Sexual Violence

Citation:

Sancho, Neila, and Ronit Lentin. 1997. “The ‘Comfort Women’ System during World War II: Asian Women as Targets of Mass Rape and Sexual Slavery by Japan.” In Gender and Catastrophe, edited by Ronit Lentin, 144–54. London: Zed Books.

Authors: Neila Sancho, Ronit Lentin

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Women, Gender-Based Violence, Security, Sexual Violence, Rape Regions: Asia, East Asia Countries: Japan

Year: 1997

Citation:

Sideris, Tina. 2000. “Rape in War and Peace: Some Thoughts on Social Context and Gender Roles.” Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity 16 (43): 41–5. doi:10.1080/10130950.2000.9675810.

Author: Tina Sideris

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Gender Roles, Gendered Power Relations, Sexual Violence, Rape

Year: 2000

Citation:

Hicks, George L. 1997. The Comfort Women: Japan’s Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.

Author: George L. Hicks

Abstract:

Over 100,000 women across Asia were victims of enforced prostitution by the Japanese Imperial Forces during World War II. Until as recently as 1993 the Japanese government continued to deny this shameful aspect of its wartime history. George Hicks's book is the only history in English regarding this terrible enslavement of women.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Women, Gender-Based Violence, Sexual Violence, Rape, Trafficking, Sex Trafficking Regions: Asia, East Asia Countries: Japan

Year: 1997

Citation:

Schreck, Laurel. 2000. “Turning Point: A Special Report on the Refugee Reproductive Health Field.” International Family Planning Perspectives 26 (4): 162–66.

Author: Laurel Schreck

Abstract:

Focuses on the efforts to improve the delivery of reproductive health services to refugees worldwide. Adoption by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees of its Policy for Refugee Women in 1990; Heightened awareness in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda; Role of donors and nongovernmental organizations in meeting the refugees' reproductive health needs. (EBSCO)

Topics: Displacement & Migration, Refugees, Health, Reproductive Health, International Organizations, Sexual Violence, Rape

Year: 2000

Citation:

Littlewood, Roland. 1997. “Military Rape.” Anthropology Today 13 (2): 7-16.

Author: Roland Littlewood

Topics: Armed Conflict, Combatants, Male Combatants, Gender, Gendered Power Relations, Masculinism, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Militarism, Paramilitaries, Sexual Violence, Rape, Sexuality

Year: 1997

Citation:

Onyejekwe, Chineze J. 2005. “Women, War, Peace-Building and Reconstruction." International Social Science Journal 57, no. 184, 277–83.

Author: Chineze J. Onyejekwe

Abstract:

Gender-based violence, especially sexual violence, has become a weapon of warfare and one of the defining characteristics of contemporary armed conflict. This paper focuses on women's protection in armed conflict and their centrality to conflict resolution and peace building. The experiences of women and girls in war and conflict situations are described. Constraints women face in participating in post-conflict peace building are also analysed. The role of the United Nations in engendering peace through Security Council Resolution 1325 is analyzed as well.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Women, Girls, Gender-Based Violence, International Organizations, Peacebuilding, Peace Processes, Post-Conflict, Post-Conflict Reconstruction, UN Security Council Resolutions on WPS, UNSCR 1325, Sexual Violence

Year: 2005

Citation:

Skjelsbæk, Inger. 2001. “Sexual Violence in Times of War: A New Challenge for Peace Operations?” International Peacekeeping 8 (2): 69–84. doi:10.1080/13533310108413896.

Author: Inger Skjelsbæk

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Peacebuilding, Peace Processes, Post-Conflict, Sexual Violence

Year: 2001

Citation:

Sasson-Levy, Orna. 2003. “Feminism and Military Gender Practices: Israeli Women Soldiers in 'Masculine' Roles.” Sociological Inquiry 73 (3): 440-65.

Author: Orna Sasson-Levy

Abstract:

Women's military service is the focus of an ongoing controversy because of its implications for the gendered nature of citizenship. While liberal feminists endorse equal service as a venue for equal citizenship, radical feminists see women's service as a reification of martial citizenship and cooperation with a hierarchical and sexist institution. These debates, however, tend to ignore the perspective of the women soldiers themselves.

This paper seeks to add to the contemporary debate on women's military service the subjective dimension of gender and national identities of women soldiers serving in “masculine” roles. I use a theory of identity practices in order to analyze the interaction between state institutions and identity construction. Based on in-depth interviews, I argue that Israeli women soldiers in “masculine” roles shape their gender identities according to the hegemonic masculinity of the combat soldier through three interrelated practices: (1) mimicry of combat soldiers’ bodily and discursive practices; (2) distancing from “traditional femininity”; and (3) trivialization of sexual harassment.

These practices signify both resistance and compliance with the military dichotomized gender order. While these transgender performances subvert the hegemonic norms of masculinity and femininity, they also collaborate with the military androcentric norms. Thus, although these women soldiers individually transgress gender boundaries, they internalize the military's masculine ideology and values and learn to identify with the patriarchal order of the army and the state. This accounts for a pattern of “limited inclusion” that reaffrms their marginalization, thus prohibiting them from developing a collective consciousness that would challenge the gendered structure of citizenship.

Topics: Combatants, Female Combatants, Feminisms, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Femininity/ies, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Sexual Violence Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Israel

Year: 2003

Citation:

Tétreault, Mary Ann. 2006. “The Sexual Politics of Abu Ghraib: Hegemony, Spectacle, and the Global War on Terror.” NWSA Journal 18 (3): 33–50.

Author: Mary Ann Tétreault

Abstract:

Revelations of the torture, murder, and maltreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq came with sensational photographs of U.S. military personnel torturing Iraqi prisoners and forcing them to perform sexualized acts. Evidence of gross violations of international law, the photographs have been used by U.S. elites to construct a discourse not about war crimes but "prisoner abuse, " some referring to the activities recorded as analogous to fraternity hazing. In this essay, I argue that the photos reflect complex reactions to the attacks of September 11, 2001, including a need to assert U.S. global dominance by punishing those who are, in American eyes, an inferior oriental enemy. The photographs are analyzed in the context of orientalism in the U.S. chain of command, a phenomenon linked to what feminists call "the politics of the gaze" - the vulnerability of women and other subalterns to virtual as well as actual violation by those in positions of domination. They are compared to evidence of other rituals of violence, such as lynching, orchestrated by elites and imitated by popular-culture entrepreneurs. The sexual politics of Abu Ghraib includes the deployment of female figures to brand, scapegoat, and repair the damage from discovery of the photographs, thereby trivializing the policies and behaviors of U.S. officials and eliding the American public's responsibility for the continued U.S. failure to condemn, much less to halt, the torture carried out in their name.

Keywords: hegemony, Torture, war crimes, orientalism, pornography, rituals of violence

Topics: Combatants, Gender, Justice, War Crimes, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Sexual Violence, Male Perpetrators, Rape, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, Torture, Sexual Torture Regions: MENA, Americas, North America, Asia, Middle East Countries: Iraq, United States of America

Year: 2006

Citation:

Pratt, Marion, and Leah Werchick. 2004. Sexual Terrorism: Rape as a Weapon of War in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo: An Assessment of Programmatic Responses to Sexual Violence in North Kivu, South Kivu, Maniema, and Orientale Provinces. Washington DC: United States Agency for International Development, Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance.

Authors: Marion Pratt, Leah Werchick

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Gender-Based Violence, International Law, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Sexual Violence, Rape

Year: 2004