The Lebanese Case

Lebanon offers critical insights into how patriarchal and sectarian social and political structures co-produce gendered political violence. As a paradigmatic power-sharing polity, identity divisions are institutionalized in both formal and informal rules that entrench male dominance (Geha Reference Geha2019). Its modern sectarian configuration was shaped by successive shifts from early Druze-Maronite rivalries to post-2005 Sunni-Shia polarization, each marked by conflict and violence (Makdisi Reference Makdisi2000; Rowayheb Reference Rowayheb2011). Lebanon’s consociational model, originally codified in the 1943 National Pact and reaffirmed in the 1990 Ta’if Accord, distributes executive and legislative power among 18 sects through confessional quotas while leadership rests on patronage and clientelism, very often linked to family dynasties, as Table 1 summarizes. The integration of former militia leaders into formal political institutions and amnesty provisions consolidated a system where violence, now reframed as party control, coupled with impunity and weak accountability, continues to underpin sectarian authority (Knudsen Reference Knudsen2010). Political violence is reinforced by instability, economic collapse, and regional conflict spillovers.

Table 1.

Major political parties by sect

Table 1. Long description

The table contains six columns and ten rows of data.

* Hezbollah: Shia Muslim base; founded 1982 (formalized 1985); not a dynastic party; participated in Civil War; has a military wing (Islamic Resistance, retained post-1990).

* Amal Movement: Shia Muslim base; founded 1974-75; not dynastic but led by Nabih Berri since 1980; participated in Civil War; military wing disarmed in 1991.

* Future Movement: Sunni Muslim base; founded 2005; dynastic (Hariri family); no Civil War participation; no military wing.

* Progressive Socialist Party (P S P): Druze base; founded 1949; dynastic (Jumblatt family); participated in Civil War; P L A militia disarmed in 1990.

* Free Patriotic Movement (F P M): Maronite Christian base; founded 2005; not strictly dynastic but founder Michel Aoun was succeeded by son-in-law Gebran Bassil; no Civil War participation; no military wing.

* Kataeb (Phalange Party): Maronite Christian base; founded 1936; dynastic (Gemayel family); participated in Civil War; Phalangist militia disarmed in 1990.

* Lebanese Forces (L F): Maronite Christian base; 1976 militia, party since 1990s; led by Samir Geagea since foundation; participated in Civil War; militia disarmed in 1990.

* Marada Movement: Maronite Christian base; founded 1967; dynastic (Frangieh family); participated in Civil War; Marada Brigade militia disarmed in 1991.

* Syrian Social Nationalist Party (S S N P): Secular, pan-Syrian base; founded 1932; not dynastic; participated in Civil War; Eagles of the Whirlwind militia disarmed in 1991 and reactivated in 2008.

* Ba’ath Party (Lebanese branch): Secular Arab nationalist base; founded 1940s; not dynastic; participated in Civil War; A L F militia disarmed in 1991.

Political violence and intimidation are major factors behind this gap, as women who step into the political arena often face threats, smear campaigns, and pressure to withdraw from elections (Chebaro Reference Chebaro2023). Consequently, while Lebanon has many outspoken women leaders and defiant organizations driving change at the grassroots level (Geha Reference Geha2020), women remain largely absent from political office due to these hostile and exclusionary conditions (El-Helou Reference El-Helou2025), with only 6.3% of women MPs in the Parliament, as of May 2026 (IPU 2026). Besides lacking gender quotas, personal status laws, which are administered through 18 sect-based religious courts, perpetuate legal discrimination in matters of marriage, divorce, custody, and inheritance (ESCWA 2021), obstructing women’s access to civil rights and political representation. As Mikdashi (Reference Mikdashi2022, 25-26) argues, sect is a patriarchal inheritance transmitted through the father, while personal status law helps produce and stabilize sexual and sectarian difference through the regulation of marriage, kinship, and family status. For instance, when getting married, women are moved from their natal family’s civil registry to their husband’s, restricting their voting and candidacy rights in both general and local elections (Lebanese Association for Democratic Elections [LADE] 2022a). Moreover, although Lebanon ratified the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in 1997 and lifted its reservations in 2018, the absence of a unified gender-based violence law, alongside a weak judiciary and clerical veto power, yields serious protection gaps (Moussawi and Yassin Reference Moussawi and Yassin2017; UN Women and LADE 2021).

Data, Methods, and Ethics

To identify incidents of political violence occurring either in political, digital, community, or domestic spaces, we draw predominantly on interviews. Since some acts, such as psychological forms of political violence, are directly observable only by those victimized, collecting first-hand experiences is of paramount importance (Bjarnegård Reference Bjarnegård2023, 108). Interviews provide rich descriptions and interpretations of the events, which helps identify the gendered patterns of such violence (Bjarnegård, Håkansson, and Zetterberg Reference Bjarnegård, Håkansson and Zetterberg2022, 46). Furthermore, this type of micro-level research design “enable greater causal identification” for intersectional analysis (Cohen and Karim Reference Cohen and Karim2021, 422). Indeed, addressing intersectional challenges in the study of political violence requires “work[ing] with local partners and let[ting] women in politics identify the structures that influence the violence they experience” (Kuperberg Reference Kuperberg2018, 688).

Data collection began amid Lebanon’s volatility and regional instability following the Beirut port explosion and the war on Gaza. Initial interviews were attempted in 2020 and 2021, with the main data collection occurring from January 2023 to January 2024. Given the sensitivity of the topic and research context, several considerations shaped the research design. First, in conflict or pervasive violence settings, security concerns often warrant conducting the interviews remotely (Stallone and Zulver Reference Stallone and Zulver2024, 6). Second, the decision to focus interviews on women candidates was both theoretical and practical. Theoretically, our goal is not to estimate gender differences in exposure to political violence but to identify the mechanisms through which gender and sectarianism interact in producing and legitimizing violence. Moreover, because the article seeks to understand how sectarian authority is enforced through gendered expectations regarding honor, sexuality, family reputation, and communal belonging, women candidates constitute the most theoretically relevant population through which to examine these mechanisms. These theoretical considerations were compounded by practical constraints. Earlier attempts to interview male candidates and party officials proved unsuccessful due to high levels of mistrust, political sensitivities, and concerns regarding researchers’ institutional (i.e., a foreign university) and perceived sectarian affiliations. Nonetheless, we combine interview data with secondary sources and counterfactual reasoning, allowing us to assess how specific forms of coercion, boundary policing, and reputational control are linked to gendered expectations that would not apply, or would apply differently, to similarly situated men candidates.

Third, studying women candidates in sectarian contexts entails challenges typical of “hard-to-survey” populations, where access depends on trust and political sensitivities (for a review, see Khoury Reference Khoury2020). While political violence is not limited to elections, the low number of Lebanese women parliamentarians led us to concentrate on electoral periods and the experiences of women candidates, as identified via official electoral lists. We purposively sought variation across sect, region, party affiliation, electoral year, and age among our interviewees in order to capture diverse experiences of gendered political violence. Recruitment was done first by direct outreach via social media. Politically affiliated candidates were cautious about the interviewer’s (the leading author) sectarian background and both researchers’ affiliation to a European university, while independent candidates were more accessible. Consequently, recruitment partly relied on snowballing and network-based, relational access facilitated by a Lebanese expert and gender scholar, who facilitated initial contact and could verify the research’s legitimacy. These strategies were crucial for interviewing candidates who might otherwise have been unreachable and helped establish the trust necessary for discussing politically sensitive experiences of violence.

Fourth, given the sensitivity of the topic, high priority was placed on protecting interviewee anonymity and ensuring confidentiality through rigorous protocols compliant with Spanish and Lebanese data protection laws. Informed consent to record interviews was obtained, but recordings were deleted post-transcription. Personally identifiable information was redacted, and pseudonyms (e.g., CA9) were used, though public figures cited in external reports or news pieces are named. While sectarian identity is central to the analysis, an ethical decision was made not to systematically ascribe sectarian identifiers to each respondent, prioritizing their anonymity. In Lebanon, the combination of identity markers (gender, sect, party, etc.) makes identification a risk. Accordingly, sectarian affiliation informed the analysis but is disclosed only in the empirical section of the article when analytically indispensable. We acknowledge that this decision limits the reader’s ability to independently trace all intersectional differences, but it protects participants from potential reputational, social, or personal harm.

Our final sample includes 20 women candidates who ran in the 2018 and 2022 general elections, covering the diversity of sectarian affiliation, party status, family position, and age. We also conducted four interviews with civil society activists and experts (two women and two men) to situate candidates’ accounts within broader assessments of women’s political engagement and sectarian violence. The 24 semi-structured interviews were conducted online, in Arabic and English, between January 2023 and January 2024. Our empirical analysis also draws on election monitoring reports (LADE 2018, 2022a, 2022b) and a targeted review of media reports documenting incidents of violence, intimidation, harassment, and public controversy surrounding candidates and politicians. The review covered a period extending from six months before to six months after the 2018 and 2022 parliamentary elections, capturing incidents linked to candidate announcements, campaign periods, and post-election developments reported by widely read online news outlets in Lebanon, including France24, The National, The New Arab, Albawaba, Euronews, L’Orient-Le Jour, 961, and HuffPost. Used for triangulation rather than systematic analysis, these secondary sources situated interview details and contextualized narratives within political developments. Media coverage specifically aided in reconstructing incidents mentioned by participants and evaluating their public reception. As already mentioned, integrating these materials also helped us, at least partially, contrast whether and how incidents targeting women and men candidates and politicians may vary.

Analytical Strategy

We employed an abductive analysis that evolved through a sustained dialogue between empirical observations and conceptual categories (Tavory and Timmermans Reference Tavory and Timmermans2014). An abductive approach is particularly suited to uncovering complex dynamics of power that are not easily captured through deductive or purely inductive designs. We began the research with what Weick (Reference Weick2007, 16) describes as “a head full of [partial] theories” that provide sensitizing concepts and initial guidance without fixing the boundaries of interpretation. On the one hand, intersectionality provides us with the critical theory and methodological guidelines for examining how overlapping systems of oppression, as is the case of patriarchy and sectarianism, generate qualitatively distinct forms of (dis)advantage that cannot be unveiled by additive, single-axis analyses (Crenshaw Reference Crenshaw1991). Rather, we must interrogate the individual, institutional, symbolic, cultural, and structural logics (Collins Reference Collins and Naples2020) that not only sustain but also co-constitute gendered and sectarian acts of political violence. Likewise, we must pay attention to multiple categories of difference and to the power relations that shape them (Hancock Reference Hancock2007), combining (inter-categorical) comparisons across sectarian groupings with (intra-categorical) attention to the diverse experiences of women within the same sectarian community (McCall Reference McCall2005). Our abductive engagement with the data exposes that attributes such as family lineage, party affiliation, type of sect, and region (urban/rural) lead to different justifications and experiences of gendered-sectarian political violence across subgroups of women.

On the other hand, feminist institutionalist scholarship provides analytical tools to trace how the patriarchal and sectarian orders are reproduced through the enactment of political violence. Specifically, this approach highlights how political institutions are inherently gendered in their — formal and informal — norms and practices (Mackay, Kenny, and Chappell Reference Mackay, Kenny and Chappell2010), which helps us uncover how sectarian institutions inscribe patriarchal logics with which individual and collective actors interact. With codes identified and refined through constant comparison (Deterding and Waters Reference Deterding and Waters2021), combining the drivers motivating the discrete acts of political violence and the perpetrator(s) allowed us to inductively identify the gendered-sectarian actors doing the enforcement and the various mechanisms or patterned processes of enforcement in place. As Grahn (Reference Grahn2024, 468) highlights, the abductive knowledge-generation process contributes to refining explanations about “the roles various social actors undertake in perpetuating” power inequalities.

Additionally, through repeated engagement with the data, Bardall et al.’s (Reference Bardall, Bjarnegård and Piscopo2020) dimensions of gendered political violence are used as analytical categories within a gendered-sectarian matrix, enabling us to capture intersectional motives, intersectional forms, and intersectional impacts (see online appendix). We remained cautious not to infer gendered intent from gendered impact, thereby avoiding post hoc reasoning (see Eriksson Baaz and Stern Reference Eriksson Baaz and Stern2013; Gottschall Reference Gottschall2004). For instance, a woman candidate may withdraw following a reputational attack, but if perpetrators frame their action as a defense of communal loyalty or political strategy, a gendered motive cannot be assumed.

It should be noted that our goal is not to identify forms of violence that are exclusive to sectarian systems but to explain how similar forms of gendered political violence are reconfigured in their meaning, justification, and enforcement when embedded in sectarian logics. For instance, while certain forms (e.g., reputational attacks or threats) may also occur elsewhere, in sectarian contexts they are typically legitimized through communal narratives of honor, purity, and loyalty, enforced through overlapping familial, religious, and political actors, and interpreted as necessary to preserve the sectarian order.

To evaluate the gendered-sectarian dimensions of political violence, we employed counterfactual testing, as proposed by Bardall et al. (Reference Bardall, Bjarnegård and Piscopo2020). For each incident, we asked whether a (hegemonic) man in the same position would have been targeted, whether the form of violence would differ, and whether the meaning or outcome would change. For example, if a man candidate would not have been subjected to sexual slander, the form is gendered. If a woman is more likely to withdraw as a result, the impact is gendered — regardless of motive. Counterfactual insights provided by interviewees were triangulated with news stories reporting men candidates’ experiences of political violence.

To remain closely attuned to the data and to participants’ own terms, grounded theory techniques, such as open coding and constant comparison, allowed us to deepen emerging categories, identify patterns and divergences across participants’ accounts, and iteratively refine conceptualizations. As the analysis unfolded, we treated tensions and apparent contradictions not as anomalies but as productive entry points for deeper theorization, prompting us to “generate a plausible theoretical account that solves the puzzle” (van Hulst and Visser Reference Van Hulst and Visser2025, 569). One such moment arose from the juxtaposition of gendered narratives that cast women both as symbols of communal honor and as permissible targets of violence. We continued this cyclical process of generating data and reasoning abductively until a single theoretical model emerged that explains the whole body of material collected (Danermark, Ekström, and Karlsson Reference Danermark, Ekström and Karlsson2019, 109–17). Through this movement between data and theory, we gradually elaborated a framework that accounts for the compounded gendered-sectarian nature of political violence in Lebanon and beyond (see online appendix for further details on the iterative coding process).Footnote ¹ Lastly, the abductive approach is also well suited for the production of knowledge “that is relevant for practitioners” (van Hulst and Visser Reference Van Hulst and Visser2025, 568), as we will reflect on in the discussion section.

Gendered-Sectarian Institutions and Actors

Institutionalist scholars have conceptualized institutions not as neutral arenas in which political actors operate, but as structured sets of rules, including norms and practices that distribute power and resources, constrain and enable action, and shape identities, interests, and capacities. Formal institutions refer to codified, written rules (e.g., constitutions, electoral laws, legislation, party statutes), while informal institutions are unwritten but socially shared rules that are created and communicated outside officially sanctioned channels and “may be externally enforced (for example, by clan and mafia bosses)” (Helmke and Levitsky Reference Helmke and Levitsky2004, 727). Feminist institutionalism emphasizes that both formal and informal institutions are gendered in their design and operation, structuring access to resources, positions, and legitimacy in ways that privilege certain masculinities and subordinate women based on gender hierarchies and power relations (Mackay et al. Reference Mackay, Kenny and Chappell2010).

A key concept here is the “gendered logic of appropriateness,” which prescribes (and proscribes) “(un)acceptable” behaviors for individuals depending on their gender, even in identical political situations (cf. Chappell Reference Chappell2006). Building on this, we adopt the notion of “gendered actors” (Lowndes Reference Lowndes2020; Mackay et al. Reference Mackay, Kenny and Chappell2010) to refer to institutionally embedded individuals and groups whose strategies, decisions, and authority are informed by gendered logics. These actors do not simply carry norms; they are active enforcers of institutional life, translating formal provisions into practice very often through informal sanctions — i.e., reputational damage or withdrawal of patronage support (Chappell and Waylen Reference Chappell and Waylen2013; Kenny Reference Kenny2013).

Adapting Hawkesworth’s (Reference Hawkesworth2003, 530) premise that since “genders are raced” institutional rules “may be raced and gendered,” we conceptualize institutions in sectarian systems as not merely gendered or sectarian in isolation but constituted through intersecting hierarchies that mutually construct and reinforce each other. Political actors are products of these gendered-sectarian institutions, embodying, sustaining and routinely enacting such compounded power relations. As a matter of fact, in deeply divided societies, gender power relations are embedded in — and help define — ethnic, national and communal identities (Yuval-Davis Reference Yuval-Davis1997), as well as extremist mobilizations (Stenger et al. Reference Stenger, True, Buranajaroenkij and Satasut2025) and wartime logics (Sjoberg and Peet Reference Sjoberg and Peet2011). As Young (Reference Young2003, 2) observes, the patriarchal logic of masculinist protection entails “wag[ing] war abroad and expect[ing] obedience and loyalty at home,” thereby linking public militarized authority to familial gendered control.

In this vein, gendered-sectarian actors — including kin, sect communities, clerics, courts, political parties, and militias — navigate and enforce both formal rules and informal norms and practices such as patronage-based networks and kinship hierarchies (Geha Reference Geha2019), serving as state intermediaries and gatekeepers to political office (Noh and Saadi Reference Noh and Saadi2026). Together, these define gendered-sectarian logics of appropriateness, grounded in culturally specific notions of honor, purity, loyalty, and communal boundaries. This symbolic regulation legitimizes gendered-sectarian coercion through scripts of shame, purity, and deviance to discipline women (Hasso Reference Hasso2011). Enforcement often takes place in sites shielded from formal scrutiny and public accountability, such as party or militia backrooms, religious spaces, and family councils, where patriarchal and sectarian logics are jointly applied.

Mechanisms of Enforcement

Our abductive analysis identified three mechanisms through which gendered-sectarian political violence is enforced collaboratively. Paying attention to how the latter is rationalized and enacted across different sites, often simultaneously by multiple actors, is crucial for understanding the structural character of gendered political violence under sectarianism. As pinpointed by Yuval-Davis (Reference Yuval-Davis2006, 205), “field methodology should carefully separate and examine separately the different levels in which social divisions operate in the communities where they work, i.e., institutionally, intersubjectively, and representationally as well as in the subjective constructions of identities.” These mechanisms are not conceived as mutually exclusive categories of actors, but as analytically distinct logics of enforcement, which may overlap and be enacted by multiple actors simultaneously.

First, family-based coercion refers to violence aimed at regulating women’s political behavior through appeals to family honor, obedience, and patriarchal authority. Women’s political ambition is framed as collective dishonor or familial overreach, with family members acting as direct enforcers or intermediaries (i.e., when mobilized by political or clerical actors). Family-based coercion includes physical assault, emotional abuse, or reputational attacks, including public disownments, and often precedes or enables other actors’ attacks. The underlying gendered-sectarian logic depicts women’s candidacy as a challenge to family or communal authority, positioning families as gatekeepers of patriarchal and sectarian orders, heavily constraining women’s political agency. We coded incidents of political violence against women as family-based coercion when the enforcement is exercised through familial authority and justified by reference to loyalty, dignity, or shame within the household or kin group.

Second, militia-/party-linked enforcement refers to political violence aimed at suppressing opposition, deterring independent candidacy, or enforcing party control and discipline. Defined by its roots in organizational authority and political dominance rather than kinship or sectarian identity, this mechanism is enforced by political parties or affiliated actors, whether formal members, armed militias, or informal brokers. It encompasses symbolic (e.g., smear campaigns), reputational (e.g., slander), and physical (e.g., beatings, threats) forms of violence. In this case, women’s political participation is cast as an affront and a threat to sectarian parties. When the logic of enforcement is primarily preserving party control, we coded incidents as militia-/party-linked enforcement, even if gendered or sectarian justifications are invoked — including claims that women’s candidacy destabilizes communal order.

Third, sectarian boundary-policing aims at regulating political belonging by tying women’s legitimacy to sectarian identity, kinship affiliation, and religious conformity. It involves violence intended to discipline women candidates and politicians who are regarded as violating the symbolic boundaries of their sectarian community, whether through inter-sect marriage, cross-sectarian alliances, reformist agendas, or perceived disloyalty. At its core, it enforces group cohesion and communal legitimacy and may involve religious sanction, symbolic exclusion, reputational attacks, or social ostracism. Despite deep rivalries, all actors converge to silence women who reject religious authority and mobilize across sectarian lines. Sectarian boundary-policing is coded when enforcement seeks to preserve communal identity, sect-based political representation, or sectarian purity, regardless of whether it is carried out by clerics, parties, extended kin, or community enforcers.

Although analytically distinct, these mechanisms often overlap. Families may be pressured by sectarian political parties, which in turn may mobilize communal sanctions, while sect leaders may activate kinship ties or sectarian boundaries to enforce conformity. Enforcement is thus frequently multilayered or proxied across sites of authority. For coding purposes, we assigned each incident to the mechanism whose dominant justificatory logic underpinned the enforcement. For example, if a party pressured a family but the sanction was carried out and rationalized in terms of honor and obedience, we coded it as family-based coercion (proxied by party pressure). This coding rule is a methodological guideline to identify patterned logics rather than to imply that enforcement is reducible to a single actor. Our analysis remains attentive to the simultaneity and interdependence of party, sectarian, and familial enforcement. Moral policing, however, is a transversal form: reputational attacks, public shaming, slander, and insinuations of moral deviance are deployed across all three mechanisms to discipline women who transgress patriarchal codes. This is especially evident when parties frame women’s cross-sectarian alliances as both partisan betrayal and a moral transgression.

Intersectional Configuration of Motives, Forms, and Impacts

According to Bardall et al.’s multifaceted framework for the study of gendered political violence (Reference Bardall, Bjarnegård and Piscopo2020), gendered motives denote violence aimed at maintaining the political power of dominant men, particularly by preventing women (and non-hegemonic men or LGBTIQ+ individuals) from gaining political influence. Acts of violence can thus serve to protect the existing gender hierarchy. As for gendered forms, political violence often reflects societal expectations of gender and follows gender scripts (Krook Reference Krook2017; Stallone and Zulver Reference Stallone and Zulver2024). Even when violence is not primarily motivated by gender, it may still be carried out in ways that employ gendered tactics (e.g., online sexual harassment) for greater effectiveness or that exploit gender stereotypes (Bjarnegård Reference Bjarnegård2023; Cockburn Reference Cockburn, Giles and Hyndman2004). Regarding gendered impacts, the fact that the consequences and outcomes of political violence are also shaped by gender must be factored in, with women being more likely to withdraw from politics due to fear of violence (Krook and Restrepo Sanín Reference Krook and Sanín2016; Schneider and Carroll Reference Schneider and Carroll2020), even if the original intent of the attack was not explicitly gendered. Most crucially, gender molds the interpretation and understanding of such violence by different audiences, whether they are the victims themselves, their families, community members, or the media (Piscopo and Bjarnegård Reference Bjarnegård2023, 54–5).

Expanding Bardall et al.’s (Reference Bardall, Bjarnegård and Piscopo2020) work, we unpack how motives, forms, and impacts operate in sectarian contexts, conceptualizing each dimension through an intersectional lens and highlighting the mutually reinforcing role of patriarchal and sectarian logics in the production of political violence. Concerning motives, violence in sectarian systems stems from perceived role incongruity between traditional femininity and political leadership. Women entering politics are viewed as “out-of-place,” challenging patriarchal dominance and hierarchies of religion, ethnicity, and class (Kuperberg Reference Kuperberg2021, 103). Violence, therefore, is driven not only by gendered power relations but also by efforts to preserve a political order in which male authority and sectarian boundaries are mutually reinforcing. Our abductive analysis identified three intersectional motives that maintain gendered-sectarian hierarchies by restricting women’s agency to patriarchal-sectarian limits. These motives do not function in isolation.

First, the preservation of male dominance in sectarian political structures. In the absence of gender quotas, (hegemonic) men’s control over political institutions, political parties, and electoral processes remains the unchallenged, taken-for-granted norm in sectarian power-sharing polities (Geha Reference Geha2019). Therefore, women’s increased participation is perceived as a threat, especially when running independently from political parties or without the backing of political dynasties. By defying expectations of patriarchal succession, gendered-sectarian actors use violence to dissuade women’s political engagement. Furthermore, when impunity for acts of violence against women is pervasive, perpetrators may deploy political violence as a demobilization strategy (Karim and Hill Reference Karim and Hill2024, 167).

Second, the reassertion of moral order through gendered discipline. Sectarian ideologies, particularly those based on religion, frequently assign to women the symbolic role of upholding communal morality, purity, and honor (Yuval-Davis Reference Yuval-Davis1997). Similar to racialized “dual loyalty” tropes identified in other contexts (Kuperberg Reference Kuperberg2021), women operating across or against sectarian boundaries are frequently portrayed as politically suspect, morally untrustworthy, or insufficiently loyal to communal interests. Women’s involvement in politics may be portrayed as a betrayal to their sectarian community (McVeigh Reference McVeigh2013) or as inappropriate for their gender, and cross-sectarian engagement is thus recast as evidence of betrayal. Sectarian actors thus police gender roles and seek to prevent affronts to the sect’s values and honor. Indeed, honor-based ideologies fuel and normalize violence in sectarian societies (Bjarnegård, Brounéus, and Melander Reference Bjarnegård, Brounéus and Melander2017). Moreover, women who promote civil rights agendas, challenge religious personal status laws, or form alliances across sectarian boundaries are also depicted as transgressors of communal norms (Bjarnegård Reference Bjarnegård2023). Independent or reformist women candidates may be particularly threatening because they challenge not only who can exercise political authority, but also the norms through which that authority is sustained (Berry and Zulver Reference Berry and Zulver2026). Their political engagement can therefore be perceived as destabilizing patriarchal-sectarian hierarchies and infringing on the status quo. In this context, violence has moral correction purposes, particularly the imperative to preserve the sect’s values.

Third, the reinforcement of control through familial patriarchy. Because family units are often the primary political actors in sectarian societies, women’s political participation may be interpreted not as a matter of individual agency but as a familial overreach or betrayal (Geha Reference Geha2019). Since family loyalty to sect leaders is paramount in sectarian systems, a woman’s candidacy may be perceived as an insult to the family and its men (Westminster Foundation for Democracy 2018), especially when she runs against the male candidate their family supports. Political violence in this case serves to reinforce patriarchal control, typically through family-based coercion, thereby deterring perceived disobedience or exposure to shame. Women’s candidacy is thus framed as a disruption to both patriarchal authority and sectarian stability.

Concerning the forms political violence takes, conventional widespread tactics — such as threats, defamation, sabotage, and online abuse — are infused with gendered templates when directed at women. This gendering of form frequently draws on sectarian-cultural scripts that subject women to moral condemnation and reputational harm. Specifically, violence takes on distinctively gendered forms when it invokes patriarchal discourses of shame, modesty, and obedience; mobilizes sectarian norms of propriety and communal honor; or relies on mechanisms (e.g., family pressure) tailored to controlling women. Even when the stated justification for violence is sectarian (e.g., punishing disloyalty or preventing vote-splitting), the form often adjusts to the gender of the target, with women more likely to be subjected to sexualized rumors and insults, religious or moral denunciation, social discrediting through family repudiations, threats targeting their roles as daughters, mothers, or wives, and physical violence by relatives to reassert family honor.

These forms are not incidental. They are purposefully designed and strategically effective because they exploit culturally resonant gendered and sectarian norms, making them difficult to challenge or dislodge. They also reinforce the sectarian status quo by keeping women outside the elite power-sharing bargain, where representation is tightly guarded among male sectarian leaders. Most crucially, by reinforcing conservative gender norms, they are designed to undermine women candidates’ credibility and tarnish their reputations (Bjarnegård et al. Reference Bjarnegård, Håkansson and Zetterberg2022, 52), an effect that is particularly devastating in sectarian societies. As such, form is critical in how intersectional political violence is enacted — it simultaneously activates sectarian and gendered control.

Similarly, the impacts of political violence against women are profoundly marked by the intersection of gender and sect. Women endure not only the physical and psychological tolls of violence, but also heightened reputational, familial, and communal consequences that men are less likely to face. In sectarian contexts, three interconnected layers of impact are particularly salient, each reinforcing the others and cumulatively imposing social discipline and political exclusion on women. The first is individual withdrawal and silencing. Many women forgo candidacy or public roles in response to threats, smear campaigns, or reputational damage. Even when violence is not physically injurious, it is psychologically exhausting (Krook and Restrepo Sanín Reference Krook and Sanín2016) and can prove politically disqualifying in environments where women’s legitimacy is already precarious, as in sectarian regimes. Withdrawal is often the first visible consequence, but it rarely ends there. This violence creates a second layer of impact that reverberates beyond the primary victims, affecting their families and staff, alongside their broader community, especially for minority women who witness violence against women politicians with similar identities (Kuperberg Reference Kuperberg2021). Within the family, they may be shamed into or pressured to discipline the candidate, including disavowing or rejecting her. Additionally, physical attacks on candidates’ families (Bjarnegård Reference Bjarnegård2023; Bjarnegård and Zetterberg Reference Bjarnegård, Zetterberg, Bjarnegård and Zetterberg2023, 8) or threats to do so (Stallone and Zulver Reference Stallone and Zulver2024, 8) can prompt families to actively prevent “their women” from pursuing political careers. In this way, patriarchal-sectarian control is consolidated, as family loyalty to sectarian group values takes precedence over individual ambition and women’s political rights. Such coercion magnifies the personal cost of political engagement, making withdrawal and apathy more likely. And the third layer of impact is structural exclusion and democratic erosion. Beyond the individual and family levels, the cumulative effect of political violence perpetuates a political order that discourages gender equality and suppresses sectarian dissent. Violence functions as a deterrent not only to individual women but also to the broader feminist, secular, or reformist agendas they are more likely to represent, as is also the case elsewhere with the racial and gender justice work of minority politicians (Sampaio Reference Sampaio2024).

Family-Based Coercion

The primary motive underpinning family-based coercion is to prevent reputational damage associated with women’s dissent. Families act not only to shield women from external backlash but also to uphold gender norms and expectations of loyalty dictated by patriarchal hierarchy. In sectarian societies, a woman’s political visibility is perceived as a symbolic affront to male authority. For instance, CA5 was physically assaulted by male relatives on the grounds that “women are not made for politics.” Intra-sect pressures, especially within dominant sects, intensify this logic, as women’s independent candidacy is cast as a betrayal of both patriarchal and communal hierarchies. Therefore, families may act preemptively to avoid backlash from their sectarian community, construing non-compliance of “their women” as moral and political transgressions. In this context, familial enforcement often blurs into moral policing, with women’s political ambition recast as a violation of communal honor and propriety. Whereas male heirs are groomed by families to inherit political legacies, women who challenge patriarchal succession typically face intra-familial punishment or opposition. The Zaaiter family publicly stated that candidate Sara Zaaiter represented herself only and not the family, reaffirming their loyalty to “their son” — the longstanding male MP Ghazi Zaaiter. Similarly, the Abu Diya family disowned Dima Abu Diya’s (Shia) candidacy on the Lebanese Forces’ list (Maronite), considering it a betrayal of their sectarian identity and family history (for a detailed account, see LADE 2022a, 3). Public disownments function as performative patriarchal and intra-sectarian group discipline, signaling allegiance to sect-endorsed men candidates and discrediting women as political actors.

The various forms of familial violence are gendered. Families may act as direct enforcers, engaging in physical assault (CA5), emotional abuse, reputational attacks (CA6), or public disownments (Sara Zaaiter, Dima Abu Diya). Even elite status offers only conditional protection. CA13, despite belonging to a political dynasty, was pressured to “return to the family and sect.” Families may also act as intermediaries, mobilized by sectarian parties, clerics, or local elites. As EXP3 explained, violence often begins once a woman declares her candidacy, with political actors approaching the family under the guise of “protecting her” to ensure the family pressures her to quit. As CA9 noted, “If the immediate family does not attack her, the larger family’s attacks get stronger,” demonstrating how extended kinship networks escalate enforcement when the nuclear family refuses to act. In other cases, families are used as proxy victims, with threats aimed at loved ones rather than the candidate herself: threats against a mother’s business (CA8) or extortion to expose a daughter’s lesbianism (EXP3). As CA6 put it, “When I talk to my children, I tell them, ‘If they are going to fight me, they will attack my personal life through you, my family’.” These acts are uniquely gendered in their reliance on relational and reputational leverage.

The impact of this violence is strongly gendered and cumulative, leading women to delay candidacies until they can secure guarantees for their family’s safety (CA8), withdraw (CA10), or avoid running altogether (CA20). Women are trapped in the very same system that they might want to run to change. Withdrawal from candidacy often occurs when familial pressure is compounded by communal expectations of obedience and moral conformity, particularly in cases where women lack elite backing. Profound emotional distress emerges from public shaming (CA2 and CA6), which is heightened when violence targets not only the candidate but also her extended kin or children, reinforcing perceptions that political ambition endangers family safety and honor. Public disownments, while serving as performative rejections, signal to the broader sect community that women candidates’ political aspirations are incompatible with familial and sectarian loyalty. Ultimately, family-based coercion sustains gendered political exclusion by making public participation emotionally, socially, and relationally extremely costly for women.

While women’s reputations are often irreparably harmed by such violence, men candidates’ political actions are rarely seen as dishonorable or destabilizing to family status. Our media scan did not return any instance of men having been subjected to familial discipline. Men candidates’ private lives are not weaponized for discrediting purposes either. For example, former Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s widely publicized extramarital affair had no discernible impact on his political legitimacy.

Militia-/Party-Linked Enforcement

Ruling political parties deploy coercive strategies to maintain dominance and delineate sectarian boundaries. In districts controlled by parties with militias and grassroots networks, enforcement often emerges from hybrid configurations of party elites, local brokers, and communal complicity. This is particularly the case of militarized parties like Hezbollah and the Amal Movement, whose legitimacy is anchored in narratives of armed non-state resistance, defense of land and sect, martyrdom, and masculine sacrifice — all of them civil war legacies. Women’s political autonomy is perceived as jeopardizing communal survival. For instance, a woman candidate contesting a Shia seat without party backing was portrayed as dishonoring male sacrifice. Female candidacy without party sponsorship signaled a transgression of gendered and sectarian hierarchies: it was regarded both as political defiance and as a violation of the patriarchal moral order underpinning sectarian legitimacy. As CA9 noted, intimidation came not only from party members but also from neighbors and family elders. These dynamics extend across sects. As pinpointed by CA7, a Maronite woman running independently, she faced slander and personal attacks by Lebanese Forces and the Free Patriotic Movement, parties from her own sect. In contrast, a Maronite woman minister with party backing was criticized professionally but “they never attacked her personally.” Intra-sectarian gendered violence thus affects independent women more severely than their party-affiliated counterparts.

Proxy violence is also used to preserve intra-sect cohesion. CA17, despite being from a prominent political family, was physically attacked by party members from another sect at the instigation of actors from her own sect who sought to ensure her male counterpart prevailed. Another prominent motive for party-linked enforcement arises when women pursue cross-sectarian alliances. In such cases, the motive of partisan discipline merges with sectarian boundary-keeping, casting women’s political choices as betrayals of party identity and acts of defiance against sectarian scripts of belonging. CA13, a Maronite woman on a Druze-led list, was accused by co-sectarian voters of “stirring sensitivities” and betraying her sect by downplaying the legacy of inter-sectarian conflict. Her candidacy was depicted as both a communal transgression and a gendered affront. CA13 was pressured to “return to the family, to the sect leaders.” Similarly, Paula Yacoubian, an outspoken secular MP from a minority sect, has faced repeated smear campaigns, threats to her family, and harassment of her staff and supporters (O’Keeffe and Ekmekji Reference O’Keeffe and Ekmekji2022). Yacoubian noted that “If [she] gain[s] more popularity, yes, they will end up by killing [her]” (Euronews 2019).

The form and intensity of violence vary by party type and region. In the South and in militia-party strongholds like Hezbollah and Amal, violence is designed not only to harm physically but also to serve as exemplary punishment. In such areas, women’s candidacy, especially independent bids, threatens the symbolic architecture that binds male leadership to communal protection, provoking overt, collective violence. As CA9 reported, “Some women candidates were beaten in the South because they dared to run against Hezbollah.” Bouchra Khalil recounted receiving death threats from Amal supporters, having sound bombs detonated at her home, and being targeted with gunfire (LADE 2022a, 4). CA4, a Sunni woman with a secular platform, was doxxed and harassed in a coordinated campaign involving Hezbollah (Shia), the Progressive Socialist Party (Druze), and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (Secular). Her personal details were leaked, and her family received threats. As she described it, party-affiliated “paid pens” spread reputational attacks through insinuation and rumor. In the case of independent Sunni CA5, reputational attacks by actors from other Sunni parties were disseminated through mosques and religious discourse, following inflated claims about her vote share. While the goal was to undermine her standing within Sunni constituencies, the means — religious slander — rested on moral judgments about female piety and loyalty, illustrating again the entanglement of sectarian and gendered logics.

The Lebanese Forces (Maronite) and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (Secular) also engage in reputational sabotage. We can then affirm that all parties and militias weaponize character assassination strategically to sideline independent women. One of the most prominent cases is that of MP Paula Yacoubian. On top of the violence presented above, her refusal to self-censor and her high visibility made her a frequent target of public shaming, even from other members of parliament (The New Arab 2025). She denounced on television: “My private parts are none of your business” (Albawaba 2020). Such attacks are rarely, if ever, directed at men. As CA10 rhetorically asked, “Would male MPs ever have to defend their sexual honor on live TV?”

The impacts of this violence are gendered and structural. By targeting independent women outside sectarian patronage, it produces reputational damage and social isolation that make candidacy unsustainable. It also sends a broader warning to other women candidates that the costs of running for office are exceptionally high. In party strongholds where legitimacy is tied to martyrdom, valor, or religious authority, such attacks carry exemplary force. CA9 noted that simply running in those districts required “bravery.” Finally, party-linked enforcement hinders representation: fewer independent women run and those who persist self-censor with narrower or less confrontational agendas, thereby reinforcing party monopolies over cross-sect coordination. The net result is not just deterrence but structural exclusion, as women’s participation becomes conditional, precarious, and contingent on patriarchal gatekeeping.

Even seemingly gender-neutral tactics, like vandalism or doxxing, carry distinct meanings. For male candidates, they are generally interpreted as political rivalry. In the 2022 elections, attacks on independent male Shia candidates Ali Amin and Hisham Hayek by Hezbollah and Amal supporters were portrayed in news stories as intimidation and proof of popularity (CPJ 2022; Rose Reference Rose2022). Similarly, the assault on candidate Wasef al-Harakeh by Hezbollah and Amal supporters chanting “Zionist” was represented by the media as the repression of a dissident voice (Jacinto Reference Jacinto2018). By contrast, Bouchra Khalil and CA9 were subjected to sexualized rumors, betrayal accusations, and threats to their homes and honor. Additionally, since women’s autonomy is treated as destabilizing, as moral deviance and social transgression, they are prompted to withdraw or retreat into invisibility, as when CA2 was told not to appear publicly. The asymmetry is stark: men subjected to similar attacks may gain sympathy or visibility, while women are delegitimized and pressured to exit, revealing a gendered interpretation of both dissent and militia- or party-based political violence.

Sectarian Boundary-Policing

Sectarian boundary-policing operates through four primary gendered-sectarian motives. First, disciplining women for pushing reformist agendas. “Communities in Lebanon fiercely maintain sectarian lines, and support for civil marriage threatens the status quo,” CA5 explained. Her advocacy for civil marriage provoked mosque-led denunciations and intense communal pressure to make her recant. Moreover, the Sunni Mufti’s refusal to be photographed with her was a deliberate act of symbolic exclusion that stripped her of communal legitimacy. Her family, fearing further ostracism, compelled her to retract her stance, illustrating how enforcement operates both publicly and privately. Women are thus forced to self-police in order to avoid complete social expulsion.

Second, disciplining women for inter-sect marriage. One interviewee (CA4) discussed the prominent case of Lebanese MP Nayla Tuéni’s marriage outside her Greek Orthodox sect was cast as betrayal, despite her political lineage. Commentators mocked her for holding a civil ceremony abroad rather than pursuing reform at home, accusing her of hypocrisy for opposing Hezbollah while marrying a Shia man with Iranian ties (Abu-Fadil Reference Abu-Fadil2011; Chemaly Reference Chemaly2009). Such attacks frame cross-sect marriages as dishonor and communal transgression, legitimizing symbolic exclusion and, at times, honor-based violence (AlQahtani et al. Reference AlQahtani, Almutairi, BinAqeel, Almutairi, Al-Qahtani and Menezes2022; Heydari et al. Reference Heydari, Teymoori and Trappes2021). Male elites face no such sanction. Tony Frangieh, a Maronite politician and heir to the Marada Movement, married a Sunni woman in a lavish celebration without consequences; the only critique noted that leaders are exempt from norms binding ordinary citizens (Jalkh Reference Jalkh2023; Mezher Reference Mezher2019).

The third motive involves disciplining women who challenge sectarian leadership norms. CA4, an independent Sunni candidate, was doxxed and publicly shamed through mosque sermons for aspiring to be prime minister. She reported that the Mufti “declared my blood permissible,” removing communal protection and enabling threats to sanction her defiance of the norm that reserves the premier position for Sunni men. This provoked attacks across sectarian lines, including by the Soldiers of God, a Maronite conservative group, and by religious leaders from her own sect. This type of enforcement is amplified in volatile times, like the October 2021 Beirut clashes, when the threat of renewed conflict intensified fear-based loyalty to traditional sectarian (male) leaders as guarantors for protection. As CA2, a Maronite candidate, observed, “People are very frightened; they tell you, ‘We want to vote for you, but please don’t tell anyone because we don’t want to fight with our neighbors.’” This communal complicity is often ambient and preemptive, rather than explicitly violent. Fourth, women are disciplined for failing to embody sectarian ideals of female propriety. CA6, a Sunni candidate who does not wear hijab, was labeled “Western” and unfit to represent Sunni women — thereby facing a similar double bind as Muslim candidates in the UK (Akhtar et al. Reference Akhtar, Jenichen and Intezar2024, 13). By embodying potential political transformation and addressing gender inequalities, these women represent a threat and are chastised for wanting to enter the system.

In terms of forms, sectarian boundary-policing may be enacted through physical violence. CA7, a Maronite woman who contested election outcomes, had her office set on fire and her car tampered with. Most commonly, though, sectarian boundary-policing is enacted through reputational and ritual violence, framing women’s cross-sectarian engagement or reformist views as betrayals. These forms communicate that women’s political participation is conditional on communal approval. CA15, for instance, was labeled a Hezbollah agent for dining with people from other sects — a smear that attached both moral deviance and political disloyalty to her social conduct. Likewise, ritual expectations function as informal tests of sectarian loyalty. CA2 and CA13 were pressured to attend religious ceremonies and seek clerical blessings. While such rituals apply broadly to men and women candidates, non-compliance by the latter is more harshly penalized. On other occasions, women candidates are marked as morally deviant and politically unfit with a view to delegitimizing their authority and shifting the terrain from the political debate of public issues to private conduct. Such attacks often invoke gendered notions of propriety or sexual respectability. As CA6 explained, “In our culture, a woman’s dignity is tied ‘to what’s between her legs’ or her honor,” underscoring how scripts of purity and shame are weaponized to discredit women. CA2 reported how proxies are often used to circulate rumors or escalate slander through social media and sectarian rumor networks, insinuating sexual impropriety. These acts thus exploit both patriarchal and sectarian norms.

The impact of sectarian boundary-policing is clearly gendered. Women perceived as violating communal boundaries through inter-sect marriage, or advocacy for civil marriage, face intensified reputational and social sanctions that escalate when religious authorities or sect leaders issue public rebukes or symbolic exclusions (e.g., refusing to grant blessings). Withdrawal then becomes less of a personal choice than a coerced response to community-wide disapproval. Candidates can only be reabsorbed into sectarian structures if they publicly renounce their transgressions. The psychological toll is severe, especially for those who resist. CA4 described her experience as “the ugliest exploitation of religion.” CA18 reflected, “You start to question whether you’re fit for politics, even if you know the attack was unfair.” Such disciplining works collectively, isolating women from their constituencies and redefining them as outsiders to their own communities, thereby warning others against similar defiance. Moral policing further intensifies this pressure. Reputational attacks and sexualized slander recast women’s candidacy as a referendum on female virtue, producing shame, emotional exhaustion, self-censorship, and withdrawal. CA6 noted that these attacks increase the likelihood of withdrawal because they capitalize on women’s vulnerability to emotional and social sanctions. Ultimately, sectarian boundary-policing enforces exclusion by delegitimizing women’s authority and narrowing political debates, rendering ambition a liability unless women conform to patriarchal-sectarian norms.

While men candidates’ dissent may be understood as ideological divergence and their missteps as strategic errors, women are subjected instead to character assassination, moral scrutiny, and public humiliation. Sectarian belonging is assumed for men, whereas for women it is inherited through men, rendering their communal affiliation contingent, conditional, and revocable through collective sanction. Women’s political legitimacy thus depends on the continued performance of sectarian loyalty, religious propriety, and kinship deference. Clerical decrees are rarely issued against men candidates, who also do not face consequences for marrying across sectarian lines. When facing accusations of factional disloyalty, women face harsher ostracism than men because of the communal and sexual purity being placed upon the former. Due to women’s newcomer status, such accusations are more likely to push them out of politics. Men, by contrast, can draw on more established networks for political capital and support.