Confronting Harm
Experiences and Strategies of U.S. Women State Legislators on the Frontlines of Political Violence
Background and Urgency
The brutal assassination of Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark Hortman on June 14, 2025, exposed a crisis that has been building for years: women state legislators face systematic harassment, threats, and violence that compromise their safety, well-being, and democratic participation. This politically motivated killing serves as a stark reminder that threats against elected officials can escalate with little warning, forcing an uncomfortable question: How prepared are any of us, really?
Research Overview
This mixed-methods study examined the safety experiences of women state legislators through:
- Sixty in-depth interviews with 38 current and former women state legislators, two staff, and 20 experts
- Geographic representation for interviews from 25 states spanning diverse political contexts
- Three hundred and nineteen responses to a national survey from women state legislators across all states
- Demographic diversity with 27.6% of survey respondents identifying as women of color, closely reflecting the 30.5% national proportion
Key Findings
The Scope of Harm
Political violence against women legislators extends far beyond traditional threats to encompass systematic harassment designed to drive women from office, with 93% of surveyed women experiencing some form of abuse.
Our expanded analytical framework identified twelve categories of harm, including four types that uniquely target women: workplace bullying, sexualized threats of violence, professional dismissal based on questioning their intellect, and appearance-based toxic comments.
These gendered attacks weaponize women’s identity through mechanisms like credit theft for legislative work, sexual objectification combined with racial slurs for women of color, and systematic undermining of their legitimacy as political actors.
Together, these incidents create a coordinated campaign of democratic exclusion that makes women’s political participation conditional and costly in ways that male colleagues do not experience.
Institutional Failures
State capitols and law enforcement agencies systematically fail to protect women legislators:
- Inadequate security infrastructure: Many capitols lack metal detectors, have minimal police presence, and permit concealed carry
- Ineffective safety protocols: Emergency procedures are often unknown, untested, or dysfunctional
- Unreliable law enforcement: Police responses vary based on political considerations, with some officers actively retaliating against legislators who challenge law enforcement interests
- Legal system limitations: Courts consistently protect harassers under First Amendment grounds, with defendants successfully using “blowing off steam” defenses even for death threats
The Devastating Toll
The impact extends across all dimensions of well-being:
- Psychological harm: Chronic anxiety, hypervigilance, sleep disruption, isolation and in extreme cases, suicidal ideation
- Professional constraints: Safety concerns limit policy advocacy, reduce public engagement, and create impossible choices between family protection and legislative effectiveness
- Family impact: Spouses and children become targets, forcing painful decisions about proximity and protection
- Staff consequences: Harassment extends to staff members who serve as buffers, creating a climate of fear that compromises workplace safety
Strategies for Resilience
Faced with inadequate institutional support, women legislators have constructed sophisticated adaptive strategies organized into three categories that constitute our resilience framework.
- Mental preparation: Developing hypervigilance and tactical awareness
- Physical tools: Carrying protective devices and modifying clothing for mobility
- Network building: Establishing relationships with law enforcement and peer support systems
- Family protection: Installing security systems and restricting digital exposure
- Threat assessment: Learning to distinguish between manageable harassment and reportable threats
- Documentation: Building systematic records for potential legal action
- Peer consultation: Accessing expertise through trusted networks
- Strategic escalation: Knowing when and how to engage formal security channels
- Support networks: Cultivating “nurturing circles” of trusted allies
- Reset practices: Understanding personal recovery needs and implementing restoration routines
- Purpose grounding: Returning to core motivations for public service
- Strategic exit: Recognizing when self-preservation requires leaving office
Guiding Principles for Moving Forward
The research culminates in four core recommendations using the SAFE resilience framework:
➢ Sow the seeds for policy change
➢ Access available resources
➢ Find comfort in community
➢ Explore alternative options
Safety should not be the exception. It should be the expectation.
This is why Ghosh Innovation Lab exists – to create technological solutions to end the harm women legislators face and make it safer to serve.
Please join us as a Safety Ambassador in our mission to make legislators feel safer:
- Receive data and findings from our legislator safety research.
- Be up to date with our comprehensive safety and security organizations resource hub
- Be part of nationwide conversations and convenings on legislator safety.
- Stay connected with our technology development progress.
- Be the first to try our solutions in a real world environment.
- Share with us what is impacting you the most.
Thank you and we look forward to working together to keep women legislators safe wherever they are serving!
Become an Ambassador of Safety
We are building a community of legislators and their allies who are committed to keeping women, transgender, and nonbinary legislators safe while they serve. Please join us.
Our promise to you: we will not share your information with anyone outside of Ghosh Innovation Lab without your express permission.