Violence

Gender, Violence, and International Crisis

Citation:

Caprioli, Mary, and Mark A. Boyer. 2001. "Gender, Violence, and International Crisis." The Journal of Conflict Resolution 45 (4): 503-18.

Authors: Mary Caprioli, Mark A. Boyer

Abstract:

Women work for peace, and men wage war--cooperative women, conflictual men. These images pervade conventional wisdom about the efficacy of women in leadership roles and decision-making environments, but imagery is not always grounded in reality . Feminist international relations literature is examined to understand how domestic gender equality may help predict a state's international crisis behavior. The authors use the record of female leaders as primary decision makers during international crises and then test the relationship between domestic gender equality and a state's use of violence internationally. The International Crisis Behavior (ICB) data set and multinomial logistic regression are used to test the level of violence exhibited during international crises by states with varying levels of domestic gender equality. Results show that the severity of violence in crisis decreases as domestic gender equality increases.

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Gender Roles, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Violence

Year: 2001

Small Arms, Violence and Gender in Papua New Guinea: Towards a Research Agenda

Citation:

Capie, David. 2011. "Small Arms, Violence and Gender in Papua New Guinea: Towards a Research Agenda." Asia Pacific Viewpoint 52 (1): 42-55.

Author: David Capie

Abstract:

Among Pacific states, Papua New Guinea (PNG) has attracted the most attention from researchers looking at problems caused by small arms and light weapons. There is now a substantive body of work cataloguing different aspects of the country's problems with firearms and gun violence. This research sits alongside a large scholarly literature on violence in PNG and the connection between violence, gender and masculine identities. There has, however, been strikingly little research bringing these literatures together and looking directly at the gendered dimensions of PNG's gun violence. This paper explores some connections between small arms, violence and gender in PNG. After providing a general overview of small arms issues in PNG, it examines the misuse of firearms in urban crime and inter-communal fighting in the Highlands, specifically noting the limited evidence that is available about the differently gendered consequences of gun violence. It identifies three potential areas for further research: exploring the relationship between changing notions of masculinity and demand for firearms; gender and PNG's growing private security industry; and fragile signs of change in the role of women in the PNG Defence Force.

 

Keywords: Gender, Papua New Guinea, small arms, violence

Topics: Gender, Masculinity/ies, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Private Military & Security, Violence, Weapons /Arms Regions: Oceania Countries: Papua New Guinea

Year: 2011

The Quest for Masculinity in a Defeated France, 1940-1945

Citation:

Capdevila, Luc. 2001. "The Quest for Masculinity in a Defeated France, 1940-1945." Contemporary European History 10 (3, Theme Issue: Gender and War in Europe c. 1918-1949): 423-45.

Author: Luc Capdevila

Abstract:

This article provides a detailed analysis of the individuals who enrolled in Vichy fighting units at the end of the German occupation. Those groups were mostly created in late 1943 and early 1944, and acted as effective subsidiaries to German troops, treating civilians and partisans with extreme violence. The enrolment of those men was a consequence of their political beliefs, notably strong anti-communism. But the fact that their behaviour seems born of desperation (some were recruited after D-Day) is a hint that it was shaped according to other cultural patterns, especially an image of masculinity rooted in the memory of the First World War and developed, among others, according to fascist and Nazi ideologies: a manhood based on strength, the violence of warfare and the image of the soldier. This article provides an analysis based on judiciary documents from the time of the purge, with a careful reconstruction of personal trajectories and self discourse in order to understand the masculine identity these sometimes very young men tried to realise through political engagement in the guise of warriors. (Cambridge Journals)

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Topics: Armed Conflict, Occupation, Combatants, Male Combatants, Gender, Men, Masculinity/ies, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Non-State Armed Groups, Violence Regions: Europe, Western Europe Countries: France

Year: 2001

Sex in the Shadow of Rome: Sexual Violence and Theological Lament in Talmudic Disaster Tales

Citation:

Belser, Julia Watts. 2014. “Sex in the Shadow of Rome: Sexual Violence and Theological Lament in Talmudic Disaster Tales.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 30 (1): 5–24.

Author: Julia Watts Belser

Abstract:

This article analyzes the representation of rape in three narratives from the Babylonian Talmud’s account of the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and discusses the connection between sexual violence, enslavement, and colonial domination. These narratives mimic pervasive Roman symbolism of imperial dominance as a form of “sexual conquest,” using that symbolism to express rabbinic lament and violation at the hands of Rome. These stories express elements of rabbinic resistance to imperial domination, emphasizing Jewish resilience even in the midst of intense suffering. Yet the symbolic and theological significance afforded to rape in these narratives also reinscribes the vulnerability and invisibility of women and enslaved people in both rabbinic and Roman cultures. By using rape to conceptualize divine woundedness and rabbinic lament, these narratives privilege the theological significance of Roman violation over the brutal body cost of imperial conquest.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Ethnic/Communal Wars, Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Gender, Gender-Based Violence, Religion, Sexual Violence, Male Perpetrators, Rape, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, Sexual Slavery, SV against Women, Violence Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East

Year: 2014

War, Gender and Culture: Mozambican Women Refugees

Citation:

Sideris, Tina. 2003. "War, Gender and Culture: Mozambican Women Refugees." Social Science & Medicine 56 (4): 713-24.

Author: Tina Sideris

Abstract:

Analyses of the psychological sequelae of war-related violence for women tend to rely on the concepts developed in research on male combatants. Post-traumatic stress disorder or varying combinations of its symptoms are identified as the principal outcomes of war-related events for women. By and large, the dominant literature does not examine possible outcomes which could be specified by gender. This paper refers to the war in Mozambique during the 1970s and 1980s as a typical illustration of how women are an integral part of the battlefield. It draws on research on African women and uses testimony of Mozambican women refugees who settled in South Africa to explore how gender is linked to psycho-social outcomes of massive social conflict. The paper argues that a richer understanding of the psycho-social outcomes of war and the needs of survivors is promoted by investigating gender in specific historical situations and how this frames the responses people have to experiences of violence and social destruction.

 

 

Keywords: women refugees, Gender, PTSD, war, South Africa

Topics: Armed Conflict, Displacement & Migration, Refugees, Gender, Women, Health, PTSD, Violence Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: Mozambique

Year: 2003

Violence and Dalit Women’s Resistance in Rural Bihar

Citation:

Srivastava, Sumit S. 2007. “Violence and Dalit Women’s Resistance in Rural Bihar.” Indian Anthropologist 37 (2): 31–44.

Author: Sumit S. Srivastava

Abstract:

The present study analyses the participation of dalit women in the naxalite movement in Bihar as a strategy of their empowerment and liberation from gender exploitation and patriarchy. The overlapping categories of caste along with class are of prime importance in our study. The broad objectives of the study are to explore experiences of violence and in response to it the nature and viability of gendering naxalite movement in Bihar. Such modes of resistance encounter different set of oppression and sites. The issues of participation are those of equal land rights and recourse to retaliation in cases of violation of dignity and violence. Similarly, the 'othering' of dalit women seen in the targeted killings of these women in massacres by landed gentry is also explored. In conclusion, the study argues that there are multiple forms of violence which require that gender and violence to be critically interpreted in the framework of caste. Most importantly, the resistance to violence by dalit women in Bihar aims to negotiate sexual exploitation and patriarchy thereby enhancing their functionalities to the optimum.

Keywords: Bihar, violence, Dalit women, Naxalite movement

Topics: Caste, Class, Gender, Women, Girls, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Sexual Violence, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, Violence Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 2007

Developing Policy on Integration and Re/Construction in Kosova

Citation:

Corrin, Chris. 2003. “Developing Policy on Integration and Re/Construction in Kosova.” Development in Practice 13 (2/3): 189–207.

Author: Chris Corrin

Abstract:

The Gender Audit (GA) and associated reports and reviews drawn upon in this article enable an evaluation of how far the intervention processes at work in Kosova since 1999 have been inclusive of gender analysis and supportive of women's and girls' needs and interests. This assessment considers the strengths and drawbacks of various attempts to use and implement gender-sensitive projects. The GA was designed to support the emerging feminist reconstructive politics in Kosova. Its findings and recommendations tackle aspects of empowerment, equity, and opportunities, outlining some developments from community activism as well as outcomes of the international administration. By considering developments over a two-year period, it is possible to place issues of equity and opportunities in the context of change over time, with change at local and national levels linked with developing international dialogues. The article analyses local work undertaken by the Kosova Women's Network to overcome violence against women in war and domestic peace, and reviews international work engaged in by the Kosovo [sic] Women's Initiative (KWI). Many Kosovar women (of all ethnicities) do fully acknowledge their community membership, and recognise the risks involved in talking across their differences to achieve everyday security and reconciliation. International reports and reviews such as those produced in 2002 by the UN Secretary-General and UNIFEM on women, war, peace, and security, as well as the review of the KWI, allow an assessment of how dialogues are changing and what the potential impact of such change might be on policy development and implementation.

Topics: Gender, Women, Gender Analysis, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equity, International Organizations, Peacebuilding, Post-Conflict, Security, Violence Regions: Europe, Balkans, Eastern Europe Countries: Kosovo

Year: 2003

Gendered Frontiers of Land Control: Indigenous Territory, Women and Contests over Land in Ecuador

Citation:

Radcliffe, Sarah A. 2013. “Gendered Frontiers of Land Control: Indigenous Territory, Women and Contests over Land in Ecuador.” Gender, Place & Culture. doi:10.1080/0966369X.2013.802675.

Author: Sarah A. Radcliffe

Abstract:

Agricultural and rural land has become the site of considerable policy, governmental and scholarly concern worldwide because of violence and dispossession, food insecurity and contests over private property regimes. Such issues are highly gendered in territories with majorities of indigenous populations where overlapping legal regimes (statutory, multicultural, customary) and histories of dispossession have created complex spatialities and access patterns. States' formalization of indigenous rights, neoliberal restructuring and land appropriation are the backdrop to Ecuadorian women's struggles to access, retain and pass on land. Despite a burgeoning literature on Latin American indigenous territories, women are often invisible. Using collaborative research among two indigenous nationalities, the article analyses the political–economic, legal and de facto regimes shaping women's claims to land and indigenous territory. Focusing on Kichwa women in the rural Andes and Tsáchila women in a tropical export-oriented agricultural frontier area, the article examines the criteria and exclusionary practices that operate at multiple scales to shape women's (in)security in tenure. Women's struggles over claims to land and territory are also discussed. The article argues that Latin America's fraught land politics requires a gendered account of indigenous land–territoriality to unpack the cultural bias of western feminist accounts of multiculturalism and to document the racialized gender bias across socio-institutional relations.

Keywords: gender, neoliberalism, collective title, Ecuador, land grabs, multiculturalism

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2011). Women’s position regarding landed property rights and market liberalization since the 1990s (Agarwal 2003; Razavi 2007) has been more extensively documented in Sub- Saharan Africa than elsewhere (Carney 1998; Watson, Adams, and Mutiso 1998; Gray and Kevane 1999), as have the interplays between customary procedures, multicultural and gender reforms, and markets (Whitehead and Tsikata 2003; Tripp 2004). Reflecting the scarcity of detailed substantive research (Jacobs 2009, 1677), little has been written about women in racial subaltern populations in Latin America; Mollett’s (2010) account of women’s struggles to register land in a protected area is a rare exception.” (2)

Territory carries weighty symbolic importance for ethnic politics which, as discussed below, is often articulated in highly gendered terms. For these interrelated reasons, land – territory comprises multifaceted problems for indigenous women. Indigenous women as citizens may have one claim on land, but their cultural-symbolic claim may be articulated differently, while an economic relation with land may be shaped by political–economic pressures.” (2)

“This article highlights how gendered relations with land are configured through a combination of ongoing dispossession of racialized populations, through legally established differences in men’s and women’s status, and the grounded realities of women’s political–economic (not merely sociosymbolic) position in ethnic communities. Through a comparative case study, the article tracks the processes that shape the criteria and practices through which women come to claim and secure access – and in some cases, legal title to land-territory (cf. Paulson 2003).” (2)

“Customary laws concerning landed territory are often considered to ensure its beneficial use for the specific group and prohibit alienation of part or whole. Unlike many Latin American countries’ civil codes (namely, land ownership rights derive exclusively from property’s social function, i.e. agricultural use), ‘customary law sees exclusive rights of possession flowing from use, occupancy, practical and spiritual knowledge, and religious and spiritual ties to the land’ (Griffiths 2004, 51).” (3)

“An Ecuadorian government survey found that indigenous and rural women had less access to land than men. Female-headed households were particularly likely to have minimal landed property (less than half on average, 4 hectares vs. 10 hectares) (Secretar ́ıa Te ́cnica 1998, 126). Among indigenous women, the survey found that few female-headed households had any land at all; male-headed indigenous households held on average eight times the amount of land of female-headed households (5.7 hectares vs. 0.8 hectares). Rural women, including indigenous women, were also more likely to rent land for production than their male counterparts (Secretar ́ıa Te ́cnica 1998, 127). At the same time, indigenous movements articulated a specific gendered discourse of cultural-symbolic claims over land – territory.” (4)

“As land prices soar, gender ideologies undercut the security of individual women’s claims as they are considered ‘second class’ claimants. This is indirectly evidenced by the fact that around one-quarter of interviewees had no land–territory, living solely on their husbands’. Moreover, and as in Honduras, ‘a process of racialization that devalues ... customary collective tenure arrangements in favour of individuation ... as a result, intensifies gender struggles’ (Mollett 2010, 359). Women living alone, especially if unmarried or older, are likely to be displaced from land, even in natal communities.” (10)

“Through national organizations, Ecuadorian indigenous women support ethnic group rights to territory, autonomy and development resources, and they organize over- whelmingly via ethnic associations rather than feminist organizations.” (11)

“Racialized gender bias lies at the heart of indigenous struggles over land–territory. Indigenous women express strategic interests regarding land–territory, although more in Kichwa than in Tsa ́chila areas. A new generation of indigenous female leaders has emerged at the national level and provinces such as Chimborazo to challenge the gender politics around land–territory. Yet indigenous women do not articulate their strategic interests in ways that challenge the overall goal of collective territory; as such, their activism challenges western feminist assumptions that women’s individual rights are better addressed outside the framework of group rights.” (13)

“Ecuador continues to have one of Latin America’s worst land distributions (Gini coefficient of over 0.8). President Rafael Correa has vowed to address land inequalities, framing it in populist terms as peasants battling corrupt business interests. Meanwhile, draft laws on water, and food sovereignty, generate indigenous protests against what they perceive as the government’s willingness to permit environmental degradation and mining, activities that undercut the buen vivir commitments of the 2008 Constitution.” (13)

Topics: Agriculture, Gender, Women, Indigenous, Land Grabbing, Land Tenure, Political Economies, Race, Rights, Indigenous Rights, Land Rights, Property Rights, Women's Rights, Violence Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Ecuador

Year: 2013

The Political Economy of Violence against Women during Armed Conflict in Uganda

Citation:

Turshen, Meredeth. 2000. “The Political Economy of Violence against Women during Armed Conflict in Uganda.” Social Research 67 (3): 803–24.

Author: Meredeth Turshen

Abstract:

The article focuses on the economic and political violence against women during civil war in Uganda. Testimonies of women who were raped and tortured by soldiers during war in Uganda is given in the article. Rape is known to be the most common act of violence against women during wartime, and it is also an act of political violence as women who are raped are abolished from their communities. The diseased women lose their eligibility to get married and lose their access to agricultural livelihood. According to a report presented in the article women are considered as property by the Ugandan soldiers. The author says that these gender disputes can be avoided by providing free education and adult literacy classes that would help to rehabilitate women. (EBSCO)

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Women, Political Economies, Sexual Violence, Rape, SV against Women, Violence Regions: Africa, East Africa Countries: Uganda

Year: 2000

Women, Economy, War

Citation:

Nordstrom, Carolyn. 2010. “Women, Economy, War.” International Review of the Red Cross 92 (877): 161–76.

Author: Carolyn Nordstrom

Abstract:

Political violence amplifies contemporary trends occurring worldwide in the twenty-first century: globalization, an increasing reliance on the informal economy, a shift from twentieth-century manufacturing to resource and labour wildcatting, and the growth of complex international extra-legal trade networks. Women are central to all of these, though their roles both as leaders of development and victims of violence are often overlooked in mainstream analyses. To explain these invisibilities, this article introduces the concept of vanishing points – places where formal analyses and policy effectively cease, such as the dividing lines between formal and informal economies, and the violence associated with controlling extra-legal profits that is effectively invisible to the public at large. The realities of women’s work amid political violence and postwar development, and across the spectrum of in/formality are explored. The conclusions serve to challenge established notions of power, profit, and economy, and the role of gender within these.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Economies, Gender, Women, Globalization, Livelihoods, Political Economies, Violence

Year: 2010

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