Gender Misinformation and its Impacts on Women's Political Participation in the Public Service

Abstract

This paper aims to synthesize evidence on how gendered disinformation affects the political participation of women in the Brazilian public service over the last 10 years. To this end, a narrative literature review was conducted using systematic searches in the Google Scholar and PubMed databases (2015-2025). As a result, 163 relevant studies were identified, of which 15 were considered central to the analysis carried out in this research. The findings indicate that gendered disinformation operates through online harassment, character assassination, deepfakes, and amplification on digital platforms, producing distinct inhibitory effects for women from different social classes, particularly those who are not part of the elite and those living in rural areas. Regarding the findings in the scientific literature, the majority of the works were qualitative and mixed-methods, with few large-scale longitudinal or causal studies. For practical contribution purposes, this study suggests that integrated public policies are necessary to combat gendered disinformation, along with greater accountability from digital platforms for the content disseminated on their domains.