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North America Regional Hub: Safeguarding and Elevating Women Local Leaders in Building and Maintaining Strong Cities

Publication Date:

13/05/2026

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Event Reports

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Gender-based harassmentNorth America Regional HubSocial CohesionSunnylandsWomen Empowerment

— 10 minutes reading time

This report provides a summary of discussions during the event and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Strong Cities Network Management Unit, Strong Cities members, event sponsors or participants.

On 24 – 26 April 2026, the Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands hosted the launch of the Strong Cities Network’s global initiative on addressing hate and harassment targeting women local leaders. This initiative responds to the escalating and increasingly gendered threats that these leaders around the world are facing, which undermine both their personal safety and the functioning of local democracy. It will include regional convenings of women elected local leaders and culminate in the development and launch of a new toolkit for cities, local governments and other stakeholders to address these threats.  

The convening welcomed mayors, deputy mayors and other local elected officials from cities across Canada and the United States, along with distinguished leaders of mayoral networks and other experts. Katherine Keneally, Director of Threat Analysis & Prevention at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), which hosts the Strong Cities Network, provided a scene-setting presentation on the online and offline threat landscape for women local leaders in North America on the campaign trail and in office.

Subsequent discussions focused on the unique contributions of women in local government in preventing hate and building trust and resilience, and the need to address the rising gendered threats they are facing. Across sessions, women local leaders shared their experiences, both being targeted by and navigating these threats. Katya Spear, Managing Director of the Mayors Innovation Project, supported these insights with research demonstrating that gender-based hate and harassment toward women mayors is not incidental or episodic but systemic and an under-recognised challenge that has intensified in recent years. A strategic discussion then identified gaps in current responses to these threats and what additional actors, expertise and resources are needed to strengthen protection of and support for women local leaders.  

A central outcome of the convening was the elaboration of the toolkit’s core elements within a three-level framework: mayoral/individual, municipal/local government, and societal/city-wide. These elements include assessing risk and identifying early warning signs; physical and digital safety and social media management; legal and reporting pathways; mental health and wellbeing support; community engagement strategies; and strategic communications. Outputs from this convening will inform the design of a programme on women’s local leadership at the Strong Cities Network Seventh Global Summit in Rabat (Morocco) in early 2027.

Key Takeaways

What are the threats?

• Research shows that women local leaders face escalating and increasingly normalised gendered threats, which are non-partisan. These gender-based threats are neither incidental nor episodic but a systemic and under-recognised challenge that has intensified in recent years.

• Women leaders and their families often face digital, physical and hybrid threats, which include harassment, swatting, doxxing, non-consensual synthetic intimacy imagery and violent, psychological or sexualised threats.

• Threats cause collateral harm to family members and staff; result in increased costs to city budgets related to security practices and protocols; reshape patterns of participation; alter decision-making behaviour; and weaken the institutional capacity of city governments to function effectively.  

• Social media is often the primary vehicle for threats, harassment and the spread of misinformation. Some leaders have decided to leave social media with their staff running their professional accounts; others, lacking staff capacity, have continued to run their accounts themselves, despite the abuse.

Implications of the threats?

• The increasingly hostile environment for women local leaders has contributed to leaders stepping down or opting out of public office entirely, threatening a pipeline of women talent in local, state and federal office.

• They contribute to an environment in which women local leaders face not only higher visibility of risk, but also different forms of abuse that directly undermine their ability to participate fully and safely in public service.

• They threaten the talent pipeline of women entering and remaining in office and have dire implications for local governance and the functioning of inclusive democracies.
  
• The impacts of sustained harassment and threats against women local leaders extend far beyond individual experiences of harm. They constrain everyday mobility, alter security practices, and often limit community engagement by women local leaders. Further, absorbing and concealing this abuse also impacts their focus, energy, and mental and physical health.

What is Being Done?

• Women local leaders find support and fellowship through trusted staff, friends, family, and networks of fellow women elected leaders.

• The burden of experiencing and addressing these challenges is often individualised with the expectation of personal resilience rather than systems change. In fact, this is a societal and institutional responsibility which should involve local and state governments, tech platforms, law enforcement, peer networks, and civil society. As such, strategies to counter these systemic harms need to include cross-sector coordination with public health, education, and tech and digital interventions.

• Local governments are often at the front lines where macro-level polarisation is either reinforced or counterbalanced and their success in engaging leadership practices, such as listening, empathy and accessibility, leads to more socially cohesive communities.

• Local government strategies for maintaining cohesion and rebuilding trust and preventing and countering misinformation in times of division include remaining visible in communities, sustaining public comment even under strain and maintaining accessibility beyond formal meetings. Initiatives like civility pledges, kindness campaigns and structured expectations for public participation are among the mechanisms for resetting community standards and interrupting cycles of incivility and community hostility.

What are the gaps?

• Existing systems are often unprepared, misaligned with the lived realities of local elected leaders, ad hoc and often dependent on municipal capacity and budgets.Instead of upstream prevention measures, many interventions emerge reactively rather than through coordinated, pre-established policies and strategies.Responses place too much emphasis on personal safety. Women leaders are often left to manage threats and harassment alone or with untrained staff members, with limited coordination across the municipality, different levels of government or professional associations, and not enough focus on institutional performance, democratic productivity, and public value. Threats and harassment were linked to lost efficiency and diversion of public resources away from core services.While leaders of some larger cities may benefit from some formal security detail and infrastructure, most operate with minimal institutional protection despite facing serious threats.Few cities have adopted local measures, such as reimbursements for home security expenses, adjustments to social media practices, modifications to public comment or city council meeting procedures and coordination with law enforcement before events, to address these threats.Cities need more upstream coordination, programmes and resources to address gaps in prevention and response.Responses typically fail to include men as visible champions and equally responsible for addressing these challenges.

• More local government partnerships with local institutions, including universities, can help fill local research and data gaps.

The discussion on building the toolkit emphasised that while personal coping strategies and informal networks are valuable, and should not be excluded from the toolkit, focusing solutions solely at the individual level risks misdiagnosing the problem and reinforcing the notion that hate, harassment and violence targeting local elected officials are simply matters of personal safety. Participants stressed that these challenges are systemic and therefore require responses that extend beyond individual resilience. 

As such, the toolkit should be organised around a three-level framework that includes, but also extends beyond, the personal level. At the mayoral or individual level, the toolkit should address personal safety, wellbeing, support structures and preparation. At the municipal level, it should focus on institutional policies, staff structures, governance norms and accountability. At the systems and societal level, it should examine broader issues related to democracy, sexism, civility, community safety and cultural narratives. 

Participants also identified several core themes that the toolkit should address. These include risk assessment and early warning signs; personal and digital safety, including social media management; legal and reporting pathways; mental health and wellbeing support; community engagement strategies; and strategic communications. 

The toolkit should provide scalable and practical guidance for cities of all sizes and include examples of good practices and case studies. This should include guidance on strategic messaging, wellbeing support strategies for elected officials and their staff, and proactively building networks that can be mobilised during times of crisis. Participants also highlighted the importance of offering a menu of training opportunities for elected officials, staff and law enforcement, covering areas such as threat assessment, reportable conduct, de-escalation, referral pathways, digital security and mental health coping strategies. 

In addition, the toolkit should include an upstream awareness campaign framework that can be adapted to local contexts. The campaign would aim to address and reduce hate and harassment targeting women local elected officials by framing the issue as one of community safety, civility and, if left unaddressed, a threat to democracy. Rather than centring the effort solely on gender or politics, participants noted that the campaign should emphasise shared values capable of bringing together a broad range of stakeholders, including sceptics from the outset. The campaign could be led by a neutral and trusted community institution or business leader and supported by male champions to broaden credibility and reach. Messaging should draw on research-backed and unifying language while incorporating media and digital literacy approaches to support healthier public discourse. 

Finally, participants underscored that the toolkit should be complemented by an implementation fund to support cities and local governments in operationalising and sustaining these efforts. 

Next Steps

Strong Cities will continue to engage and update North American participants of the Safeguarding and Elevating Women Local Leaders in Building and Maintaining Strong Cities convening on the development of the toolkit and key takeaways from future regional convenings.

Additional regional convenings of local elected women leaders outside North America are scheduled through 2026 to provide opportunities for more local leaders and stakeholders to dialogue on personal experiences, local approaches, and to identify gaps in current research and responses to gendered threats. Forthcoming convenings will also expand upon additional actors, expertise and resources that are needed to strengthen protection, support and safeguard local democratic governance. These convenings will inform the design and development of the new Strong Cities global toolkit as well as programming on women’s local leadership at the Seventh Strong Cities Global Summit in Rabat, Morocco in early 2027.

Additional Resources

• The 2025 Annual Review of Plots and Attacks Across the US, Institute for Strategic Dialogue (March 2026)
• How to Prevent and Respond to Swattings & Threats, Institute for Strategic Dialogue (February 2026)
• ‘Tick tock traitor:’ The rise of violent rhetoric targeting US public officials, Institute for Strategic Dialogue (February 2026)
• Sixth Global Summit: Spotlight on the Strong Cities Network Women’s Caucus, Strong Cities Network (January 2026)
• Sixth Global Summit: Hate and Harassment Against Elected Local Officials, Strong Cities Network (January 2026)
• Squaring the circle on men’s health, online harms and gender-based violence, Institute for Strategic Dialogue (December 2025)
• North America Regional Hub: Enhancing Local Efforts to Address Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence (TFGBV) and Misogyny as Drivers of Social Polarisation and Violence, Strong Cities Network (December 2025)
• Fostering Healthy Masculinities: Building Resilience Against Online Misogyny, Institute for Strategic Dialogue (December 2025)
• A Toolkit for Manitoba Municipalities: Addressing Anti-Government Hate and Harassment, Strong Cities Network (December 2025)

Contact Information 

For more information on this event or Strong Cities North America programming, please contact the North America Regional Hub at [email protected].

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