Violence Against Women as a Political Act: Toward a Typology of Gendered Messages

ABSTRACT

The pervasiveness of violence against women has drawn the attention of international audiences in multilateral fora, media, and academia. Feminist researchers across social sciences have attempted to make sense of violent acts that target women and feminised bodies, especially by unravelling their causes and motivations. A particular approach sees violence against women as a political act that delivers gendered messages to individuals and communities. In this paper, we develop a typology of the messages conveyed by acts of violence against women. We argue that deciphering these messages is quintessential to making sense of gender violence, namely when it targets women.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Dr. Melina Mörschbächer and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on this paper.

Notes

1 Aggestam and Towns (2018, chapter 1) affirm that the WPS initiative contributed to push gender mainstreaming in international fora and national diplomacies, triggering a more profound debate about women’s roles in conflict and peace negotiations.

2 For a brief overview of different theories in psychology, epidemiology, criminal studies, and anthropology, see Heise (1998) and True (2012, chapter 2). For a more robust anthropological discussion, see Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois, (2003).

3 Crawford (2013, 515), speaking about wartime sexual violence, makes a similar point:

Just as “women” and “gender” are not synonymous, responding to sexual violence should not be considered a substitute for careful consideration of the myriad forms of gender-based violence and inequality that shape daily life in peacetime and in conflict zones.

4 Baaz and Stern’s (2009) study of rape in the Democratic Republic of Congo demonstrate how aggressors perceive rape in different ways, namely lust rape and violent rape. As we are specifically interested in how victims and their communities understand the language of violence against women, we shall not concentrate our attention on how aggressors interpret their acts of violence.

5 As expectations about gender roles change from peacetime to wartime (Sjoberg 2016, 144), so do gender violence and violence against women. Therefore, treating violences that take place in conflict settings separately from those that take place in peacetime is quintessential to understanding the messages each act of violence in each of these contexts conveys. As Sjoberg (2016, 154–155; emphasis in original) affirms: ‘The gendered dehumanization of the direct victim, the gendered emasculation of the direct and proximate targets, and the gendered masculinization of the direct perpetrator and his/her allies all communicate gendered messages’.

Additional information

Funding

This research resulted from a research grant provided by National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq). For reference: Grant Pibic/CNPq 2020-04, PVM 1186-2020.