Abstract
Introduction. Violence against women in politics (VAWP) is a specific form of gender-based violence that is receiving growing attention from research, because it threatens the progress made in women’s political representation. However, there are few works on how to design legislation against VAWP. Objectives. This article contributes to filling this gap by analysing how the Bolivian legislation influenced norms of VAWP drafted and passed by other countries and international organisations in Latin America, the country where more efforts of this kind have taken place – the 243/2012 Bolivian Law on Political Violence and Harassment against Women was the first law on VAWP in the world –. Methodology. The research draws on qualitative content analysis of the legislation and semi-structured interviews with Bolivian women’s activists, officials and MPs. Results, conclusions and discussion. I argue that four specific features of the Bolivian legislation have had a major influence on other norms on VAWP: (i) a wide and detailed definition of VAWP; (ii) the attribution to the electoral organ of competences to prevent VAWP; (iii) the establishment of political parties’ responsibilities; (iv) the (incomplete) adoption of an intersectional perspective.
Highlights
Violence against women in politics (VAWP) is a specific form of gender-based violence that is receiving growing attention from research, because it threatens the progress made in women’s political representation
The respondents were purposively selected with the aim of obtaining a precise view of the process of politicization of VAWP and the elaboration of legislation against VAWP in Bolivia’s Law on Political Organisations (Bolivia), which led me to include in the sample former ministers, MPs and officials, members of ACOBOL and other women’s organizations that were directly involved in the drafting of the 243 Law and its decree, and international experts involved in the drafting on international legislation on VAWP or who have analyzed the policy diffusion of the Bolivian legislation
The specific behaviors and actions that fall into the definitions of harassment and political violence in the Bolivian legislation are detailed in article 8 of the 243 Law and article 2 of the 2935 Decree
Summary
In 2012, Bolivian councilwoman Juana Quispe was murdered after months of sexist harassment and aggressions. Research on how to tackle VAWP through law includes Albaine’s (2017) comparative research on existing laws and draft laws on VAWP in Latin America, Restrepo Sanín’s (2018) investigation on the limitations of the definitions of VAWP followed by some laws, and the analysis of the debates that preceded the approval of the 243 Law in Bolivia carried out by Cabezas Fernández (2014b). Existing literature suggests that Bolivian legislation has influenced other countries’ legislative initiatives on VAWP (Krook and Restrepo Sanín 2016a) and international norms (Restrepo Sanín, 2018), but no research has investigated yet which specific features of the Bolivian legislation influenced other countries and how, which is the question addressed by the present article. There is an open discussion in the literature on the boundaries of the concept of VAWP, focused on which specific forms of violence should be included within the notion of VAWP
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