Addressing Gender Violence Research Articles

Cloth and Iron Dresses: Reading Symbolic Reparation from Postwar Artworks That Address Gender Violence

Cloth and Iron Dresses: Reading Symbolic Reparation from Postwar Artworks That Address Gender Violence

Fighting gender violence with behavioral public policy: scope and limitations

Since the concept of “nudge” was introduced in 2008 by Thaler and Sunstein, proposing that small interventions based on changesin choice architectures can alter people’s behavior and make it easier for them to achieve their desired goals, the application in public policy ofbehavioral economics has gained significant attention. This has led to the emergence of different types of policies based on behavioral insights,which have been used in a variety of areas, including health or finance, with the goal of promoting well-being and addressing social and economicissues. After providing a basic theoretical background as a frame of reference to understand gender violence, this study explores the use of tools from the field of behavioral economics as it is applied in public policy. Regulatory (paternalistic) and non-regulatory (libertarian) interventions based on behavioral insights will be considered: nudges, boosts, shoves, budges, or sludge audits, are examined as potential interventions to use in matters related to this type of violence. After evaluating these behavioral policy instruments and their potential effectiveness, the limitations ofthe behavioral perspective are recognized, and the need for a multifaceted approach to combating gender violence is acknowledged. The article concludes by arguing that public policies addressing gender violence should not only utilize behavioral tools but should also incorporate strategies related to education, legislation, and social norms.

Language Beyond Labeling: Toward a Language Ideologies Analysis of Anti-Violence Interventions.

As scholars explore anti-carceral approaches to gender violence, they question how to structure interactive practices to transform, rather than reproduce, dynamics of inequality and harm. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with frontline workers in north India, this article argues that the concept of language ideologies can help analyze how interactive practices address gender violence. Language ideologies are shared representations of how interaction connects speaker, audience, and context. By tracking the language ideologies that inform anti-violence interventions, researchers can better analyze the extraordinarily complex semiotic labor required to address gender violence.

Boko Haram Insurgency and Violence Against Women and Girls in Nigeria

Nigeria has continued to experience the menace of Boko Haram insurgency over the years. While some progress has been made over the years in curbing the activities of the insurgency in some quarters, the unabated violence against women and its implication on women and girls remain unresolved. As a pointer to the need for a deliberate and focused attention on violence against women and girls due to Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria, this paper, through the review of relevant literature explores the activities of the insurgency and violence against women. This paper further investigates the implication of violence against women and the social structure as whole. The paper concludes by making recommendation on how the menace of Boko Haram insurgency can be addressed in order to address gender violence against women and crime against womanhood.

Occupying the streets, occupying words. Reframing new feminisms through reappropriation

This paper presents a Critical and Socio-Cognitive analysis of protest discourse as created in slogans for feminist rallies taking place in Spain (2017–2020). The study focuses on the discursive evolution of the term manada (‘wolfpack’), from its origins as a metonymy to refer to a gang rape taking place in the San Fermín bullfighting celebration of July 2016, to its reappropriation by feminists to bring attention to gender violence and, most importantly, to create a positive in-group identity of cohesion and empowerment, while delegitimizing and dispossessing the out-group, rapists, of their power. The analysis shows how reappropriation, together with recontextualization and multimodal creativity, helps to understand the impact of a single term, manada, in the transformation of the traditional discourse of fear and threat into one of solidarity and hope when addressing gender violence, as well as its effects on the constructions of new cognitive and social frames within the community.

The Pitfalls of the Italian Response to the International Obligations of Criminalisation of Gender Violence

Abstract Gender oriented international law has historically been at the basis of the development of international sources of coercive obligations for addressing gender violence at the national level. The nature of these obligations range from implicit and presupposed obligations stemming from a framing of intimate partner violence as a serious human rights violation by the international jurisprudence of the ad hoc criminal tribunals as well as by the cedaw Committee and the ECtHR case law, on one hand and, on the other hand, explicit sources of the enactment of national criminal legislation for sanctioning any form of gender violence codified in the Istanbul and Lanzarote Conventions. In the light of such international rationale behind the obligation of criminalisation of gender violence, Italy’s full national compliance proposed and the choice to ‘neutralize’ the symbolic function of criminalisation will be queried and possible remedies for missing profiles of implementation will be proposed.

Women, Peace and Security in Zimbabwe - The Case of Conflict in Non War Zones

The Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda is the United Nation’s (UN) key policy instrument for addressing gender violence in conflict zones. However, the agenda has been preoccupied with “hot” conflicts, and its application and relevance to sustained, but “low level” conflict situations is poorly conceptualized. This research considers this issue through a case study of Zimbabwe since 2000. I make the case for broadening the understanding of conflict as found in the WPS agenda. This paper addresses the question: ‘How does the case of Zimbabwe exemplify the need for a broader understanding of conflict within the WPS agenda as it applies to non-war settings?’ I first consider the nature of non-war zones, adopting a feminist international relations theory perspective, incorporating elements of postcolonial feminist theory and critical race theory. We then review Zimbabwe’s recent history and situate it as a country in non-war conflict zone. We situate Zimbabwe’s recent history clearly within the concept of non-war zones and discuss the nature of gender violence in this setting. My analysis adds to the body of literature and research on non-war zones and argues for broadening the WPS agenda to encompass a broader understanding of conflict, specifically arguing for the centrality of gender-based violence in non-war situations, as exemplified in Zimbabwe’s recent history.

Las universidades frente a la violencia de género. El caso de la Universidad Autónoma de Guanajuato

Se analiza cómo las universidades están actuando frente a la violencia de género. A partir de la propuesta de la teoría fundamentada, se tomó el caso de la denuncia que realizó en 2018 un grupo de estudiantes de la Universidad Autónoma de Guanajuato. A través de entrevistas en profundidad semiestructuradas a autoridades, estudiantes y docentes, se presenta el proceso institucional, con el fin de identificar sus alcances y limitaciones. Se muestra que las autoridades actúan de manera reactiva, con escasas medidas de prevención de la violencia. La falta de una mirada integral y sistemática da como resultado respuestas erráticas y apresuradas, lo cual provoca un malestar generalizado en la comunidad universitaria, sin que haya una atención de fondo a la problemática.

A Girl Activist Inventory

In March 2019, I had the pleasure of giving a talk at Peter Green College at the University of British Columbia that I called “The Politics and Possibilities of Girl-led and Youth-led Arts-based Activism to Address Gender Violence.” I wanted to highlight in particular the activist work of numerous groups of Indigenous girls and young women in a current project and the youth AIDS activist work of the Fire and Hope project in South Africa but I also wanted to place this work in the context of girls’ activism and youth activism more broadly. To do this I started out with a short activity called “Know your Girl Activist” during which I showed PowerPoint photos of some key girl and young women activists of the last few years, and asked the audience if they could identify them. The activists included two Nobel Prize Peace Prize winners, Malala Yousafzai (2014) and Nadia Murad (2018) along with Autumn Pelletier, the young Indigenous woman from Northern Ontario, Canada, well known for her work on water activism, and, of course, Greta Thunberg, now a household name but then, in 2019, already well known for her work on climate change activism. To my surprise only some of these activists were recognized, so, during the Q and A session, when I was asked if there is a history of girls as activists I could see that this question indicated clearly the urgent need for this special issue of Girlhood Studies which was only just in process then. Now, thanks to the dedication of the two guest editors of this special issue, Catherine Vanner and Anuradha Dugal and the wide range of superb contributors, I can point confidently to girls’ activism as a burgeoning area of study in contemporary feminism rooted in feminist history.

The approach to gender violence from the perspective of communities in northern Córdoba Province, Argentina

Gender violence is a human rights violation and a serious public health problem that should be addressed with an inter-sector and interdisciplinary focus. Collaboration and coordination between sectors, including the health sector, is essential for guaranteeing such approach. The study aimed to learn which actors address gender violence in the communities and to study the communities' opinions concerning the public health system's role in (and approach to) this problem. A qualitative action-research project was conducted with local community self-diagnosis workshops, using various qualitative techniques and thematic analysis. The results pointed to various local actors that address the problem and showed that primary healthcare plays a relevant role, due mainly to its proximity to the population and interdisciplinary approach. The obstacles identified by the communities for the health system approach mainly involved the biomedical model of care, decentralization, and lack of resources, training, and integrated policies. In conclusion, the workshops facilitated the development of collective knowledge on the local reality, underlining the role of primary healthcare and the need to link action and approaches between sectors and communities.

#MeToo, Sexual Harassment and Accountability: Considering the Role of Restorative Approaches

Questions about the meaning of accountability for civil rights violations, and about what role the law can play in advancing accountability, are critically important to law reform. With respect to gender violence, the #MeToo movement has prompted widespread recognition of what feminists have long known, that sexual harassment is pervasive both in and out of the workplace. Yet its persistence, notwithstanding sexual harassment laws and policies that now have been on the books for decades, should spur reflection about what law and policy reforms actually would deter and prevent harassment, and what approaches would meaningfully advance equality at work. Sexual harassment at work lies at the intersection of parallel critiques of anti-discrimination law and of criminal legal interventions in response to gender violence. Both critiques should be taken into account in developing workplace responses to sexual harassment. In both contexts, commentary as well as pilot programs have begun to explore the possibility of incorporating restorative programs to promote healing and redress harms. This Article builds on those foundations and argues that workplaces should integrate restorative approaches into the options available to workers who raise sexual harassment complaints. It summarizes, and draws parallels between critiques of criminal legal regimes addressing gender violence, on the one hand, and workplace discrimination, on another. It describes principles common to restorative justice approaches and reviews the emerging research on the use of restorative justice with gender violence cases. It offers a beginning assessment of how restorative justice approaches might be incorporated into workplace sexual harassment responses, and identifies challenges that will have to be addressed for effective implementation.

Hashtags, testimonies, and measurements: Gender violence and its interpretation

In this article, I address gender violence through the act of witnessing and speaking out by the victims. Starting from a critical comment on some arguable points raised in the recent Hau Journal forum aimed at discussing forms and claims of the #MeToo movement, I let emerge the conundrums that anthropology faces in dealing with the issue. A focus on domestic abuse as a specific form of gender violence allows me to delve into the twine of intimacy, agency and consent in the experience of the victims. I detect the specific dynamics that characterize the issue of speaking/not speaking out against violence by abused women and that underpin analytical biases. Then, I illustrate how these complexities can be found in the general assessment and measurement of gender violence as a global phenomenon. I conclude with a reflection on violence and women’s voices as an opportunity for anthropological knowledge to deal with truth telling, intimacy, and the gendered act of speaking out.

“You start by changing the whole cultural context”: aikido v. gender violence

ABSTRACTAikido is a martial art that focuses on non-violent approaches to conflict. The current article discusses ways that experienced practitioners of aikido adjust the social environments in which they practice this leisure pastime in order to pre-emptively address gender violence. Their approaches compliment the tactics of bystander intervention and community accountability strategies. This study is based on data obtained through naturalistic observations, participant observations, and interviews (n = 15) with people who had been studying aikido for an average of 12.4 years. Interventions were conducted at the levels of policy, leadership, curriculum, and game structure. The collection of modifications to aikido practitioners’ social environments includes resistance to binary opposition between two sexes, social hierarchies, violence against the self, homophobic talk, and suppression of empathy.

FEMICIDE AND GENDER VIOLENCE IN MEXICO: ELEMENTS FOR A SYSTEMIC APPROACH

This article aims to address gender violence and femicide through the analysis of several aspects related with its reality and current problematic or conundrum, the new standards to widen gender perspective in the ministerial practices and judicial reasoning, as well as the controversies and tensions generated by the social risk related to impunity and the current control policies and exception categories created to fight femicides and violence against women with the principles and fundaments wherewith the criminal justice system and human rights operate in Mexico.

Reconstruction of Autobiographical Memories of Violent Sexual-Affective Relationships Through Scientific Reading on Love: A Psycho-Educational Intervention to Prevent Gender Violence

Violence in sexual-affective relationships among teens and young people is recognized as a social, educational, and health problem that has increased worldwide in recent years. Educational institutions, as central developmental contexts in adolescence, are key in preventing and responding to gender violence through implementing successful actions. In order to scientifically support that task, the research reported in this article presents and discusses a psycho-educational intervention focused on autobiographical memory reconstruction that proved to be successful in raising young women’s critical consciousness about the force of the coercive discourse upon sexual-affective experiences and memories. We examined among a sample of young women (n = 32, age range 17–30) whether reading a scholarly text about love, the Radical Love book, modified autobiographical memories of violent sexual-affective relationships in line with preventing future victimization. This group was compared with a control group (n = 31, age range 17–30). Memory reports were collected before and after the reading and coded to analyze their content, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Memory quality features were assessed with the Memory Quality Questionnaire (MMQ). A focus group was also conducted to examine the personal impact of the intervention on participants. Compared with controls, the experimental group had stronger critical memories (of episodes involving violence), an average decrease in positive emotions induced by recall, and an average increase in negative emotions. The results show the effectiveness of the reading intervention designed in relation to gender violence prevention, as they indicate the ability of the psycho-educational action to debilitate the force of the coercive discourse in young women’s memories. The findings both advance knowledge on the reconstructive nature of autobiographical memories of violent sexual-affective relationships in female youth and indicate the potential of memory-based interventions as an instrument to prevent and reduce gender violence in school contexts. Teachers and teaching staff, and educational psychologists, among others, can benefit from these results by expanding the tools they have to address gender violence among female adolescents and youth.

Debating Appropriate Approaches to Violence in Lihir: The Challenges of Addressing Gender Violence in Papua New Guinea

Recent years have seen a proliferation of initiatives aimed at addressing gender violence both at the national and local levels in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Numerous studies in PNG have noted high levels of violence. This paper takes a range of initiatives in the Lihir Islands, New Ireland Province (NIP), as a case study to discuss the challenges of speaking about, creating policy and attempting to manage gender violence. In Lihir there have been marches against violence, business initiatives to combat violence, outreach programs to villages and training programs for individuals and groups. These changes occur locally within the national context of the establishment of the Family Protection Act in 2013 and the Family Violence and Sexual Action Committee in 2000. Despite the seeming groundswell against gender violence in Lihir, the plans and programs are often met with debate about the terms used, the value of programs or events and their appropriateness. Initiatives are critiqued as externally imposed, colonial or inappropriate for the local context which has implications for programs at both local and national levels.

Provider Perspectives on Intimate Partner Violence in Bluefields, Nicaragua

ABSTRACTBackground: Intimate partner violence represents a significant public health problem and a substantial human rights' issue for women and girls throughout the world. Design and Purpose: The purpose of this study was to answer these research questions: What are the current practices for addressing gender violence in the RACS? What do professionals consider to be the current strengths and gaps in policies related to gender violence in this region? By employing a qualitative descriptive approach (Sandelowski, 2000), researchers traveled from the US to Bluefields, Nicaragua, in 2012. The multidisciplinary team of two US nurses, a prosecutor, and a victim-witness advocate interviewed 18 key informants, police officers, advocates, and nurses, and observed court processes. Methods: Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed in the language the interview was conducted in. Researchers coded data independently and identified emergent themes. Findings: Informants described the complexity of the nature and dynamics of gender violence, strongly informed by Nicaragua's fairly progressive laws. The participants described holistic, fully integrated services as the intended functioning of the system. These services were often thwarted by gaps—fragmentation and lack of resources—and were additionally hampered by substantial individual and structural economical obstacles.

Addressing gender violence among children in the early years of schooling: insights from teachers in a South African primary school

This paper explores how teachers in a poor township primary school in South Africa construct meaning regarding gender violence among children, and how they talk about addressing that violence. The paper argues that major influences on the endemic violence include complex societal structures that are inscribed with cultures of violent masculinities, extreme socio-economic conditions and gender inequality. It shows how primary school teachers recognise violent masculinities and gender power imbalances but simultaneously uphold the notion of children’s innocence as a rationale for refuting the primary school as a site of violence. The paper explores contradictions embedded in some of the solutions which the teachers suggest as a way of addressing violence. For example, while they highlight the importance of teaching peace, respect and equality, they also advocate the use of corporal punishment as an effective means of dealing with violent conduct among school children.

New challenges for addressing gender violence:

La violencia de género ha flagelado a las sociedades a lo largo de la historia. En los últimos tiempos se ha visibilizado la temática, por medio de la masificación de la información, las distintas perspectivas de abordaje y las nuevas producciones de conocimiento que la problematizan. Desde la perspectiva del trabajo, se considera a la violencia de género como una de las consecuencias derivadas de la naturalización de la relación jerárquica entre géneros que inscribe a lo masculino en un rol dominante y a lo femenino en un rol subordinado, subalterno. De esta manera, la violencia contra las mujeres debe ser leída en clave cultural. En el presente trabajo se analiza la visión actual que condiciona el modo en que hoy día se diseñan las políticas públicas en materia de violencia de género, para luego poner en cuestión las construcciones sobre las cuales éstas se han establecido y fundamentado. Se desafía a pensar en una reformulación de la mirada sobre el papel de los hombres en la sociedad moderna y la importancia que tiene su incorporación en la planificación de nuevas intervenciones.

Using transformative pedagogies for the prevention of gender-based violence: Reflections from a secondary school-based intervention

abstract This article describes an initiative aimed at addressing gender violence, and in particular sexual violence. Implemented in 2014 in a township secondary school in Durban, the initiative involved six peer educators from the Durban University of Technology and 10 from the secondary school. In its design, the initiative has drawn from what might be called ‘transformative pedagogies’. Moreover, located more broadly within feminist pedagogies, the project focused on work that emphasises the creation of safe spaces in education for young female learners. This was aimed at enabling participants’ deep reflection on the self, addressing both structure and agency. Our analysis suggests that through its pedagogy, the initiative created a platform for both male and female students to speak about their experiences of violence and forge new ways of talking about and addressing sexual abuse. Further, the process was successful in enabling an appreciation of difference and resourcefulness among the participants. This article highlights the potential value of transformative and feminist pedagogies in addressing gender-based violence, and particularly sexual violence among learners in secondary schools.