As disclosures about sexual misconduct emerged last year, 44% of all members of Congress raised the issue on their official Facebook accounts. But the percentage of women legislators who discussed the topic in their official Facebook posts was almost twice as high as the percentage of men in Congress who did so (72% vs. 37%), according to a Pew Research Center analysis of 44,792 posts published between Oct. 1 and Dec. 30, 2017.

There were wide gaps across the two major parties: 55% of Democratic members and 34% of Republican members made posts about the topic. In both parties, the shares of women who discussed sexual misconduct on Facebook were 30 percentage points larger than the shares of men who did so.

Not only were women in Congress more likely than male legislators to mention sexual misconduct, but they also posted about the topic more often. From October to December, female lawmakers posted about sexual misconduct more than three times as often as male legislators. (This analysis did not distinguish between types of posts mentioning the topic; all references to sexual misconduct and harassment were grouped together.)

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