Gender And Violence Against Political Actors

"This edited volume brings together U.S. and European scholars within political science, comparative politics, international relations, and other related disciplines and practitioner fields to offer theoretical and methodological perspectives on gender and political violence and to encourage conversation across subfields and disciplines on the topic"--

Women have made significant inroads into political life in recent years, but in many parts of the world, their increased engagement has spurred attacks, intimidation, and harassment. This book provides the first comprehensive account of this phenomenon, exploring how women came to give these experiences a name: violence against women in politics. Tracing its global emergence as a concept, Mona Lena Krook draws on insights from multiple disciplines--political science, sociology, history, gender studies, economics, linguistics, psychology, and forensic science--to develop a more robust version of this concept to support ongoing activism and inform future scholarly work. Krook argues that violence against women in politics is not simply a gendered extension of existing definitions of political violence privileging physical aggressions against rivals. Rather, it is a distinct phenomenon involving a broad range of harms to attack and undermine women as political actors, taking physical, psychological, sexual, economic, and semiotic forms. Incorporating a wide range of country examples, she illustrates what this violence looks like in practice, catalogues emerging solutions around the world, and considers how to document this phenomenon more effectively. Highlighting its implications for democracy, human rights, and gender equality, the book asserts that addressing this issue requires ongoing dialogue and collaboration to ensure women's equal rights to participate--freely and safely--in political life around the globe.

This work explores the links between political, economic and social violence and illustrates how local community organizations run and managed by women play a key role throughout conflict situations, not only for meeting basic needs, but also as advocates, fostering trust and collaboration.

This book provides a holistic analysis of the gendered nature of armed conflict and political violence, and in a broader understanding of the complex, changing roles and power relations between women and men during such circumstances, predominantly viewed as 'male domains', perpetrated by men acting as soldiers, guerillas, paramilitaries or peacemakers. The involvement of women has received far less attention, with a tendency to portray a simplistic division of roles between men as aggressors and women as victims, particularly of sexual abuse. Consequently the gendered causes, costs and consequences of violent conflicts have been, at best, under-represented and, most often, misrepresented.

Women have made significant inroads into political life in recent years, but in many parts of the world, their increased engagement has spurred attacks, intimidation, and harassment. This book provides the first comprehensive account of this phenomenon, exploring how women came to give these experiences a name: violence against women in politics. Tracing its global emergence as a concept, Mona Lena Krook draws on insights from multiple disciplines--political science, sociology, history, gender studies, economics, linguistics, psychology, and forensic science--to develop a more robust version of this concept to support ongoing activism and inform future scholarly work. Krook argues that violence against women in politics is not simply a gendered extension of existing definitions of political violence privileging physical aggressions against rivals. Rather, it is a distinct phenomenon involving a broad range of harms to attack and undermine women as political actors, taking physical, psychological, sexual, economic, and semiotic forms. Incorporating a wide range of country examples, she illustrates what this violence looks like in practice, catalogues emerging solutions around the world, and considers how to document this phenomenon more effectively. Highlighting its implications for democracy, human rights, and gender equality, the book asserts that addressing this issue requires ongoing dialogue and collaboration to ensure women's equal rights to participate--freely and safely--in political life around the globe.

Gender-based violence in politics is a significant and growing problem that threatens the democratic process in Canada. Despite its prevalence, little academic research has been conducted on this topic to date. Gender-Based Violence in Canadian Politics in the #MeToo Era raises awareness of and presents new innovative research on this timely and pressing public issue. Here, leading experts from across Canada uncover critical new insights and identify potential solutions that would help address gender-based violence in politics, improve gender equality, and strengthen Canadian democracy. Using an intersectional lens, chapters range in their approaches; offer new concepts and measures of gender-based violence in online political spaces, political media coverage and cartoons, campaigns, municipal politics, and legislatures; and explore Indigenous ways of knowing about gender-based violence in Canadian politics. Additionally, the volume presents recommendations for decision-makers, policymakers, anti-violence advocates, and the academic community on how to best address the problem of gender-based violence in the political sphere.

At publication date, a free ebook version of this title will be available through Luminos, University of California Press’s open access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Since the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban government in Afghanistan, violence against women has emerged as the single most important issue for Afghan gender politics. The Pitfalls of Protection, based on research conducted in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2015, locates the struggles over gender violence in local and global power configurations. The author finds that aid flows and geopolitics have served as both opportunities and obstacles to feminist politics in Afghanistan. Showing why Afghan activists often chose to use the leverage of Western powers instead of entering into either protracted negotiations with powerful national actors or broad political mobilization, the book examines both the achievements and the limits of this strategy.

What are the factors that shape domestic violence policy change and how are variable gendered meanings produced in these policies? How and when can feminists influence policy making? What conditions and policy mechanisms lead to progressive change and which ones block it or lead to reversal? The Gender Politics of Domestic Violence analyzes the emergence of gender equality sensitive domestic violence policy reforms in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Tracing policy developments in Eastern Europe from the beginning of 2000s, when domestic violence first emerged on policy agendas, until 2015, Andrea Krizsán and Conny Roggeband look into the contestation that takes place between women’s movements, states and actors opposing gender equality to explain the differences in gender equality sensitive policy outputs across the region. They point to regionally specific patterns of feminist engagement with the state in which coalition-building between women’s organizations and establishing alliances with different state actors were critical for achieving gendered policy progress. In addition, they demonstrate how discursive contexts shaped by democratization frames and opposition to gender equality, led to differences in the politicization of gender equality, making gender friendly reforms more feasible in some countries than others.