SV against Women

Citation:

Author: Susan M. Manning

Abstract:

This article uses the lens of intersectionality to analyze secondary data gathered by international human rights organizations investigating women’s experiences of sexual violence near Barrick Gold’s mine in the Porgera valley of Papua New Guinea. This case study provides an example of how an intersectional framework can be useful to feminist researchers exploring North–South power relationships in the context of resource extraction, by helping us ask nuanced questions about the benefits and costs of resource extraction in the Global South. In this article, intersectionality helps to trace the transnational relationships of power that shape women’s experiences of violence in Porgera, and Barrick Gold’s remediation policy for survivors. Intersectionality serves as a useful tool to map the systems of power at work in Porgera and to make visible the structural violence implicit in the relationship between Canada and Papua New Guinea created by Barrick Gold’s operation.

Keywords: intersectionality, sexual violence, mining, Canada, corporate social responsibility

Topics: Extractive Industries, Feminisms, Gender, Women, Gender Analysis, Gendered Power Relations, Sexual Violence, SV against Women Regions: Americas, North America, Oceania Countries: Canada, Papua New Guinea

Year: 2016

Citation:

Schott, Robin May. 2015. “What is the Sex Doing in the Genocide? A Feminist Philosophical Response.” European Journal of Women’s Studies 22 (4): 397-411.

Author: Robin May Schott

Abstract:

This article reviews the literature on Holocaust and genocide studies to consider the question, ‘what is the sex doing in the genocide?’ Of the three answers usually given: (1) sexual violence is like other forms of genocidal violence, (2) sexual violence is a coordinate in genocide and (3) sexual violence is integral to genocidal violence, the author argues for the third position, but takes issue with Catharine MacKinnon’s claim that sexual violence destroys women as a group, thereby destroying the ethnic, racial, religious, or national group to which women belong. Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s concept of natality, the author argues that sexual violence is an attack on a fundamental condition for the possibility of the existence of human groups. When political violence is used to force biological birth in the service of death, it is a form of thanatonatality.

Keywords: genocide, Holocaust, natality, sexual violence, thanatonatality

Topics: Ethnicity, Gender, Women, Gendered Discourses, Gendered Power Relations, Conflict, Genocide, Race, Religion, Sexual Violence, SV against Women, Violence

Year: 2015

Citation:

Mutlu-Numansen, Sofia, and Ringo Ossewaarde. 2015. “Heroines of Gendercide: The Religious Sensemaking of Rape and Abduction in Aramean, Assyrian and Chaldean Migrant Communities.” European Journal of Women’s Studies 22 (4): 428-442. 

Authors: Sofia Mutlu-Numansen, Ringo Ossewaarde

Abstract:

This study seeks to understand a diaspora community narrative of rape and abduction suffered during the genocidal massacre of 1915 in the Ottoman Empire and its aftermath. Based on interviews with 50 Aramean, Assyrian and Chaldean migrants in Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands, whose families are from the village of Bote, known as one of the ‘killing fields’ in southeast Turkey, the article explores the ways in which descendants remember the ‘forgotten genocide’ of Aramean, Assyrian and Chaldean communities in 1915. The research reveals that the descendants of survivors make sense of the sexual violence experienced in Bote mainly through a religious narrative and that, for them, the genocide is, in spite of all the sufferings the males had to go through, a feminized event. In their gendercide narrative, the abducted and raped women are identified as the ‘heroines’ of the genocide.

Keywords: Armenian genocide, feminization, gendercide, migration, narrative, post-genocide, sexual violence

Topics: Displacement & Migration, Migration, Ethnicity, Gender, Women, Conflict, Genocide, Post-Conflict, Sexual Violence, Rape, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, Sexual Slavery, SV against Women, Trafficking, Sex Trafficking Regions: MENA, Asia, Europe, Southern Europe Countries: Turkey

Year: 2015

Citation:

Meiri, Sandra. 2015. “Visual Responses: Women’s Experience of Sexual Violence as Represented in Israeli Holocaust-Related Cinema.” European Journal of Women’s Studies 22 (4): 443-456.  

Author: Sandra Meiri

Abstract:

This article explores the function of Israeli narrative films’ persistent, albeit marginal, portrayal of women as victims of sexual violence during the Holocaust. While the marginalization of such characters may be attributed to the difficulty of representing sexually-related trauma/post-trauma, their portrayal attests both to the ubiquity of sexually-related crimes in the Holocaust and to its aftermath: namely, the persistence of women’s trauma. The first of the two waves of ‘retro films’ examined here evinces the importance of the visual, cinematic representation of women’s trauma. Its main function is to legitimize its disclosure through cinematic aesthetic/artistic mediation, for sexual violence was a crime committed against helpless victims. The second wave includes films made from the point of view of ‘the second generation’, and explores the topic further by dealing with the transmission of post-traumatic symptoms of women’s trauma to the second generation.

Keywords: cinematic visualization, insanity, sexualized violence, the second generation, transmission of women's trauma, unfit motherhood

Topics: Gender, Women, Gendered Discourses, Gender-Based Violence, Genocide, Health, Mental Health, PTSD, Trauma, Sexual Violence, SV against Women Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East, Europe Countries: Israel

Year: 2015

Citation:

Authors: Siri Aas Rustad, Gudrun Østby, Ragnhild Nordås

Abstract:

The natural resource abundance of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has featured in policy debates as the prime example of ‘conflict minerals’ driving conflict-related sexual violence. This narrative has dominated how the conflict in the eastern part of the country has been portrayed in the media and by high-level policy-makers. Despite increased attention to research on mining and gender, systematic analyses of the links between mining, conflict, and sexual violence are scarce. This paper contributes to filling this gap by exploring how artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) and sexual violence are related in Eastern DRC. We combine new subnational data on the geographical location of ASM sites with detailed survey data from the 2013/2014 Demographic and Health survey of women aged 15–49 on their exposure to sexual violence committed by their intimate partners and by others (non-partners). The results indicate that women living in close proximity to ASM are indeed more likely to experience sexual violence of both types, although the effect is stronger for non-partner sexual violence. In the Kivus and Maniema, the risk of experiencing non-partner sexual is particularly high for women that live close to a mine with the presence of an armed actor.

Keywords: armed conflict, ASM, Democratic Republic of the Congo, sexual violence, Mineral mining

Topics: Armed Conflict, Extractive Industries, Gender, Women, Sexual Violence, SV against Women Regions: Africa, Central Africa Countries: Democratic Republic of the Congo

Year: 2016

Citation:

Mattocks, Kristin M., Anne Sadler, Elizabeth M. Yano, Erin E. Krebs, Laurie Zephyrin, Cynthia Brandt, Rachel Kimerling, Theo Sandfort, Melissa E. Dichter, Jeffrey J. Weiss, Jeroan Allison, and Sally Haskell. 2013. “Sexual Victimization, Health Status, and VA Healthcare Utilization Among Lesbian and Bisexual OEF/OIF Veterans.” Journal of General Internal Medicine 28 (S2): S604–8. 

Authors: Kristin M. Mattocks, Anne Sadler, Elizabeth M. Yano, Erin E. Krebs, Laurie Zephyrin, Cynthia Brandt, Rachel Kimerling, Theo Sandfort, Melissa E. Dichter, Jeffrey J. Weiss, Jeroan Allison, Sally Haskell

Abstract:

Keywords: lesbian, health services research, veterans, women

Topics: Combatants, Female Combatants, Gender, Women, Health, Mental Health, PTSD, Trauma, LGBTQ, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Sexual Violence, SV against Women Regions: Americas, North America Countries: United States of America

Year: 2013

Citation:

Moore, Melinda W., and John R. Barner. 2017. “Sexual Minorities in Conflict Zones: A Review of the Literature.” Aggression and Violent Behavior 35: 33-37.

Authors: Melinda W. Moore, John R. Barner

Abstract:

In civil and ethnic conflict, sexual minorities experience a heightened risk for war crimes such as sexual violence, torture, and death. As a result, sexual minorities remain an invisible population in armed conflict out of a need for safety. Further study of sexual minorities in conflict zones confronts matters of human rights, war crimes, and the psychosocial effects of war. This article reviews the existing research on sexual minorities in conflict zones, examines the findings on human rights, war crimes, and the psychosocial effects of war and violence on sexual minority populations, and reviews the barriers to effectiveness faced by intervention programs developed spe- cifically to aid post-conflict societies. The article concludes with a summary of findings within the literature and further considerations for research on aggression and violent behavior with sexual minority groups in conflict zones.

Keywords: violence, aggression, Sexual minorities, gender, war, armed conflict, human rights

Topics: Armed Conflict, Civil Wars, Ethnic/Communal Wars, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gender-Based Violence, International Law, International Human Rights, Justice, War Crimes, LGBTQ, Rights, Human Rights, Sexual Violence, SV against Men, SV against Women, Torture, Sexual Torture, Violence

Year: 2017

Citation:

Zorn, Jean G. 2016. "Translating and Internalising International Human Rights Law: The Courts of Melanesia Confront Gendered Violence." In Gender Violence & Human Rights: Seeking Justice in Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu, edited by Aletta Biersack, Margaret Jolly, and Martha Macintyre, 229-70. Australia: ANU Press.

Author: Jean G. Zorn

Annotation:

"CEDAW has had a salutary effect on the island nations of the South Pacific, including Papua New Guinea. To say that, however, is not to say very much. To date, CEDAW’s effect has been limited— and the problems of women’s subordination and of widespread, systemic violence against women remain obdurate and intractable. Nevertheless, it is a beginning. Guided by the analyses of Meyersfeld and Koh, who pointed out that the first impact of an international law on the politics, economy and social ordering of any culture will most likely be found in the legal practices of that culture, I sought for evidence of CEDAW in the decisions handed down by judges of the state courts. And, indeed, I found a number of cases—still scattered, but potentially influential—in which judges have not only mentioned CEDAW’s existence, but have actually relied upon it in framing the common law and in applying domestic statutes. In other words, in the Meyersfeld/Koh terminology, judges are aiding the infiltration of this crucially important piece of international law into the domestic legal system" (Zorn, 2016, p. 262).

Topics: Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, International Law, International Human Rights, Rights, Women's Rights, Sexual Violence, SV against Women, Violence Regions: Oceania Countries: Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu

Year: 2016

Citation:

Ahmad, Lida, and Priscyll Anctil Avoice. 2016. “Misogyny in ‘Post-War’ Afghanistan: the Changing Frames of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence.” Journal of Gender Studies 1-16.

Authors: Lida Ahmad, Priscyll Anctil Avoice

Abstract:

Although the US and NATO invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was ideologically justified under the banner of democracy and women’s rights, the latter issue has been completely forgotten within the public sphere since then. As the war has officially ended in Afghanistan, new forms of misogyny and sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) have arisen. The ‘post-war’ Afghan context presents an institutional normalization of violence, favouring a culture of rape and impunity. The changing frames of violence against women are widely related to the political situation of the country: while public attention is focused on peace agreements, women’s issues are relegated to banalities and depicted as ‘everyday’ news. Meanwhile, new frames of SGBV appear as body part mutilation within marriage, forced prostitution, and increasing domestic violence, partly due to the growing consumption of opium but also to the perpetuation of powerful warlords in state structures. This article draws on gender studies to analyse the current misogynist culture in ‘post-war’ Afghanistan, framing the new forms of violence induced by successive armed conflicts. It relies on interviews conducted in 2013 in Afghanistan; and on secondary sources, mostly taken from the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan and Human Rights Watch reports.

Keywords: Afghanistan, misogyny, sexual and gender-based violence, violence, politics, post-war, local initiatives

Topics: Armed Conflict, Domestic Violence, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Governance, Post-Conflict Governance, Post-Conflict, Rights, Women's Rights, Sexual Violence, Rape, SV against Women, Violence Regions: Americas, North America, Asia, South Asia Countries: Afghanistan, United States of America

Year: 2016

Citation:

Kihato, Caroline Wanjiku. 2015. “'Go Back and Tell Them Who the Real Men Are!' Gendering Our Understanding of Kibera’s Post-Election Violence.” International Journal of Conflict and Violence 9 (1): 12-24.

Author: Caroline Wanjiku Kihato

Abstract:

Using a gendered analysis, this article examines the post election violence (PEV) in Kibera, Kenya, between December 2007 and February 2008. Through indepth interviews with Kibera residents, the article interrogates how gender influenced violent mobilizations in Kenya’s most notorious slum. Most scholarly analyses have tended to understand the post-election violence as a result of politicized ethnic identities, class, and local socio-economic dynamics. Implicitly or explicitly, these frameworks assume that women are victims of violence while men are its perpetrators, and ignore the ways in which gender, which cuts across these categories, produces and shapes conflict. Kibera’s conflict is often ascribed to the mobilization of disaffected male youths by political “Big Men.” But the research findings show how men, who would ordinarily not go to war, are obliged to fight to “save face” in their communities and how women become integral to the production of violent exclusionary mobilizations. Significantly, notions of masculinity and femininity modified the character of Kibera’s conflict. Acts of gender-based violence, gang rapes, and forced circumcisions became intensely entwined with ethno-political performances to annihilate opposing groups. The battle for political power was also a battle of masculinities.

Keywords: conflict, xenophobia, violence

Topics: Class, Ethnicity, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gender Roles, Femininity/ies, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Masculinism, Governance, Elections, Sexual Violence, Rape, SV against Women Regions: Africa, East Africa Countries: Kenya

Year: 2015