Violence against women is a major problem in all countries, affecting women in every socio-economic group and at every life stage. Yet, when women enjoy good social and economic status they are less vulnerable to violence across all societies. This book develops a political economy approach to understanding violence against women - from the household to the transnational level - accounting for its globally increasing scale and brutality.
The Political Economy of Conflict and Violence against Women shows how political, economic, social and ideological processes intersect to shape conflict related gender-based violence against women. Through feminist interrogations of the politics of economies, struggles for political power and the gender order, this collection reveals how sexual orders and regimes are linked to spaces of production. Crucially it argues that these spaces are themselves firmly anchored in overlapping patriarchies which are sustained and reproduced during and after war through violence that is physical as well as structural. Through an analysis of legal regimes and structures of social arrangements, this book frames militarization as a political economic dynamic, developing a radical critique of liberal peace building and peace making that does not challenge patriarchy, or modes of production and accumulation.
This Handbook brings together leading interdisciplinary scholarship on the gendered nature of the international political economy. Spanning a wide range of theoretical traditions and empirical foci, it explores the multifaceted ways in which gender relations constitute and are shaped by global politico-economic processes. It further interrogates the gendered ideologies and discourses that underpin everyday practices from the local to the global. The chapters in this collection identify, analyse, critique and challenge gender-based inequalities, whilst also highlighting the intersectional nature of gendered oppressions in the contemporary world order.
Eliminating violence against women globally is now seen as one of the major challenges of the twenty-first century. This book introduces a wide readership to the problem of violence against women and girls (VAWG) identified by social movements, researchers, and policymakers. It provides raw material, stories from around the world, macro data, and up-to-date knowledge on the various forms of VAWG. It highlights the intersections of VAWG with several other issues, andsets out the most promising policy and advocacy frameworks to end this violence.
Until relatively recently, little had been written about gender issues in international relations despite the increased importance of the study of gender in other areas of the social sciences. Gender and International Relations fills that gap, providing a clear and accessible guide to the study of gender issues, feminist theories, and international relations. Steans illustrates how gender is central to nationalisms and political identity, the state, citizenship and conceptions of political community, security, and global political economy and development. Drawing on feminist scholarship from across the social sciences, she demonstrates the uses of feminism as critique. She also introduces readers to contemporary theoretical debates in international relations using concrete concerns and easily understandable issues to ground the discussion. The book does not construct a single feminist theory of international relations nor does it advance a particular perspective of how gender can best be understood in an international or global context. Rather, the book argues that feminist theories have collectively produced insights crucial to the study of international relations and that these insights can be used to challenge conventional approaches to the discipline.
Comprises 12 papers which assess the contemporary situation of women in India in four broad domains: the cultural, the social, the political and the economic. Argues that despite apparently positive indicators of progress, particularly education and paid employment, little has changed.
Rape Loot Pillage offers a new framework for understanding conflict-related sexual violence based on feminist international political economy. By looking at patterns of contemporary conflict, this book proposes a new typology of wartime sexual violence that ties the 'value' of this violence to the politico-economic objectives of the perpetrators in different conflict contexts.
"Women have made significant inroads into politics in recent years, but in many parts of the world, their increased engagement has spurred physical attacks, intimidation, and harassment intended to deter their participation. 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 - and lobbied for its increased recognition by citizens, states, and international organizations. Tracing how this concept emerged inductively on the global stage, the volume draws on research in multiple disciplines to resolve lingering ambiguities regarding its contours. It argues that this phenomenon is not simply a gendered extension of existing definitions of political violence privileging physical aggressions against political rivals. Rather, violence against women in politics is a distinct phenomenon involving a broad range of harms to attack and undermine women as political actors. Drawing on a wide range of country examples, the book illustrates what this violence looks like in practice, as well as catalogues emerging solutions around the world. Issuing a call to action, it considers how to document this phenomenon more effectively, as well as understand the political and social implications of allowing violence against women in politics to continue unabated. Highlighting the threats it poses to democracy, human rights, and gender equality, the volume concludes that tackling violence against women in politics requires ongoing dialogue and collaboration to ensure women's equal rights to participate - freely and safely - in political life around the globe"--
The COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns have led to a rise in gender-based violence. In this paper, we explore the economic consequences of violence against women in sub-Saharan Africa using large demographic and health survey data collected pre-pandemic. Relying on a two-stage least square method to address endogeneity, we find that an increase in the share of women subject to violence by 1 percentage point can reduce economic activities (as proxied by nightlights) by up to 8 percent. This economic cost results from a significant drop in female employment. Our results also show that violence against women is more detrimental to economic development in countries without protective laws against domestic violence, in natural resource rich countries, in countries where women are deprived of decision-making power and during economic downturns. Beyond the moral imperative, the findings highlight the importance of combating violence against women from an economic standpoint, particularly by reinforcing laws against domestic violence and strengthening women’s decision-making power.
