Sigrid Kaag is latest high-profile female politician to quit, citing years of ‘hate, intimidation and threats’
Sigrid Kaag speaks to the press after resigning as Dutch foreign minister in 2021. She has been a deputy PM since January 2022.Sigrid Kaag speaks to the press after resigning as Dutch foreign minister in 2021. She has been a deputy PM since January 2022.Nearly two years after Sigrid Kaag was catapulted into the highest ranks of Dutch politics, police keep a constant watch over her home.
Instead she described it as a glimpse – albeit extreme – of how the steady flow of vitriol, amplified by social media and, in her case, the extreme right wing, is reshaping politics. Speaking to the Guardian, Kaag warned the shift threatened to roll back decades of progress when it comes to the political participation of women, minorities and people of colour.
Her departure adds to the growing list of high-profile female politicians who have turned their backs on politics, from Finland’sfor female politicians, describing the current environment as “much harsher and more hostile” than any other time in her decades-long career.“Social media provides a vehicle for the most awful abuse of women, misogyny, sexism and threats of violence for women who put their heads above the parapet,” she told a BBC documentary.
Kaag traced her own experience with online hate to 2017 when rumours began circulating about her return home to join the government after decades of high-profile“That was sort of driven by a small group that took offence to the fact that a Dutch minister happened to be married to a Palestinian of Jerusalem,” she said. Her husband, Anis al-Qaq, served as a deputy minister and ambassador to Switzerland for the Palestinian Authority beforethe International Forum for Peace in the Middle East.