Kirsty Williams: Abuse of women in politics getting worse

Abuse is getting "worse and worse" for women in politics, Wales' former education minister has said.

Kirsty Williams said she had felt unable to keep her family safe from the trolling she received on social media.

The ex-politician told BBC Walescast that while she would not discourage her daughters from getting into politics, she would be worried if they did.

Abuse is "simply priced-in" for many of her former colleagues in politics, she said.

The former Brecon and Radnorshire Member of the Senedd spoke to the BBC Wales podcast as part of a series of profiles of Welsh political figures.

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Ms Williams served as a Liberal Democrat representative for the constituency from the start of the assembly in 1999.

She became Wales' first woman leader of a Welsh political party in 2008, staying on until after the 2016 election.

After she was left as the only Lib Dem in the Senedd, then-first minister Carwyn Jones brought her into the Labour Welsh government as education minister.

Kirsty Williams, pictured with her husband Richard, said she had been unable to protect her family from abuse.

Ms Williams, who ended her 22-year-long career by standing down in May, said she was "really proud" to have been a high-profile woman in frontline politics.

But over the years she worried about the impact on her family.

"Kind people have always been very reassuring that actually, you know, it's a good thing for your girls to see you going out and doing this," she said.

"You've got a responsibility, haven't you, not to duck those issues and to pass it on to someone else to do the hard yards."

Ms Williams, who has three daughters with her husband Richard, said: "It's got harder and harder, it's got worse and worse. And that's not just for me, that's for lots of my political colleagues.

"I think it's particularly difficult for women because there is a particularly nasty misogynistic, really horrible element to some of the social media stuff.

"For too many of my colleagues, now it is simply priced-in that that is the price they've got to pay for doing the job that they want to do."

'What does that mean, mum?'

In 2016, not long after the year's election result, then-newly elected UKIP group leader Neil Hamilton called Ms Williams and Plaid's Leanne Wood "political concubines" on the floor of the Senedd.

"I had to come home and explain to my daughters what the word concubine meant," she told the podcast.

"Mum, that man on the television said that you were a concubine. Everyone on the news is talking about it mum - what is that word? What does that mean, mum?

"I don't want to have to explain to my prepubescent daughters that's how a male colleague treats a female colleague in the workplace."

After he was rebuked for sexist language, Mr Hamilton said he had "no intention to upset anybody in anyway".

Ms Williams recently spoke to ITV Wales about death threats that she had received - but she said that in "some ways" social media trolling was harder to deal with.

"It's really really horrible, but the police deal with that effectively, and they deal with it efficiently."

But she said her "inability" to keep her family "safe" from "pernicious trolling" and comments were "much more upsetting than the death threats".

It was only after she exited politics that she became aware of the true nature of some of it, she said.

Kirsty Williams was the first woman leader of a political party in Wales.

Sometimes she could laugh off some of the messages, or challenge them - like one man who said on Twitter that she delivered a statement "like I would deliver a fake orgasm".

"And you're thinking - do you know what, I'm not putting up with that today, I'm going to say something back... I used a little [When] Harry Met Sally gif.

"The vile stuff you ignore. When it crosses a line into a sexual element to it, that's when I'm not going to put up with it.

"That particular person - I wrote back to them and said does your wife know this is how you spent your Saturday afternoons, and what is your employer going to think about this on Monday morning, when I tell them."

Ms Williams said she would "never discourage" her daughters from entering politics.

But would she be worried for them? "Absolutely, in a way I wouldn't be worried for them if they chose a life outside of that public scrutiny.

"I would be lying if I said there was a part of me that wouldn't want them to make a contribution.

"But there would be a bit of you that would be saying I really wish they would do this out of the public eye."

You can download the full episode now through BBC Sounds and most other podcast platforms.