims, families, and bureaucratic failure firsthand. Eventually, she left the bench and moved into public service, becoming the first woman appointed as an inspector at Algeria’s Ministry of Justice in 1987. She later served as a policy advisor at the General Secretariat of the Government, and in 2006, was elected president of the Arab Women’s Legal Network, where she worked to train and empower women leaders across the region.
Her political emergence crystallized during the 2018 Mouwatana movement. Alongside other reformists, she challenged President Bouteflika’s bid for a fifth term, citing institutional collapse and constitutional violations. By 2024, she had declared her candidacy for the presidency, motivated not by personal ambition, but by what she called a humanitarian duty to offer a badeel siyasi; an ethical political alternative grounded in public service and national integrity.
Her campaign, however, was short-lived. To officially qualify, Assoul needed 50,000 citizen endorsements. She received her final campaign clearance just twelve days before the deadline. Some citizens were reportedly denied access to the endorsement platform. Others faced intimidation or bureaucratic obstruction when attempting to sign. “Some demanded money. I refused,” she told me. “You can’t start a clean path by stepping into the mud.” Still, she documented every violation, submitting five official reports to Algeria’s election authority. “Even if I didn’t get the signatures,” she said, “I left behind a blueprint.”
Her experience reflects what scholar Ruth Angelie Cruz calls “gendered disinformation”; a tactic used not to challenge a woman’s political agenda, but to attack her personhood. In her 2023 policy brief Misogyny in Politics, Cruz writes that “gendered narratives portray women as unfit for leadership roles” and that social media platforms “promote politics as a corrupt, violent field where women leaders do not have a place.”
In a follow-up interview with us, Cruz elaborated on how these narratives manifested during Robredo’s campaign. “The nature of the attacks was always personal,” she said. Online networks hijacked hashtags to distort the public narrative, #KayLeniTayo (“We’re with Leni”) was flipped into #KayLeniTalo (“Leni loses”), and memes like #LeniTangaSaLahat (“Leni dumbest of all”) circulated widely. “Leni Lugaw,” a food-based slur, was among the ridicule used to diminish her. “Despite Leni’s transparency in leadership, the ridicule was designed to reduce her to something laughable.”
While Robredo’s supporters responded with hashtag hijacks and digital momentum, Cruz noted that social media often functions more as an echo chamber than a space of persuasion. “We didn’t investigate whether minds were changed,” she said. “And that’s the harder question.”
She also reflected on a deeper cultural pattern. “Despite the Philippines being considered more matriarchal than other countries, a prevailing culture of machismo still exists,” Cruz said. “We admire women for being nurturing, but feel uneasy when they assert themselves in leadership. So we mock them, objectify them, make them laughable—to put them ‘in their place.’”
Assoul experienced a similar climate. “People say we can’t lead because we’re too emotional as women. That we should be ashamed. That we couldn’t defend the country,” she said. “This is not a war between men and women. This is a war of education.”
That sentiment echoed across borders. In Mexico, 2024 presidential candidate Xóchitl Gálvez was labeled a puppet, mocked for her Indigenous roots, and harassed through memes on WhatsApp and Facebook. According to the research collective Signa_Lab and the Report on Electoral Disinformation, more than 60% of attacks on Gálvez invoked her gender or ethnicity.
Even in liberal democracies, the pattern holds. In Germany, Annalena Baerbock’s 2021 campaign for Chancellor was haunted by deepfakes and manipulated nudes. Reports by the Brookings Institution and Deutsche Welle confirmed that the attacks were driven in part by pro-Russian actors aiming to derail her credibility by weaponizing her gender.
More broadly, objectification has been identified as a key tool for undermining women in politics. As Claire Gothreau has written, this kind of portrayal doesn’t just devalue women, it dehumanizes them. Voters exposed to objectifying commentary are less likely to view women candidates as competent, warm, or trustworthy. Over time, these portrayals can even reduce women’s political engagement and sense of efficacy, reinforcing the cycle of exclusion.
In Algeria, Assoul emphasized that the problem wasn’t religion; it was how religion was misused. “Our constitution says the nation belongs to us all. But when people twist identity to gain power, they betray the nation’s trust.”
Her message for young Algerians, especially women, is simple but urgent: “Take the fight beyond social media. Join your neighborhood association. Help out. Learn the law. Make your own path.” While some youth hesitate to engage with political parties, Assoul insists political work is a school, where young people learn how to debate, collaborate, and lead with integrity.
Assoul says she isn’t tied to the outcome. “I want to plant the seeds for change even if I don’t get to harvest them,” she said. What matters more to her is leaving behind a political path that others, especially young women, can walk on. She still believes in dignity through public service. “They might call us emotional, but a politician who doesn’t cry when they see a homeless person sleeping on the street has no business leading a country,” she said. “We must keep our humanity.”
What unites Assoul, Robredo, Gálvez, and Baerbock isn’t just their gender or ambition. It’s their refusal to forfeit dignity in a system that routinely strips it away. They are fighting for visibility in arenas that have long preferred to keep them blurred. And in a world where algorithms too often reward outrage, their very presence is a form of resistance.
Edited by Erin Hale