PreprintPDF Available

Violence Against Women in Elections and Gendered Electoral Violence: A Conceptual Framework for Policy Innovation

Authors:
Preprints and early-stage research may not have been peer reviewed yet.

Abstract and Figures

Violence against women in politics and during the election cycle has been widely documented as an impediment to the free and equal political participation of women, and thus to the conduct of inclusive elections. Academic research and practitioner assessments have raised the profile of this global problem, and draw attention to key challenges in theory development, the operationalization of concepts, and the creation of shared measures for data collection. This paper seeks to advance the enterprise by positing a theoretical framework that situates violence against women in elections (VAWE) at the intersection of gender-based violence, and political violence. We discuss the relationship between motives and electoral violence, and propose that violence motivated by gender discrimination and misogyny should be considered alongside more conventional motives in the study of electoral violence. Further, we provide an example of a gender sensitive reporting form/questionnaire to gather data on VAWE and other types of gendered electoral violence, and which could provide the foundation for building global common indicators that policy-makers could use to address these serious violations.
Content may be subject to copyright.
1
Violence Against Women in Elections and Gendered Electoral Violence
Paige Schneider, PhD. The University of the South, Sewanee Tennessee, United States
David Carroll, PhD. The Carter Center of Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, United States.
Paige Schneider (corresponding author) is Assistant Professor of Politics and Women’s and Gender
Studies at Sewanee (The University of the South) and can be reached at pschneid@sewanee.edu.
David Carroll is Director of the Democracy Program at the Carter Center. We would like to thank
Gabrielle Bardall for her very many helpful comments and recognize the contributions of our
research assistant Sophie Clark for her valuable help.
2
Violence Against Women in Elections and Gendered Electoral Violence
Violence against women in politics and during the election cycle has been widely documented as an
impediment to the free and equal political participation of women, and thus to the conduct of inclusive
elections. Academic research and practitioner assessments have raised the profile of this global
problem, and draw attention to key challenges in theory development, the operationalization of
concepts, and the creation of shared measures for data collection. This paper seeks to advance the
enterprise by positing a theoretical framework that situates violence against women in elections
(VAWE) at the intersection of gender-based violence, and political violence. We discuss the
relationship between motives and electoral violence, and propose that violence motivated by gender
discrimination and misogyny should be considered alongside more conventional motives in the study
of electoral violence. Further, we provide an example of a gender sensitive reporting
form/questionnaire to gather data on VAWE and other types of gendered electoral violence, and
which could provide the foundation for building global common indicators that policy-makers could
use to address these serious violations.
Keywords: gender; women; elections; political violence; intersectionality; gender and sexual
minorities
Introduction
The study of the relationship between gender and political violence has flourished in the last
decade with more scholars interested in women’s experiences as targets of violence, but also in their
roles as political actors on the international stage (Enloe, 1990; Cockburn, 1998; Moser and Clark,
2001; Mazurana et al, 2005; Sjoberg, 2014; 2016; Davis, 2017). Gender is relevant to the understanding
of political violence in a multitude of contexts such as war, peacekeeping operations, and acts of
terrorism, and it is increasingly clear that gender matters to our understanding of electoral violence
(SAP, 2008; Valverde, 2010; Bardall, 2011; 2013; 2016; Cerna, 2014; Drummond, 2015; Ballington,
2016; 2017; Bjarnegard, 2016; Krook and Sanin, 2014; 2016; Krook, 2017; Piscopo, 2015; 2016).
Scholars and practitioners working at the intersection of gender and electoral violence suggest that
violence against women in the context of the election cycle is a global problem that undermines the
integrity of elections by inhibiting women’s equal participation as voters, election officials, candidates,
and party leaders, among other roles. Too, limited existing data support arguments that women may
be perpetrators of election violence under certain conditions. The present research seeks to advance
this line of inquiry by positing a new theoretical and conceptual framework for considering the
relationship between gender and electoral violence, including violence against women in elections
(VAWE).
1
We challenge the marginalization of gender in electoral and political violence research by
arguing that VAWE is indeed a subset of political violence. The framework provides the theoretical
foundation necessary to make visible the invisibility of the real harm women face as women in election
related violence, but also provides the conceptual space for identifying and analyzing women’s
perpetration of electoral violence, and other manifestations of gender related and gender-based
violence. Finally, the framework informs the development of a sample reporting form or survey, to
facilitate common data-gathering approaches that will enhance our understanding of the relationship
1
In the interest of coalescing around a single set of acronyms, we use the acronyms for violence against women in
politics (VAWP) and violence against women in elections (VAWE), or in some cases VAWP/E, that is utilized by
UNWomen in the recent comprehensive programming guide, Preventing Violence against Women in Elections, that can be
found here, http://www.unwomen.org/-
/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/library/publications/2017/preventingvaw-in-elections.pdf?la=en&vs=2640
3
between gender and electoral violence across different country contexts. This, in turn, provides the
foundation for the development of common indicators with which to track progress on addressing
violence against women at the national and international levels, and we hope, additional programming
to mitigate gender-based election violence.
In the first section of the paper, we review the literature on the relationship between electoral
violence and the integrity of elections, and consider the place of gender as an independent variable in
conventional studies of these topics. In the literature review we also summarize the emerging
scholarship on women’s experiences with violence, intimidation and harassment in their roles as
voters, candidates, and other political stakeholders. Then, we turn to a discussion of the alternative
gender sensitive conceptual framework that we propose which draws on insights from both academic
scholarship and practitioner assessments to suggest a more inclusive and intersectional approach to
the study of election violence. On the basis of this alternative framework, we introduce a general
reporting form for data collection that can be used to provide data for measures of key indicators of
violence against women in elections, and other categories of gender-based violence during the election
cycle.
Electoral Violence and the Threat to Electoral Integrity
Electoral integrity can be undercut by a wide variety of irregularities or ‘electoral malfunctions
that can undermine democratic principles and processes of inclusive participation, including buying
votes, suppressing voter turnout, unequal access to media across parties and candidates, or tampering
with vote counts at the ballot box (Alihodzlc, 2013; Norris, 2014). In addition to these and other such
efforts to manipulate or subvert the electoral process, electoral violence constitutes an especially
serious threat to electoral integrity due to its nature and the potential severity of its impacts. The last
decade has witnessed a surge in scholarly interest in electoral violence, drawing on a range of literatures
related to democratization and elections, ethnic and political conflict, civil war and post-conflict
elections, among others. This research has examined a wide range of issues, including causal factors
for electoral violence operating not only at the micro individual and political levels but also at the
macro institutional and structural levels (Taylor et al, 2017; Hafner-Burton et al 2014, Goldsmith,
2015; Fjelde and Hoglund, 2016). Research has assessed electoral violence as a strategic choice from
a menu of election manipulation options (Bhasin and Gandhi 2013, Norris et al 2015; van Ham and
Lindberg 2015), examined the interaction effects from the presence of election observers (Daxecker
2012, 2014; Smidt 2016), and the increased risks of electoral violence associated with holding post-
conflict elections (Brancati and Snyder 2013).
When analyzing electoral violence, it is useful to do so in the context of an election cycle time
frame, given that different kinds of electoral events and socio-political interactions occur at various
points in the cycle. For practical purposes, most election management bodies and election observation
and assistance groups define the election cycle as a series of expected activities or phases that culminate
in the holding of elections on a specific day, followed by a post-election phase which at some point
starts the pre-election phase for the next election. There are various definitions of the election cycle,
but common to all is the assumption that the conduct of elections involves a range of processes that
unfold over time and involve a multitude of actors (Norris, 2014: 33-34; Strauss and Taylor, 2012: 20;
Höglund, 2009: 416). This can be simplified to the following three phases: (1) the pre-election phase,
i.e., the months or years, after the last election, and before the next election which can include voter
registration, and candidate nomination processes; (2) the election phase, i.e., the days surrounding
voting and the counting of ballots; and (3) the post-election phase, especially the tabulation and
publication of final election results, and any post-election electoral dispute and related judicial process,
sometimes extending for months, or years.
4
There is no single widely agreed upon definition of election violence, as the main research
question of a study often drives decisions around context and timeline, and thus what constitutes an
act of election associated violence. Fischer’s definition has been widely employed and is summarized
as any act, or threat of action that involves physical harm or abuse, psychological intimidation, with
the intention of delaying or influencing the electoral process or outcomes (2001). Electoral violence
incidents that involve acts of actual physical violence (including sexual violence) are of particular
concern to human rights groups and electoral assistance organizations because of the potential for
large scale mortality and morbidity among the civilian population (Smith, 2009; Dercon and Gutiérrez-
Romero, 2012; Johnson et al, 2014; Berry et al, 2017; Goldsmith, 2015). Fortunately, acts of physical
violence are much less common than other forms of violence such as psychological intimidation and
threats of physical violence. Bekoe’s study of electoral violence in sub-Saharan Africa utilizing the
Taylor and Strauss dataset on African Electoral Violence (AEVD), found that only about one fifth of
incidents were serious violence (2012: 37). For this reason and others, the concept of electoral violence
is understood by most scholars as encompassing a range of other non-physical types of harm including
especially threats of physical assault, as well as psychological intimidation and harassment, and
economic damage or loss (Bardall, 2011: 6-8, 22; Höglung, 2009; 417). These non-physical forms of
violence are nonetheless quite serious as they can take the form of thinly veiled threats to destroy
property, harm children or other family members, or humiliate or shame someone in front of the
community, and can be as effective as actual physical violence in deterring someone from participating
in the political process
2
(Högland 2009: 417; Bardall 2011: 18).
Birch and Muchlinski offer another definition of electoral violence in their work, worth
quoting at length, as it explicitly subsumes electoral violence under the rubric of political violence, and
connects the temporal aspect of the election process to the causal link that assumes acts of electoral
violence are motivated by political goals to manipulate or control the outcomes of the electoral
process: “our definition of electoral violence is: coercive force, directed towards electoral actors
and/or objects, that occurs in the context of electoral competition. This definition can be justified on
the grounds that virtually all political violence that occurs during the electoral period can be expected
to be conditioned by the electoral process either directly or indirectly, and conversely, the electoral
process can be expected to be conditioned by virtually all political violence that occurs during this
period” (2017:3) The reference to coercive force is an important one, because it implies intentionality
which is one of the necessary attributes that distinguishes violence from more general acts of harm
which may occur without a motive or intention.
The importance of intentionality in definitions of violence is also found in the World Health
Organization’s (WHO) approach that defines violence as “the intentional use of physical force or
power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that
either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm,
maldevelopment or deprivation” (Rutherford, 2007:676). The WHO definition adds the notion of
deprivation which is less commonly included in analyses of forms of electoral violence. We believe that
the notion of deprivation describes the effects or consequences of a well-established category of election
violenceeconomic violence—and is a useful addition in specifying a particular form of economic
violence. For example, typical cases of economic violence such as destruction of property require the
active use of physical force to destroy something. In contrast, depriving an individual, family or entire
group or village of access to shelter or to a market to purchase food, in retaliation for refusal to do
something like support a particular candidate, still constitutes loss and harm, but in a way that does
2
In recent field work in northern Uganda, one of the present authors (Schneider) heard compelling stories from
informants about the effective and wide spread use of threats of both physical and sexual assault and destruction
through arson of huts and shelters during the election cycle. Acts of violence, while they did occur, were not necessary
to undermine the sense of safety of potential voters and candidates and dissuade individuals from participating in the
electoral process.
5
not directly require the use of any physical force. Scholars of intimate partner violence have long
understood that deprivation is a crucial tactic in the repertoire of harms that may occur more
frequently in the context of interpersonal violence and family relationships--contexts in which women
are disproportionately represented as targets (but may also serve as perpetrators). We offer the
following gender sensitive definition of electoral violence that covers a range of types of targets,
perpetrators, and forms of violence, as well as timing and motive: Election violence constitutes
any purposeful
or calculated act of physical, sexual, psychological or economic harm against a person or property, including threats,
harassment, intimidation, or deprivation that occurs during the election cycle with the intent to discourage or prevent an
individual or group from participating, or to alter an election process or outcome.
Violence against women in elections and gendered electoral violence
Traditional political science scholarship on electoral violence typically ignores the gendered
dimensions of electoral violence (for examples see Burch and Muchlinski, 2017; Daxeckeer, 2014;
Goldsmith, 2015; Dercon and Guttierrez-Romero, 2011; Taylor, Pevehouse, and Strauss, 2017; Van
Ham and Lindberg, 2015). The assumption is that electoral violence is perpetrated by individuals or
groups who seek to manipulate or control the electoral process or election outcomes, and attempts to
dissuade or prevent women from participating in the process has not been heretofore included as
instances of electoral violence. Because conventional electoral violence scholars commonly rely upon
large-N data bases constructed from news accounts, these accounts disproportionately capture the
most violent incidents as they are perceived as more serious and newsworthy. These incidents
commonly occur on the ‘streets’ where men are more likely to be the targets and the perpetrators,
missing types of violence that may disproportionately affect women such as physical, sexual, or
psychological threats in the domestic private sphere. This leaves the impression that election related
conflict and violence is a mostly male affair. Yet, we know from practitioner reports from the field
that women experience a wide range of harms during the election cycle both in private and public
spaces because they are women, with the intent to restrict or dissuade them from participating in the
electoral process as voters, candidates, elected officials, party leaders, activists and agents (Report of
the Special Rapporteur, 2018: 9-10). Too, increasingly scholars document cases in which women are
perpetrators of political violence, complicating our notions of who commits gender-based violence,
and women’s positionality and culpability in acts of political violence (Lorentzen and Turpin, 1998;
Moser and Clark, 2001; Bardall, 2011; Mackenzie, 2012; Sojberg, 2016).
Scholars and practitioners have documented serious incidents of violence against women
during elections at least as far back as 2010 (Keller, 2010; RUA, 2010; Rojas Valverde, 2010; SAP,
2008; Valverde, 2010; Bardall, 2011; 2013; 2016; Cerna, 2014; Drummond, 2015; Ballington, 2016;
2017; Bjarnegard, 2016; Krook and Sanin, 2014; 2016; Krook, 2017; Piscopo, 2015; 2016). Bardall’s
2011 report, Breaking the Mold: Understanding Gender and Electoral Violence was the first comprehensive
examination of the relationship between sex/gender and election violence, and from this work the
acronym VAWE gained traction. Utilizing International Foundation for Electoral Assistance (IFES)
data from six country contexts, Bardall examines in detail the forms and frequencies of electoral
violence by sex/gender of the target and the perpetrator. Her findings suggest that while men are
more often the targets of physical forms of electoral violence, women are more frequently subjected
to psychological violence, harassment, and intimidation, and are much more likely to experience
violence in the private sphere and be targeted in cyber space (2011:1; 2016). She also finds limited
evidence that under some conditions, women can perpetrate violence, often against other females,
and especially when they are part of group violence (2011: 1-2).
3
In sum, data from Bardall, and others
3
One of the author’s (Schneider) of this paper found high rates of female perpetrated violence against other female
candidates and their supporters during field research in 2018 in Moroto, and Soroti northern Uganda. Female
perpetrated violence was much more common in elections for a ‘women’s (quota) seat’ than in campaigns where women
6
in the field in a number of countries clearly demonstrate gendered patterns of perpetration and
victimization (2011, Figures 4-7, p. 10-14; UN Women Programming Guide, 2017: 31-35; Report of
the Special Rapporteur, 2018: 9-10).
Because the types of violence experienced by female political stakeholders can be very severe
or even fatal, it is problematic that VAWE heretofore has not been adequately incorporated into the
normative frameworks used in the election community to assess and support election integrity.
VAWE incidents also usually entail violations to one or more of a wide range of human rights and
State obligations for democratic elections, including the right to participate in political affairs, to vote
and be elected, equality between men and women, freedom from discrimination, the right to the
security of the person, and the fundamental freedoms of expression, assembly, association, and
movement, among others. In this regard, greater understanding of and attention to VAWE can help
ensure that VAWE is appropriately considered as part of election integrity, and that incidents or
patterns of VAWE are recognized as undermining election integrity, democratic legitimacy, and the
political rights of women.
Since the 1993 UN World Conference on Human Rights, the international community has
officially recognized violence against women as a breach of fundamental human rights.
4
Yet it remains
the case that traditional gender roles, and conceptions of masculinity and femininity that place men
and women in roles associated with different social spheres means that public political activity is still
perceived in most countries and communities around the world, as a male preserve.
5
Politics as a male
preserve becomes a domain where men feel entitled to lay claim to positions of power, and women
who transgress these expectations face ridicule, harassment, or worse. The concept of a male preserve
well developed theory in the sociology of sport literature (Matthews, 2016)— is being introduced here
as a novel but we think important conceptual link. The existence of perceived male preserves like
politics (and military and sports) explains male attitudes around entitlement to social power and public
space and ties this sense of entitlement to male resistance to women’s incursions into these spaces. This
backlash effect (Mansbridge and Shames, 2008; Krook and Restrepo-Sanin, 2016a: 126) results in threats
and actual acts of violence against women in politics. Women’s transgressions into male preserves can
be perceived as a dangerous challenge to the social order and to gendered power relations. This also
elucidates why violence against women in politics and during elections is more than just a case of
individual men attempting to deter individual women from participating. When it is motivated by
structural discrimination and misogyny, it becomes an attempt by men as a group, to consolidate,
monopolize, and limit access to political power by women as a group.
As many scholars have already noted, intentions are hard to measure, and the targets
6
of
violence may perceive the motivation behind the attack in a way quite different from the perpetrator(s)
(Krook and Restrepo-Sanin 2016a: 147; Piscopo, 2016: 446). To untangle the complex interplay
between intent and action, and determine whether an attack was motivated by political power struggles
on the one hand, or embedded in gendered power relations, on the other, requires a considerable
amount of detail about the violent incident. Motivations are obviously more difficult to validate
empirically than say, reporting the location of an incident, and some degree of error in the data is likely
competed against men for a direct or open seat. In direct seat races with women candidates running against male
candidates, women candidates were more often targeted than male candidates, and primarily by male agents/supporters.
4
https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/vienna.aspx
5
As far as I can determine, the use of the concept-- male preserve-- was first introduced in the academic scholarship
devoted to the study of sport and gendered power relations and is attributed to Sheard and Dunning (1973). Christopher
R. Matthews resurrects the term in his insightful 2016 article in Gender & Society.
6
Following Hoglund (2010:417) and others in the field of election and conflict studies, we employ the term target to
denote victims of violence. While the term survivor has been widely adopted in the public health literature--particularly for
victims of intimate partner violence and especially sexual assault, we argue that target is a generic and more appropriate
concept to describe victims of the wide range and types of electoral and political violence documented and analyzed in
the political violence literature, and in the present study.
7
unavoidable, so minimizing error by careful questioning and follow up with the respondent is necessary.
Birch and Muchlinski point out the weaknesses of existing methodologies stating, “many broad
measures of electoral violence currently in use obscure the identity of the actors involved, gloss over
the tactics employed, do not report on the nature of the violence itself, or otherwise provide indicators
of electoral violence at quite high levels of aggregation and generality. Because of this lack of detailed
data, important puzzles still remain about the perpetrators, timing, causes, consequences, and nature
of electoral violence” (2017:2). Fjelde and Höglund make a similar argument in their analyses of
methodological challenges in the measurement of electoral violence pointing out that the level of detail
typically found in case studies that allow for greater analytical precision in identifying targets,
perpetrators, forms and so on, is lacking in studies that use data aggregated from event or incident
reports found in news sources (2016: 9). The alternative and gender sensitive conceptual framework
that we propose below, justifies the collection of data on individual and group perpetrated violence at
levels of specificity required to identify, analyse, and report on events that reify the complex
relationship between gender and electoral violence. At the same time, it retains the flexibility, and
logical properties necessary to make sense of cases in which a weak relationship between gender and
election violence exists.
Violence against women in elections and gendered electoral violence: an alternative
conceptual framework
The varied and complex ways in which sex and gender condition social interactions presents
significant methodological challenges for scholars who seek to empirically document sex differentiated
and gendered political behavior, and in a wide variety of cultural contexts.
7
The framework that we
propose addresses some of these challenges by defining key concepts and clarifying logical
relationships between concepts and assumptions in the study of gender and electoral violence. The
framework informs the questions on the incident reporting form (questionnaire) explained and
included in Appendix 1.
8
Violence against women in politics (VAWP) or elections (VAWE) is generally understood to
be a category or sub-type of gender-based violence because the motivation for the behavior is assumed to
be embedded in unequal gendered power relations and gender discrimination. It is also a sub-type of
violence against women (VAW) as women are assumed to be the primary targets. Gender-based violence
is violence that is perpetrated against an individual for transgressing dominant gender roles, norms, or
expectations of behavior in a given society (Bloom, 2008: 14) which means that heterosexual/cis-
gendered, homosexual and transgender men and non-binary individuals may be targets. For instance,
under this definition, male supporters of women’s rights may be targeted if their views transgress
dominant gender norms about women’s roles in their communities.
The concept gendered violence is defined as violence in which the gender of the perpetrator or
target emerge in the data as predictors of certain types, or patterns of violence. For our purposes, the
logic rule for determining if an act of violence is an instance of gendered electoral violence is the extent
to which gender as an individual level characteristic and independent variable explains variation across
cases. The motive behind the violence could be an attempt to control political power or resources, or
7
Feminist scholars employ gender with an understanding that the term reflects an abstract social construct (like race) but
one that is reified in material conditions of inequality caused by unequal gendered power relations. VAWE has been
documented worldwide, including in high income country contexts, where the use of the concept gender will be widely
understood. However, in low and medium income country contexts, the term sex may be most appropriate because in
many communities the general population may have a limited, if any, understanding of the meaning of the term gender, or
gender identity.
8
The reporting form/questionnaire is offered as a template for practitioners and for scholars as just one of many
possible options for what we hope is a fairly comprehensive approach to collecting gender sensitive data on electoral
violence in the field.
8
it could be based on gender discrimination and misogyny, or something else altogether such as animus
directed at religious or ethnic minorities. An example of gendered election violence, would be a case in
which all male groups of youth acting in the capacity of party agents, harassed and intimidated voters
in a district. This would be gendered because the pattern of all male youth gangs suggests that
something other than randomness is at work (if random, then the makeup of the group would be
more evenly distributed between males and females). Theories of gendered political behavior,
including for instance, the earlier discussion of male preserves, predict that males will be overrepresented
in public and political spaces including as members of violent youth gangs. Other theories of gendered
behavior predict that males in groups will be at higher risk of committing violence, than when acting
alone. Another example of gendered violence is the case in which male and female youth agents
harassed female voters at higher rates than male voters, because women were perceived as easier
targets to control or manipulate and with a lower likelihood of retaliation. Here, the gender of the
targets, not the perpetrators emerges as an important pattern in the violence. The motive for harassing
female voters, rather than male voters, is clearly related to assumptions about, and expectations of the
gendered behavior of women.
If patterns of violence fail to correlate with the variable gender (i.e. the distribution or pattern
of violence by sex of the target or perpetrator is random) then we would categorize the violence as
non-gendered electoral violence. It would be assumed that the motive for the violence lacks a gender
dimension as well. Under this assumption, an example of non-gendered electoral violence includes
cases of group harassment or intimidation of voters in a precinct in which the targets and perpetrators
were equally likely to be male or female, suggesting that perhaps political or partisan motives rather
than gender, explained patterns of violence.
Figure 1 here
Turning now to how scholars might understand the relationship between gender and electoral
violence in their work, Figure 1 presents what we refer to as the conventional approach to these lines of
inquiry. As mentioned above, violence against women in elections motivated by gender discrimination
or misogyny is generally understood to be a subset of both the violence against women in politics, and
violence against women sets. There is no overlap with the political violence set. Why is this? There
are feminist scholars writing on political violence, who study gendered forms and types of political
violence, however their work tends to be outside of the field of electoral studies (Cheldelin and Eliatamby,
2011; Davis, 2017; Guichaoua, 2012; Mazurana et al, 2005; Moser and Clark, 2001; Sojberg, 2016).
Too, the motive for the gendered political violence is typically understood to be political power plays,
struggle over resources, animus directed at religious or ethnic minorities, or something else, but not
gender discrimination. For instance, in Sjoberg’s book, Women as Wartime Rapists she examines
motives—including sexual violence perpetrated to emasculate the enemy which predict female
perpetrators of sexual violence (2016: 18-19). The violence is most definitely gendered, but the motives
behind female perpetration of sexual violence during wartime is not to dissuade or forbid women as
women from participating as political actors in the political process.
In electoral studies when gender is included as a variable it tends to be in relation to studies of
patterns of participation and representation of women as voters and candidates, such as studies that
examine the impact of electoral quotas on women’s political representation (Dahlerup, 2008; Krook,
2009; Paxton et al, 2010). The research of scholars like Krook (2016; 2017) who studies violence
against women in politics motivated by gender discrimination and misogyny, find their work situated
at the intersection of feminist studies of women and politics, and political violence. However, because
conventional political and electoral violence literature more often than not fails to include the role of
gender in the study of violence, there is little scholarly space for considering VAWE or other forms
of gender- based violence as a legitimate category of electoral violence. This bifurcation in the literature
9
can lead to instances in which important predictors of violence can be missed, miscoded or categorized
in a way that hinders advancing the goals of research programmes concerned with electoral violence.
To better understand how the conventional approach to the study of political violence may
fail to capture important data we present two examples. First, consider a case of a woman candidate
during the campaign period who is assassinated by an extremist group because she is a woman.
9
Violence
studies scholars may record her death as an instance of electoral violence, but the failure to consider
this act as a form of gender-based violence will lead to underestimation of the importance of misogyny
as a motive of political violence. For practitioners, a failure to understand the role gender plays in this
instance might lead to programming that fails to mitigate future violence against women candidates
who may be at heightened risk of victimization in certain social contexts. In the second example,
consider a village that is destroyed during campaigning as a result of factional conflict between two
groups. If reports of the incident show that many more women than men perished, the gender
imbalance is a red flag, signaling that gender matters. One hypothesis to explain the gender imbalance
is that women’s social position in the domestic/private sphere meant that more women stayed in the
village, and thus they were more likely to have perished in the fire. Even if the motivation for the
violence is purely political, political violence scholars are unlikely to analyze this case as gendered political
violence—which it is, as patterns of victimization clearly demonstrate that gender is a predictor of
who was targeted regardless of the motivation. A gendered analysis of the violence would uncover
two important effects: first, the violence resulted in lower levels of female voter participation which is
a concern from the perspective of election integrity and inclusive election principles. Secondly, the
violence is likely to have resulted in the loss of a disproportionate number of essential caretakers,
thereby affecting the health and wellbeing of children and others in the extended family network,
increasing the level of harm from the act beyond the loss of lives of the victims.
In an effort to strengthen the explanatory power of the conventional approach we offer an
alternative framework (Figure 2) that conceptualizes VAWE as a subset of VAWP, and both as
subsets of violence against women (VAW) more generally. However, we also posit that both are a
logical subset of the political violence set. This alternative approach strengthens the existing
framework in at least two important ways. From a conceptual level, it encourages the inclusion of a
fuller range of independent variables such as gender, in studies of political violence. This provides
additional information informing more accurate predictions and explanations of patterns of violence
during the election cycle which benefits the scholarly enterprise. It is also beneficial to practitioners
who design policies and programs to mitigate violence during the election cycle. Secondly, it eliminates
the artificial segregation of studies of violence against women in politics/elections as women from the
political and electoral violence sets. By including additional motivations for electoral violence such as
gender discrimination and misogyny, we expand the range of violent acts included in the study of
political violence, including those for which women may be at greater risk of victimization. This
change addresses serious feminist critiques of the marginalization of violence against women in the
political violence literature and rejects assumptions that these instances of violence are somehow
outside of the scope of legitimate incidents of political violence.
Figure 2 here
The flow chart in Figure 3 provides another visualization of the relationship between gender
and electoral violence, identifying and explaining gendered dimensions of the electoral environment.
It more fully explores with examples, how different motives may lead to different patterns of violence
9
The authors acknowledge that it is not always easy to discern the motive for an act with one hundred percent accuracy.
As with any research requiring the coding of events, researchers are obligated to publicly share their coding schema and
disclose weaknesses, caveats or other instances that may introduce error into the data and effect the accuracy of
interpretation.
10
by target, perpetrator, location and other relevant factors. As mentioned above, the relationship
between gendered and non-gendered electoral violence is distinguished by the extent to which gender
as a variable explains variation across cases. Multiple motivations for electoral violence are accounted
for but violence motivated by gender discrimination and misogyny is explicitly included in the model.
We juxtapose the gender discrimination motive against the political power motive, not because this is
the only other motive possible, but because it is an important motive commonly found in the literature.
The chart posits that the sex/gender identity of the target and/or the perpetrator may vary by type of
motive. For instance, electoral violence motivated by gender discrimination and misogyny would affect
primarily women and is often but not exclusively perpetrated by men. There are cases in which women
could perpetrate VAWE such as when an older female enforces traditional gender norms by
controlling through threats or violence the behavior of a younger female in the family. Gender
discrimination could also serve as the motive behind violence against males who are perceived as
homosexual, and in this case, we may find higher rates of female perpetration as well, given widespread
homophobia among men and women in many countries around the world
10
(Weiss and Bosia, 2013).
The flow chart accounts for the experiences of sexual minorities but also the possible interaction
effects between gender and other marginalized social identities such as age, ability, ethnic minority
status etc. which may operate to place some individuals at higher risk of violence.
Figure 3 here
In sum, this alternative conceptual framework while not exhaustive in its attention to type,
target, perpetrator or interaction effect, offers a gender sensitive approach to election violence that
justifies why gender matters in the study of electoral violence. It demonstrates how analyzing elections
with a gendered lens exposes types and patterns of violence that might otherwise be missed. In turn,
this brings us closer to the goals of protecting the citizenship rights of all, and ensuring safer and more
inclusive elections.
Conclusion
Violence against women in politics/elections and other forms of gendered electoral violence
are significant problems worldwide that have been ignored for too long. In this project we have
proposed and defended a conceptual framework for the study of electoral violence that is gender
sensitive and justifies greater attention by scholars and practitioners to the complex ways in which
women’s political participation may be circumscribed by unique forms of electoral violence that are
more difficult to uncover, but no less harmful to the victim. A failure to consider sex/gender as an
independent variable in research on political and electoral violence can lead to important gaps in our
understanding of patterns of perpetration, victimization and harm, necessary to develop effective
policies aimed at mitigating violence against women and electoral violence more generally. The
artificial segregation of violence against women as women during the election cycle, from the rest of the
political violence literature suggests that violence motivated by gender discrimination is somehow
outside of the scope of political violence. This can lead to an inaccurate understanding of how gender
interacts with violence to condition outcomes that undermine inclusive electoral practices, and thus
10
Gender and sexual minorities are at greater risk than others of being targets of violence. It is an understudied form of
gendered violence. Weiss and Bosia (2013) demonstrate in their groundbreaking work on global homophobia, that
LGBTQ individuals are most often targeted as gender and sexual minorities rather than for political or partisan reasons,
although recent events in a wide range of countries (e.g. Iran, Russia, Poland, Uganda, Cameroon) suggest that LGBTQ
individuals may be targeted as scapegoats during political campaigns which complicates this interpretation to some
extent. Our proposed alternative framework will necessarily fall short in providing a comprehensive approach for
explaining violence against LGBTQ individuals in politics more generally. But, the framework allows for the inclusion
of questions to ascertain whether or not a target identifies as a sexual or gender minority.
11
electoral integrity. A problem of this magnitude requires the attention of many scholars and
practitioners if we hope to fully understand and address the phenomena. Our hope is that the
communities of scholars and practitioners interested in these issues will consider the proposed
framework and indicators, and that these can provide a useful basis for further dialogue and
refinements with the objective of achieving a widely shared approach for data collection, analyses and
policy prescriptions.
References
Albaine, Laura. 2015. Obstáculos y desafíos de la paridad de género. Violencia política, sistema
electoral e interculturalidad. Iconos: Revista de Ciencias Sociales 52: 145-162.
Archenti, Nélida and Laura Albaine. 2013. Los desafíos de la paridad de género. Tensión
normativa y violencia política en Bolivia y Ecuador. Revista Punto Género 3: 195-219.
Ballington, Julie. 2016. Turning the Tide on Violence Against Women in Politics: How are we
Measuring Up? Paper presented at the 24th International Political Science Association World
Congress. Poznan, Poland, 23-28 July.
Bardall, Gabrielle. 2011. Breaking the Mold: Understanding Gender and Electoral Violence.
International Foundation for Electoral Systems, December, Washington, D.C.
http://ifes.org/sites/default/files/gender_and_electoral_violence_2011.pdf
Bardall, Gabrielle. 2013. Gender-specific election violence: the role of information and
communication technologies. Stability: International Journal of Security and Development, Vol 2: (60) 1-11.
Bardall, Gabrielle. 2015. Towards a More Complete Understanding of Election Violence:
Introducing a Gender Lens to Electoral Conflict Research. 4th European Conference on Politics
and Gender (ECPG) Uppsala, Sweden, 11-13 June 2015
Bardall, Gabrielle. 2016. Gender Based Distinctions and Motivations in Political Violence. In, Voices,
Votes and Violence: Essays on Selected Dynamics of Electoral Authoritarianism. Phd Dissertation. University
of Montreal.
Bardall, Gabrielle. 2018. Violence, Politics, and Gender. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics.
Oxford University Press.
Bekoe, Dorina. 2012. Voting In Fear. Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace.
Birch, Sarah and David Muchlinski. 2017. The Dataset of Countries at Risk of Electoral Violence.
Terrorism and Political Violence DOI: 10.1080/09546553.2017.1364636
Bjarnegard, Elin. 2016. Gender and Election Violence: The Case of the Maldives. Paper presented at
the World Congress of the International Political Science Association. Poznan, Poland. July 23-28.
Bloom, Shelah S. 2008. Violence Against Women and Girls: A Compendium of Monitoring and
Evaluation Indicators. USAID. East Africa Regional Office.
12
Cerna, Daniela Cerva. 2014. Political Participation and Gender Violence in Mexico. Revista Mexicana
de Ciencias Politicas y Sociales Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico Nueva Epoca. LIX, num.
222. Septiembre-diciembre de 2014. Pp. 117-140.
Cheldelin, Sandra I. and Maneshka Eliatamby. 2011. Women Waging War and Peace. New York:
Continuum International Publishing.
Cockburn, Cynthia. 1998. The Space Between Us: Negotiating Gender and National Identities in Conflict.
London: Zed Books.
Cohn, Carol. 2012. Women & Wars. Cambridge: Polity.
Collier, P., and Vicente, P.C. 2012. Violence, Bribery, and Fraud: The Political Economy of Elections
in Sub-Saharan Africa. Public Choice 153 (1-2): 117-147.
Davis, Jessica. 2017. Women in Modern Terrorism. New York: Rowman Littlefield.
Daxecker, Ursula E. 2013. All Quiet on Election Day? International Election Observation and
Incentives for Pre-Election Violence in African Elections. Electoral Studies. 34. 232-243.
Drummond, Paula. 2015. Promoting Democracy in Preventing Electoral Violence: The Women’s
Situation Room. The Graduate Institute Geneva. Programme on Gender and Global Change.
Enloe, Cynthia.1990. ‘Womanandchildren’: Making Feminist Sense of the Persian Gulf Crisis. The
Village Voice. September 25.
Fischer, Jeff. 2001. Electoral Conflict and Violence. White Paper. International Foundation for
Electoral Systems (IFES). Virginia, U.S.
Fischer, Jeff. 2002. Electoral Conflict and Violence – A Strategy for Study and Prevention.
International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES).
Fjelde, Hanne and Kristine Höglund. 2016. Electoral Violence: The Emergence of a Research Field.
Newsletter of the Comparative Democratization section of the American Political Science
Association. National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
Guichaoua, Yvan. 2012. Understanding Collective Political Violence. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Höglund, Kristine. 2009. Election Violence in Conflict-Ridden Societies: Concepts, Causes, and
Consequences. Terrorism and Political Violence. 21 (3):412-427.
Hyde, S.D., Mahoney, S.A. 2010. International Scrutiny and Pre-Electoral Fiscal Manipulation in
Developing Countries. Journal of Politics. 72 (3), 690-704.
IDEA. Electoral Risk Management tool: https://www.idea.int/data-tools/tools/electoral-risk-
management-tool.
13
Inter-Parliamentary Union. Sexism, Harassment, and Violence Against Women Parliamentarians
Brief. October 2016. http://www.ipu.org/pdf/publications/ issuesbrief-e.pdf
Kaufman Joyce P and Kristen P. Williams. 2010. Women and war: gender identity and activism in times of
conflict. Sterling VA: Kumerian Press.
Kellow, Tim. 2010. Women, Elections and Violence in West Africa: Assessing Women’s Political
Participation in Liberia and Sierra Leone. London: International Alert.
Krook, Mona Lena. 2009. Quotas for Women in Politics: Gender and Candidate Selection Reform Worldwide.
New York: Oxford.
Krook, Mona Lena and Juliana Restrepo Sanin. 2014. Mapping Violence against Women in Politics.
Paper presented at the American Political Science Association, Washington DC. August 28-31.
Krook, Mona Lena and Juliana Restrepo Sanin. 2016a. “Gender and Political Violence in Latin
America: Concepts, Debates, and Solutions.” Política y gobierno. 13(1) 125-157.
Krook, Mona Lena and Juliana Restrepo Sanin. 2016b. Violence Against Women in Politics: A
Defense of a Concept. Politica y gobierno Vol 23 (2) 459-490.
Krook, Mona Lena. 2017. “Violence Against Women in Politics.” Journal of Democracy. Vol 28 (1) 74-
88.
Lorentzen , Lois Ann and Jennifer Turpin. 1998. The Women & War Reader. New York: New York
University Press.
Mackenzie, Megan H. 2012. Female Soldiers in Sierra Leone. New York: New York University Press.
Mansbridge, Jane and Shauna IL. Shames. 2008. Toward a Theory of Backlash: Dynamic Resistance
and the Central Role of Power. Politics & Gender 4 (4): 623-634.
Martinez, Anayeli García. 2015. “Reportaje: Reacción violenta del patriarcado contra la paridad.”
http://www.cimacnoticias.com.mx/node/70336 Retrieved May 23 2018.
Matthews, R. Christopher. 2016. Tyranny of the Male Preserve. Gender & Society. 30 (2): 312-333.
Mazurana, Dyan, Angela Raven-Roberts, and Jane Parpart. 2005. Gender, Conflict, and Peacekeeping.
Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.
Moi, Toril. 1991. Appropriating Bourdieu: Feminist Theory and Pierre Bourdieu’s Sociology of
Culture. New Literary History 22 (4) 1017-1049.
Moser, Caroline O N and Fiona C Clark. 2001. Victims, Perpetrators or Actors? Gender, Armed Conflict and
Political Violence. London: Zed Publishers.
National Democratic Institute. “Votes Without Violence.”
https://www.voteswithoutviolence.org/cross-country-analysis Retrieved May 15 2018.
14
Norris, Pippa. 2014. Why Electoral Integrity Matters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Norris, Pippa, Richard Frank and Ferran Martinez i Coma. 2015. Contentious Elections. From Ballots to
Barricades. New York: Routledge.
Paxton, Pamela, Melanie M. Hughes, and Matthew A Painter. 2010. Growth in Women’s Political
Representation: A Longitudinal Exploration of democracy, electoral systems, and gender quotas.,
European Journal of Political Research. 49 (1): 25-52.
Piscopo, Jennifer M. 2015. The Challenges with Legislation as Enforcement: Rethinking Responses
to Violence Against Women in Politics. International Seminar Violence in Politics
against women in Latin America: Diagnostics, Dialogues, and Strategies. Mexico City, Mexico, November 11-
13.
Piscopo, Jennifer M. 2016. State Capacity, Criminal Justice, and Political Rights: Rethinking Violence
against Women in Politics. Politica y gobeirno. 23 (2) 437-458.
RAU (2010), Preying on the “Weaker” Sex: Political Violence against Women in Zimbabwe. Report
produced by IDASA (An African Democracy Institute), the International Center for Transitional
Justice [ICTJ] and the Research and Advocacy Unit [RAU].
November 2010. Harare: Research and
Advocacy Unit.
http://www.researchandadvocacyunit.org/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=96&Itemid
=90 Retrieved June 4 2018.
RAU (2011), Women and Political Violence: An Update. July 2011. Harrare: Research and Advocacy
Unit.
http://www.researchandadvocacyunit.org/index.php?option=com_docman&task=cat_view&gid=54&Itemid=90
Retrieved June 4 2018.
Rutherford, A., Zwi, A. B., Grove, N. J., & Butchart, A. (2007). Violence: a glossary. Journal of
Epidemiology and Community Health, 61(8) 676–680. http://doi.org/10.1136/jech.2005.043711
SAP International and International IDEA, 2008. Women, Representation and Violence: Exploring
Constituent Assembly Election in Nepal. August.
http://iknowpolitics.org/sites/default/files/vawip-report.pdf
Sheard, K.G. and Eric G. Dunning, 1973. The Rugby Football Club as a type of Male Preserve. The
International Review for the Sociology of Sport. 8 (3) 5-24.
Simpser, A., Donno, D. 2012.“Can International Election Monitoring Harm Governance?”
Journal of Politics. 74 (2) 501-513.
Sjoberg, Laura. 2014. Gender, War and Conflict. Cambridge: Polity.
Sjoberg, Laura. 2016. Women as Wartime Rapists. New York: New York University Press.
Steenkamp, Chrissie. 2005. The Legacy of War: Conceptualising a ‘Culture of Violence’ to
Explain Violence after Post Accords. The Round Table. Vol 94 No. 379 (2005) 253254.
15
Report of the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women. 2018. United Nations Office of the
High Commissioner
https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Women/SRWomen/Pages/ViolenceAgainstWomeninPolitics.
asp. Retrieved September 20 2018.
UN Women. 2017. Preventing Violence Against Women in Elections: A Programming Guide.
UNWomen/UNDP. http://www.unwomen.org/en/digital-
library/publications/2017/11/preventing-violence-against-women-in-elections#view. Retrieved
June 2018.
Valverde, María Eugenia Rojas. 2010. Gender-Based Political Harassment and Violence: Effects on the
Political Work and Public Roles of Women. NEW SOLUTIONS: A Journal of Environmental and
Occupational Health Policy . Vol 20 (4) 527 535.
Wilkinson, S. I. 2004. Votes and Violence: Electoral Competition and Ethnic Roots in India. Cambridge
University Press. Cambridge, UK.
Zabiliute, Emilija. 2014. Notes from the field: Delhi Assembly Elections Daru and Politisation of
Violence against Women. Feminist Review. (107) 90-97.
16
Appendix 1: Sample reporting form/questionnaire for data collection
As the recent UN Women publication on Preventing Violence Against Women in Elections
(UN, 2017) makes clear, identifying and addressing instances of VAWE is of global concern. While
the UN Guide and other recent scholarly work has moved us closer to achieving clarity on the broad
concept and key sub-dimensions, more work is needed to harmonize approaches to data-gathering
and the development of common indicators, which would allow cross-national comparisons and
tracking over time. The general reporting form below borrows methodological insights developed in
several recent practitioner frameworks, especially those by the National Democratic Institute (NDI)
and International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES).
11
It is offered as a sample of the type of
measurement instrument that could be used by scholars and by election observation and violence
monitoring organizations. The core of elements underlying the VAWE reporting form are the
integration of gender sensitive measures, use of typologies of “victims,” “perpetrators,” “categories
of violence” (i.e., physical, sexual, psychological, threats and coercion, and economic), and questions
relating to specific locations and contexts of VAWE incidents (private sphere, public sphere, or
protected public sphere, e.g., political institutions). The form, we hope, allows for more precise coding
schemas that can distinguish between instances of VAWE, and other types of gender-based violence.
Gathering data in the field on violence against women, on sexual violence, and on violence
generally can be fraught with challenges. If not done correctly with due diligence to the cultural context
and norms around gender and sexuality, data collection efforts may do more harm than good by
inadvertently underrepresenting or misrepresenting patterns of gendered and gender-based violence.
Therefore, we offer below some suggestions and guidelines on methodology and approach.
Baseline assessment. The first step is complete desk research and then send an expert team to conduct
an early pre-election field visit to complete a baseline assessment of key contextual variables, data,
trends, laws, actors, and institutions regarding VAWE. The field visit could last several weeks (or
months), and could incorporate a range of information gathering techniques, including key informant
interviews with a variety of stakeholder, surveys, focus groups, etc.
General reporting Form. A few key guidelines for using the forms are as follows:
(1)Time-period for reporting: The reporting form is designed to be used throughout the election cycle,
especially the periods in which VAWE is most likely to occur, including voter registration, candidate
selection/ nomination, the campaign period, and the days immediately surrounding election day,
including before, during, and after the election;
12
(2) Observers/reporters: The form would be filled out by trained observers/reporters— presumably
the election mission’s core team experts (directed by the gender expert or gender focal point) and/or
long-term observers—and accompanied and assisted by trained local staff with appropriate language
skills and cultural awareness of the regions where data is being gathered.
(3) Informants: Drawing on key information from the baseline assessment report, the
observers/reporters would select a broad sample of persons to interview using the reporting form,
including men and women, candidates, party officials, election officials, partisan supporters, and
average citizens. The sampling methodology and the overall size and scale of the sample would be
11
Please contact corresponding author for detailed comparative analysis of practitioner frameworks and programming
guides on violence against women in politics and elections.
12
We presume that on election day, the general reporting form would NOT be used as a polling station observer checklist,
given that polling day processes are well covered by standard polling station checklists.
17
managed by the core team experts, working within the time and resource constraints of the mission
at hand.
Reporting form/survey here
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any citations for this publication.
Article
Full-text available
Electoral violence is increasingly affecting elections around the world, yet researchers have been limited by a paucity of granular data on this phenomenon. This paper introduces and describes a new dataset of electoral violence—the Dataset of Countries at Risk of Electoral Violence (CREV)—that provides measures of 10 different types of electoral violence across 642 elections held around the globe between 1995 and 2013. The paper provides a detailed account of how and why the dataset was constructed, together with a replication of previous research on electoral violence. We introduce this dataset by demonstrating that the CREV, while measuring the same underlying phenomena as other datasets on electoral violence, provides researchers with the ability to draw more nuanced conclusions about the causes and consequences of violence that occurs in connection with the electoral process. We also present and analyze descriptive data from the CREV dataset.
Article
Full-text available
Female politicians in Latin America experience myriad forms of gender-based abuse, from physical attacks to degrading sexual commentaries. Activists have framed this problem as violence against women in politics (VAWIP), an emphasis on women's political and electoral rights that reflects the political opportunity structure. In Latin America, broken criminal justice systems foment impunity, normalizing actors' use of violence to maintain political and patriarchal power. Citizens' rights to physical and emotional security are not protected by law enforcement, but women's rights to elect and be elected have received substantive protections from electoral institutions and electoral courts. Consequently, framing VAWIP as an electoral crime represents an astute activist strategy-but one that researchers cannot adopt without losing explanatory power. From an academic standpoint, VAWIP overlooks how widespread impunity results in the routinization of violence throughout state and society, leading to policy solutions narrowly tailored to punish political parties and protect elite women. Such reforms do little to address the underlying absence of the rule of law.
Article
Full-text available
The phenomenon of violence against women in politics is gaining growing and urgent attention from actors around the globe. Piscopo (2016) criticizes emerging theories and strategies to theorize and combat this problem, arguing that scholars have accepted activist definitions at face value, violence against women in politics is simply a subcategory of violence in politics more generally, weak state capacity and criminal justice systems-the result of incomplete democratic consolidation-explain this phenomenon, these acts of violence do not only violate women's political rights but also other laws, legislation is insufficient given widespread impunity for criminal offenses, and further state actors and policies should be activated to tackle this issue. In response, we argue that nas cent academic studies do bring new tools to bear on definitions of this phenomenon. We maintain that violence against women in politics is distinct from violence in politics, seeking to prevent women's participation as women. Worryingly, this problem is present in all regions of the world, not just Latin America, although context may influence the content and prevalence of different categories of violent acts. This violence is more than a criminal issue, posing a serious challenge to democracy, human rights, and gender equality-such that even ineffective laws can play an important normative role in validating these acts as a "problem". Solutions, finally, should not only be pursued by the state, but instead engage a host of different actors. Although debates continue, we conclude that scholars and activists should not abandon the concept of violence against women in politics, but rather, should work together to bring this problem into focus and ensure that men and women are able to participate in politics equally without fear of violence.
Article
Full-text available
Reports of physical attacks, intimidation, and harassment aimed at female politicians, activists, and voters have grown as women have become more politically engaged around the world. Often dismissed as the “cost of doing politics,” such acts pose a serious threat to democracy and raise questions about the progress that has been made globally toward incorporating women as full political actors. Drawing on a diverse range of quantitative and qualitative data, as well as academic research on gendered and political violence, this essay maps the contours of this phenomenon and proposes emerging solutions. Abstract
Article
Full-text available
Violence against women in politics is increasingly recognized around the world but especially in Latin America as an emerging tactic to deter women's political participation. We survey how this concept has been defined by academics and practitioners across the region largely in terms of physical and psychological violence and draw on global data and research in various disciplines to propose expanding this concept to include two further forms of violence: economic and symbolic. We provide examples of all four types of violence in Latin American countries and then consider a range of solutions that might be pursued in light of this broader definition. We emphasize that a comprehensive approach provides the best means for tackling violence in all its forms.
Book
Very few women are wartime rapists. Very few women issue commands to commit sexual violence. Very few women play a role in making war plans that feature the intentional sexual violation of other women. This book is about those very few women. Women as Wartime Rapists reveals the stories of female perpetrators of sexual violence and their place in wartime conflict, legal policy, and the punishment of sexual violence. More broadly, Laura Sjoberg asks, what do the actions and perceptions of female perpetrators of sexual violence reveal about our broader conceptions of war, violence, sexual assault, and gender? This book explores specific historical case studies, such as Nazi Germany, Serbia, the contemporary case of ISIS, and others, to understand how and why women participate in rape during war and conflict. Sjoberg examines the contrast between the visibility of female victims and the invisibility of female perpetrators, as well as the distinction between rape and genocidal rape, which is used as a weapon against a particular ethnic or national group. Further, she explores women’s engagement with genocidal rape and how some orchestrated the ethnic cleansing of entire regions. A provocative approach to a sensationalized topic, Women as Wartime Rapists offers important insights into not only the topic of female perpetrators of wartime sexual violence, but to larger notions of gender and violence with crucial cultural, legal, and political implications.
Book
Recent events, including the rise of the Islamic State and its overt recruitment of Western women, have once again brought the issue of women participating in terrorist organizations to the forefront. Yet much remains to be understood about why women join terrorist organizations and why groups choose to incorporate them into their structures and operations. Women in Modern Terrorism, which draws from a unique dataset compiled over a decade, tackles these questions and analyzes women’s inclusion in terrorist organizations since the beginning of modern terrorism, covering both religious and ethno-nationalist terrorism and conflict. The text opens with a discussion of the definition of terrorism before examining key issues, such as how and why women join terrorist groups, what women’s inclusion in terrorist organizations reveals about the nature and longevity of both the groups and the conflicts, the future of women’s role in terrorist organizations and attacks (particularly given the rise of new terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq), and the types of attacks women perpetrate and how they compare across groups. By looking at case studies, including Hizballah, Chechnya, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, Al Shaabab, and more, this text shows that women’s inclusion in various terrorist organizations is largely a pragmatic choice by the group. It also highlights the cross-pollination of ideas between differently motivated groups. All these issues, along with the role of the media and the Internet in radicalization and recruitment processes, are explored to provide an exhaustive account of the many roles for women in terrorist groups today.
Article
The monitoring of elections by international groups has become widespread. But can it have unintended negative consequences for governance? We argue that high-quality election monitoring, by preventing certain forms of manipulation such as stuffing ballot boxes, can unwittingly induce incumbents to resort to tactics of election manipulation that are more damaging to domestic institutions, governance and freedoms. These tactics include rigging courts and administrative bodies, and repressing the media. We use an original panel dataset of 144 countries in 1990-2007 to test our argument. We find that, on average, high-quality election monitoring has a measurably negative effect on the rule of law, administrative performance and media freedom. We employ various strategies to guard against endogeneity, including instrumenting for election monitoring.