Links between gender and experiences of anti-Semitism

What is it about?

Little is known about the gendered dimension of antisemitism. Drawing on social identity theory, antisemitism, sexism, and Jewish feminism this paper demonstrates the urgency of examining the link between gender and experiences of anti-semitism. This study uses the European Union Agency for Fundamental Right’s (FRA) 2018 dataset ‘Experiences and perceptions of antisemitism: second survey on discrimination and hate crime against Jews in the EU’, a large-scale survey of Jews in thirteen countries across Europe. The independent variable is gender identity. The five dependent variables relate to experiences of: sex/gender discrimination, physical attacks, offensive/threatening com-ments, offensive gestures/staring, and online harassment. By using three control variables – being identifiable as a Jew in public, country, and Jewish identity – I engage with descriptive statistics, and then use binary logistic regression analysis to analyse my variables. The findings show that while women are more likely to experience gender discrimination, men are significantly more likely to experience antisemitism.

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Photo by shraga kopstein on Unsplash

Photo by shraga kopstein on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Focusing on different expressions of anti-Semitism, the findings show that while women are more likely to experience sexism, Jewish men are significantly more likely to experience anti-Semitism. This is an important addition to the ways in which anti-Semitism is gendered and our understanding of discrimination and harassment.