Marcia Texler Segal

GENDERED PERSPECTIVES
ON CONFLICT AND VIOLENCE:

PART B
ADVANCES IN GENDER RESEARCH
Series Editors: Marcia Texler Segal and Vasilikie Demos
Recent Volumes:
Volume 5: An International Feminist Challenge to Theory Edited by Vasilikie Demos
and Marcia Texler Segal, 2001
Volume 6: Gendered Sexualities Edited by Patricia Gagné and Richard Tewksbury,

2002
Volume 7: Gender Perspectives on Health and Medicine: Key Themes Edited by

Marcia Texler Segal and Vasilikie Demos with Jennie Jacobs Kronenfeld,
2004
Volume 8: Gender Perspectives on Reproduction and Sexuality Edited by Marcia
Texler Segal and Vasilikie Demos with Jennie Jacobs Kronenfeld, 2005
Volume 9: Gender Realities: Local and Global Edited by Marcia Texler Segal and
Vasilikie Demos, 2005
Volume 10: Gender and the Local Global Nexus: Theory, Research, and Action
Edited by Marcia Texler Segal and Vasilikie Demos, 2006
Volume 11: Sustainable Feminisms Edited by Sonita Sarker, 2007
Volume 12: Advancing Gender Research from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-first
Centuries Edited by Vasilikie Demos and Marcia Texler Segal, 2008
Volume 13: Perceiving Gender Locally, Globally, and Intersectionally Edited by
Vasilikie Demos and Marcia Texler Segal, 2009
Volume 14: Interactions and Intersections of Gendered Bodies at Work, at Home,
and at Play Edited by Marcia Texler Segal, 2010
Volume 15: Analyzing Gender, Intersectionality, and Multiple Inequalities: Global,
Transnational and Local Contexts Edited by Esther Ngan-Ling Chow,
Marcia Texler Segal and Lin Tan, 2011
Volume 16: Social Production and Reproduction at the Interface of Public and Private
Spheres Edited by Marcia Texler Segal, Esther Ngan-Ling Chow and
Vasilikie Demos, 2012
Volume 17: Notions of Family: Intersectional Perspectives Edited by
Marla H. Kohlman, Dana B. Krieg and Bette J. Dickerson, 2013
Volume 18A: Gendered Perspectives on Conflict and Violence: Part A
Edited by Marcia Texler Segal and Vasilikie Demos, 2013
ADVANCES IN GENDER RESEARCH VOLUME 18B
GENDERED
PERSPECTIVES ON
CONFLICT AND
VIOLENCE: PART B
EDITED BY
MARCIA TEXLER SEGAL

School of Social Science, Indiana University Southeast,
New Albany, IN, USA
VASILIKIE DEMOS
Department of Sociology/Anthropology, University of
Minnesota-Morris, Morris, MN, USA
United Kingdom North America Japan

India Malaysia China
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CONTENTS
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS vii
INFORMATION FOR AUTHORS ix
MORE GENDERED PERSPECTIVES ON CONFLICT

AND VIOLENCE: AN INTRODUCTION
Vasilikie Demos and Marcia Texler Segal 1
ROUTINE VIOLENCE: INTERSECTIONALITY AT THE

INTERSTICES
Bandana Purkayastha and Kathryn Strother Ratcliff 19
WELL-INTENDED MEASURES: CONCEPTUALIZING

GENDER AS A SOCIAL STRUCTURE IN POST-
CONFLICT POLICY DEVELOPMENT
Elizabeth A. Degi Mount 45
RESISTING GENDERED RELIGIOUS NATIONALISM:

THE CASE OF RELIGIOUS-BASED VIOLENCE IN
GUJARAT, INDIA
Mangala Subramaniam 73
IS RELIGIOSITY RELATED TO REDUCED ABUSE

IN CHILDHOOD? A COMMUNITY STUDY OF
ULTRA-ORTHODOX AND SECULAR JEWISH
WOMEN
Marjorie C. Feinson and Adi Meir 99
v
vi CONTENTS
TREATING SEXUAL VIOLENCE AS A “BUSINESS”:

REFLECTIONS ON NATIONAL AND
INTERNATIONAL RESPONSES TO SEXUAL AND
GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE IN THE DEMOCRATIC
REPUBLIC OF CONGO
Jane Freedman 125
THE USE OF PARTICIPATORY GENDER ANALYSIS

FOR VIOLENCE REDUCTION IN (POST-) CONFLICT
SETTINGS: A STUDY OF A COMMUNITY
EDUCATION PROJECT IN NORTHERN UGANDA
Colette Harris 145
NOT ALL NAZIS ARE MEN: WOMEN’S

UNDERESTIMATED POTENTIAL FOR VIOLENCE IN
GERMAN NEO-NAZISM. CONTINUATION OF THE
PAST OR NOVEL PHENOMENON?
Andrea S. Dauber 171
“THAT CANDY BAR AIN’T FREE”: MANAGING

PERFORMANCES OF MASCULINITY IN PRISON
Eleanor M. Novek 195
BEFORE PREVENTION: THE TRAJECTORY AND

TENSIONS OF FEMINIST ANTIVIOLENCE
Max A. Greenberg and Michael A. Messner 225
“OUR” HONOR AND “THEIR” HONOR: THE CASE OF

HONOR KILLINGS IN TURKEY
Julie Alev Dilmaç 251
SYMBOLIC VIOLENCE: RESHAPING POST-

PATRIARCHAL DISCOURSES ON GENDER
Franca Bimbi 275
ABOUT THE AUTHORS 303

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Franca Bimbi Department of Philosophy, Sociology,

Education and Applied Psychology,
University of Padua, Padua, Italy
Andrea S. Dauber Department of Sociology, University of
California-San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
Vasilikie Demos Department of Sociology/Anthropology,
University of Minnesota-Morris Morris,
MN, USA
Julie Alev Dilmaç Departments of Business Administration
and Social Work, Cyprus International
University, Lefkoşa, North Cyprus
Marjorie C. Feinson Falk Institute for Behavioral Health
Studies, Jerusalem, Israel, and The
Renfrew Center Foundation, Philadelphia,
PA, USA
Jane Freedman CRESPPA, Université de Paris 8, Paris,
France
Max A. Greenberg Department of Sociology, University
of Southern California, Los Angeles,
CA, USA
Colette Harris Department of Development Studies,
School of Oriental and African Studies,
University of London, London, UK
Adi Meir Falk Institute for Behavioral Health
Studies, Jerusalem, Israel
Michael A. Messner Department of Sociology, University
CA, USA
vii
viii LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Elizabeth A. Degi School for Conflict Analysis and

Mount Resolution, George Mason University,
Arlington, VA, USA
Eleanor M. Novek Department of Communication,
Monmouth University, West Long Branch,
NJ, USA
Bandana Purkayastha Department of Sociology, University of
Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA
Kathryn Strother Department of Sociology, University of
Ratcliff Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA
Marcia Texler Segal School of Social Science, Indiana
University Southeast, New Albany,
IN, USA
Mangala Subramaniam Department of Sociology, Purdue
University, West Lafayette, IN, USA
INFORMATION FOR AUTHORS
Series Co-Editors: Marcia Texler Segal and

Vasilikie Demos
We seek original manuscripts dealing with new developments in the study

of gender informed by a variety of feminist frameworks and methodologies.
Essays that are empirical, theoretical or applied, dealing with any nation
or region or offering a comparative perspective are welcome.
Authors from all parts of the world are encouraged to submit inquiries.
However, all manuscripts must be in English and submitted electronically
in an editable format and all contributors must be able to communicate
with the editors and the publisher via e-mail. Inquires, one page abstracts
or drafts of papers are welcome. These should be sent to mtsegal.agr@
gmail.com and demosvp@morris.umn.edu.
ix
vi CONTENTS
TREATING SEXUAL VIOLENCE AS A “BUSINESS”:

REFLECTIONS ON NATIONAL AND
INTERNATIONAL RESPONSES TO SEXUAL AND
GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE IN THE DEMOCRATIC
REPUBLIC OF CONGO
Jane Freedman 125
THE USE OF PARTICIPATORY GENDER ANALYSIS

FOR VIOLENCE REDUCTION IN (POST-) CONFLICT
SETTINGS: A STUDY OF A COMMUNITY
EDUCATION PROJECT IN NORTHERN UGANDA
Colette Harris 145
NOT ALL NAZIS ARE MEN: WOMEN’S

UNDERESTIMATED POTENTIAL FOR VIOLENCE IN
GERMAN NEO-NAZISM. CONTINUATION OF THE
PAST OR NOVEL PHENOMENON?
Andrea S. Dauber 171
“THAT CANDY BAR AIN’T FREE”: MANAGING

PERFORMANCES OF MASCULINITY IN PRISON
Eleanor M. Novek 195
BEFORE PREVENTION: THE TRAJECTORY AND

TENSIONS OF FEMINIST ANTIVIOLENCE
Max A. Greenberg and Michael A. Messner 225
“OUR” HONOR AND “THEIR” HONOR: THE CASE OF

HONOR KILLINGS IN TURKEY
Julie Alev Dilmaç 251
SYMBOLIC VIOLENCE: RESHAPING POST-

PATRIARCHAL DISCOURSES ON GENDER
Franca Bimbi 275
ABOUT THE AUTHORS 303

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Franca Bimbi Department of Philosophy, Sociology,

Education and Applied Psychology,
University of Padua, Padua, Italy
Andrea S. Dauber Department of Sociology, University of
California-San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
Vasilikie Demos Department of Sociology/Anthropology,
University of Minnesota-Morris Morris,
MN, USA
Julie Alev Dilmaç Departments of Business Administration
and Social Work, Cyprus International
University, Lefkoşa, North Cyprus
Marjorie C. Feinson Falk Institute for Behavioral Health
Studies, Jerusalem, Israel, and The
Renfrew Center Foundation, Philadelphia,
PA, USA
Jane Freedman CRESPPA, Université de Paris 8, Paris,
France
Max A. Greenberg Department of Sociology, University
CA, USA
Colette Harris Department of Development Studies,
School of Oriental and African Studies,
University of London, London, UK
Adi Meir Falk Institute for Behavioral Health
Studies, Jerusalem, Israel
Michael A. Messner Department of Sociology, University
CA, USA
vii
More Gendered Perspectives on Conflict and Violence 3
specific cases as well as definitions and decisions that have global impact.
They have interrogated theory and evaluated the history and impact of
practical applications. These are not easy subjects. If these chapters were
films or television programs they would carry warnings about sex, violence,
and language, yet none of the contents are gratuitous; the types of violence
examined happen in peoples’ everyday lives in prisons, in war zones, but
also in private homes, in places of business and on university campuses.
At the close of this introduction we will ask what have we learned, what
comments we can make and what conclusions we can draw by looking
at the 22 contributions to this two-part volume. First we provide brief
overviews of each of the contributions to Part B. Next we show how they
overlap and intersect with each other and with those in Part A calling
attention to some broad general themes that recur.1 We end with some
comments about the construction of GBV knowledge.
OVERVIEWS OF PART B CHAPTERS

In “Violence: Intersectionality at the Interstices” Bandana Purkayastha
and Kathryn Strother Ratcliff offer insights from research and action in
the global south, calling attention to the growing phenomenon of routine
violence, a form of violence that “is gendered/racialized/classed and is often
invisible because it is normalized in everyday life.” This form of violence
is seen in the focus on national security that leads to the militarization of
border zones in India, but also in the southwest of the United States, and in
neo-liberal policies such as the privatization of water and other natural
resources. The authors review the related literature and provide two
extended examples of resistance to routine violence from India. Irom
Sharmila has been on an extended hunger strike since 2000 to protest activ-
ities under the auspices of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA)
in Manipur and neighboring states along India’s border with nations with
whom there have been tensions. Older women (Imas), inspired by Sharmila
have been motivated by specific acts of routine violence to take action.
A second example concerns the half-widows of Kashmir. Their husbands
and other men folk have disappeared, either arrested or into armed groups,
leaving them trying to locate the men while being totally responsible for all
aspects of daily life. The chapter shows how a focus on routine violence
highlights the links between public and private violence and the materiality
of violence.
4 VASILIKIE DEMOS AND MARCIA TEXLER SEGAL
In “Well-Intended Measures: Conceptualizing Gender as a Social

Structure in Post-Conflict Policy Development,” Elizabeth Degi Mount
reports on her exploratory case study of women’s situation with respect to
divorce and domestic violence, in Bali, in the aftermath of the fall of
Soeharto’s regime in 1998, followed by the passing of United Nations
Security Council Resolution 1325 mandating that gender issues be
integrated in all levels of peace-building and that the needs of women in
conflict situations be given special attention, World Bank investment in the
island, and the 2010 Reforms meant to facilitate women’s independence.
She finds that despite “the well-intended measures” of the 2010 reforms,
women’s situation is not greatly improved. Women in Bali have little
economic power; once they marry into their husband’s family and lands,
they do not have the means to leave and live independently, and, further,
they are not welcomed back to their family of birth, but viewed as an
economic burden. A major responsibility they have is to make offerings for
the temples. This is an expectation which fills the needs of the family, but,
also, the tourist industry which is dependent on selling a traditional Bali.
Based on the interviews she conducted with academics, activists, profes-
sionals involved in NGO programs, adult children of abused Balinese
women, and Balinese women and on her participant observation, Mount
takes a grounded theory approach to the understanding of GBV explaining
that women’s situation has not improved because its cause, structural gen-
der/structural violence has not been addressed. She finds that World Bank
investment in Bali was purposely decentralized to prevent the emergence of
another dictator with highly centralized power. The unintended effect of
this investment was to restore regional power and the Adat, customary
Balinese law that provides for patrilineal inheritance of land and the mainte-
nance of temples. In addition, the neo-liberal orientation of the World Bank
with its focus on the individual means that individuals rather than social
structures are held responsible for actions. Because the 2010 Reforms
designed to deal with the unintended consequences of World Bank invest-
ment were based on an individual conceptualization of gender, they did little
to improve women’s situation. Mount observes that a structural approach
does ask not what is happening to women, but rather how “cultural norms
and attitudes about gender constrain and order individuals’ behaviors in
everyday life, the propagation of cultural norms, and the functioning of
social and political-juridical institutions.”
In “Resisting Gendered Religious Nationalism: The Case of Religious-
Based Violence in Gujarat, India,” Mangala Subramaniam reviewed rele-
vant documents, published and unpublished, interviewed leaders of seven
NGOs, and used a grounded theory approach to identify frames used to

defy gendered nationalism in India. Focusing on Gujarat, and the 2002
communal or sectarian conflict between Hindus and Muslims,
Subramaniam explains that the clash between the two religious groups is a
result of the attempt to establish Hindutva, an ideology holding that India,
constructed in 1947 as a secular state, should be Hindu, gendered and com-
munal. Subramaniam notes that women’s bodies were used to differentiate
the two religious groups from each other, and in that clash and subsequent
ones, their bodies were the borders of the religious groups to be killed or
raped, the rape of a woman, dishonoring not her but her husband.
Subramaniam identified three frames used by NGOs to address the issue
of a gendered communal nationalism. The communal harmony (not com-
munal violence) frame means that women are seen as un-gendered members
of their community; the endangered woman frame sees women as present,
but without agency, as passive, and the mainstreaming frame sees women
as relevant to all aspects of Indian life. She also notes that while a woman’s
rights frame may be evident on the global level, it is absent from the local.
Starting from the premises that child abuse is globally a major health
issue and that religiosity is associated with good health, Marjorie Feinson
and Adi Meir in “Is Religiosity Related to Reduced Abuse in Childhood? A
Community Study of Ultra-Orthodox and Secular Jewish Women,” analyze
telephone interviews of 261 ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) and 181 nonreligious
Secular Jewish women living in Israel to explore intra-denominational dif-
ferences in the reporting of three kinds of child abuse physical, emotional,
and sexual. They find that nearly half of the women said they had experi-
enced child abuse and more than half of these women said they currently
experience abuse (re-victimization). The experience of sexual child abuse
was the least reported. What Feinson and Meir find most remarkable and
contrary to expectations is that there are no significant differences between
Haredi and Secular Jewish women in the reported incidence of child abuse.
Their study is unique in examining childhood abuse across the range of
observance within a single religious denomination. It indicates that greater
religious practice and devotion does not present a buffer to child abuse.
Further research on the relationship between religious observance and child
abuse as it intersects gender is called for.
Jane Freedman’s chapter, “Treating Sexual Violence as a ‘Business’:
Reflections on National and International Responses to Sexual and
Gender-Based Violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” is based on
interviews with key informants including NGO and international aid
officials and 20 focus groups with local women and men. Her thesis is that
while it is clear that sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) is wide-

spread in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), statistics are unreli-
able for many reasons and somewhat beside the point. The real issue on
which we should focus is the underlying gender inequities that cause the
violence. Moreover, while the ways in which the violence has been
observed, a kind of “SGBV tourism,” and reported, a kind of “pornogra-
phy of violence,” has called worldwide attention to the problem, it has not
been conducive to either analysis or solutions. In fact, it has produced a
“market” for SGBV services in which NGOs are created (or claim) to focus
on this issue in order to compete for donor aid and women and girls who
do not otherwise have access to social services present themselves as
victims. She also notes that the problem of men who are victims of SGBV
is ignored given the norms of masculinity that make it difficult for men to
admit being victims, while, at the same time, some men accuse women
either of being victimizers or of taking advantage of the system.
In “The Use of Participatory Gender Analysis for Violence Reduction in
(Post-) Conflict Settings: A Study of a Community Education Project in
Northern Uganda,” Colette Harris describes the ethnographic field work
she conducted among the Acholi people of northern Uganda who had been
in displacement camps as a result of the Ugandan civil war. This work,
which began in 2007, as the civil war was coming to a close, and ended in
2011, consisted of collecting data among the Acholi living in the camps and
identifying gender and specifically masculinities as a source of conflict
among them. A year-long participatory education program was implemen-
ted in which 40 Acholi self-selected participants living in two villages were
divided into age-gender facilitated discussion groups. Harris validated the
effectiveness of the program through two discussion sessions with partici-
pants and an assessment by an outside agency. One of her major findings is
that as a result of the discussion groups, senior men who had felt their
dispositional power or as referred to in other parts of this volume, their
structural power, threatened, and, consequently, had engaged in violent
domestic acts as a way of asserting themselves, had regained respect by
listening to girls, women, and younger men and renouncing violence.
Harris’ ethnographic work is a natural experiment, one in which she
introduces the independent variable of the weekly discussion groups and
measures the effect of these after a year. It is informed by a knowledge of
the complex precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial history of the Acholi
people. She explains that to understand the function of gender among
them, it is critical to understand, also, the function of age that the two
intersect and that it was during the colonial era that age was deemphasized.
Further, as a western woman working with an African group, she is careful

not to re-impose colonialism. Rather than a traditional western student/
teacher hierarchical model of learning, she introduces the Acholi to Paolo
Freire’s (2000) pedagogy of liberation, a model of learning in which the
learners construct the curriculum and in which learners and teachers are
equal.
In “Not All Nazis Are Men: Women’s Underestimated Potential for
Violence in German Neo-Nazism. Continuation of the Past or Novel
Phenomenon?” Andrea S. Dauber uses the case of Beate Zschäpe to raise
the question of whether women can engage in violent actions, specifically
in the Neo-Nazi movement. This leads her to review research on women in
the earlier Nazi movement and to question why researchers, law enforce-
ment, the media, and the general public seem blind to the fact that women,
past and present, have perpetrated acts of violence. She concludes that
being convinced that women are always and everywhere dominated by men
and thus lack agency, those seeking to understand women’s involvement in
Nazism and Neo-Nazism have reified Bordieu’s concept of symbolic vio-
lence limiting themselves to asking how and why women complied with
Nazi demands or come to be involved as romantic partners or helpers of
Nazi or Neo-Nazi men. Had Zschälpe not turned herself in, the murders of
several immigrant merchants might never have been solved. Presenting
examples of how researchers, police, courts, and media have framed both
history and the present, she notes that analysis of women’s participation in
the Nazi era is being revisited and urges that similar attention be paid to
more recent events.
Eleanor M. Novek’s contribution, “‘That Candy Bar Ain’t Free:’
Managing Performances of Masculinity in Prison,” is based on field data
gathered while running workshops and teaching writing at two men’s pris-
ons in the United States and brief excerpts of the writing of some of the
participants. Although some of her examples are based on actions she
witnessed, she makes a case for accepting what people report, not as fact,
but as evidence of how they see themselves and their world. The chapter
looks at the ways that masculinity is expressed in the kinds of contempor-
ary correctional institutions that can be labeled “paternal” rather than
“maternal” owing to their focus on control rather than rehabilitation. The
expansion of the prison industrial complex and the racial/ethnic dispari-
ties in the prison population are discussed. Both inmates and guards act in
hyper-masculine ways expressing symbolic, and occasionally actual, vio-
lence within and between groups. A reputation for violence both prior to
and within the institution is valued and homophobia is a key element in
the performances. An example featuring a female guard behaving in the

expected manner is included. While both inmates and guards generally
avoid any show of emotion or caring, occasional examples do occur offer-
ing a contrasting version of masculinity. She notes that guards bring their
modes of behavior home with them and many of the prisoners will even-
tually be released. Thus, what happens inside will eventually affect the
outside.
Beginning in the late 1960s when GBV was not recognized as a social
problem, “Before Prevention: The Trajectory and Tensions of Feminist
Antiviolence” by Max A. Greenberg and Michael A. Messner traces the
development of awareness, theorizing, policies and programs in the United
States. Based on existing literature, interviews, and ethnographic research
the authors develop a four-part schema with attention to events and actions
before and after violence targeted toward recipients and perpetrators of
that violence. They show how over time feminist theory and practice were
employed to develop self-defense and risk-reduction practices, shelters and
support groups, legal reforms and therapy, and gradually, through the
activities of feminist men, prevention programs directed toward men and
boys. They document the impact of legislation such as Title IX (1972) and
the Violence Against Women Act (1994, 2013). Approaches to dealing with
victims and perpetrators gradually became less grassroots, more professio-
nalized and more medicalized. Funding increased, but it became more
market-driven as providers framed their programs to conform to models
and priorities of funding sources and competed for funds. Activities in each
of the four cells of the schema have become disconnected and, thus, less
likely to provide the base for comprehensive social change. Prevention has
become the primary response and, not anchored in the other realms or in
feminist approaches, is often merely a public relations exercise. The poten-
tials for reducing the focus to individual behavior, for blaming the victim
or for using lack of training as an excuse by the perpetrator are commented
on and illustrated. Programs for men and boys are shown to have moved
from a focus on how notions of masculinity may lead to violence to one of
masculine honor as a tool to prevent violence.
In her chapter, “‘Our’ Honor and ‘Their’ Honor: The Case of Honor
Killings in Turkey,” Julie Alev Dilmaç, uses a convenience sample repre-
senting 10 out of 39 districts in Istanbul and consisting of 50 women and
50 men, 20 27 years old who have lived in Istanbul all their lives and who
are university students and graduates to explore the meanings given to
three different types of honor onur, şeref, and namus and to consider
how they are relevant to honor killings. Her focus and, indeed, that of her
MORE GENDERED PERSPECTIVES
ON CONFLICT AND VIOLENCE:
AN INTRODUCTION
Vasilikie Demos and Marcia Texler Segal
ABSTRACT
Purpose This introduction sets forth the main themes of Part B of

the two-part volume, reviews the methods employed by the contributors,
and demonstrates the relationships among these chapters and those of
Part A.
Design/methodology/approach The chapters in the volume exemplify
current research approaches to the subject matter: gender-based violence.
The introduction identifies trends and themes.
Findings Worldwide attention is being drawn to examples and forms
of gender-based violence. These are currently major topics in the media,
both factual and fictional. Public policies are under discussion and
programs to deal with them are developing. However, because the discus-
sions and the programs are often not research-based or intersectionally
inclusive, gender-based violence persists and victims are sometimes
ignored, blamed, or subjected to further violence.
Gendered Perspectives on Conflict and Violence: Part B

Advances in Gender Research, Volume 18B, 1 17
Copyright r 2014 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved
ISSN: 1529-2126/doi:10.1108/S1529-21262014000018B001
1
RECURRING THEMES
As we read and re-read the chapters for this volume we were continually
struck by the overlapping recurrent themes. A conclusion from a study in
the DRC would echo a point from one in the United States, a theorist
whose work was applied or critiqued would be cited in a seemingly unre-
lated context. The ability of the mass media to frame situations would
impact our views of the rape of an infant and that of a military contract
employee, but also call worldwide attention to the plight of women in a
conflict zone. The ghost of colonialism continues to precipitate conflict and
also influence how we interpret people and events. Forms of masculinity
and the meanings attached to women’s bodies are threads that wind
through prisons and temples, laws and programs, honor and respect.
Conflict and violence are universal though our contributors show that they
have taken specific forms in the 20th and 21st centuries. Moreover, their
victims and perpetrators are variously situated. In almost every instance
the intersectionality of social life became immediately apparent. People act,
react, and are acted upon on the basis of gender, race/ethnicity, ability,
social class, sexuality, age, religion, citizenship, and numerous other char-
acteristics and social locations. The question of agency is a recurring theme.
Women are often seen as victims of conflict or violence or called upon to
resist as if they have some essential ability to do so. Instead, in many of
these chapters we see the conditions under which, individually or collec-
tively, they are able or not to exert agency, to take action.
While gendered conflict and violence have occurred throughout human
history, it has been manifest in specific ways in the 20th and 21st centuries
and in these times significant steps have been taken nationally and transna-
tionally to define its forms and develop explicit policies and programs to
deal with it. Ward (18A) and Freeman discuss the matter of legal definition,
grappling for instance with whether GBV should be classified as a war
crime or a crime against humanity whenever it occurs in a conflict zone
regardless of whether the perpetrators are armed combatants, if the goal is
genocidal or if the victim is male or female. Pearce (18A) examines the
treatment of GBV as a basis for the asylum claims of transnational
migrants. The contested use of the term “gender” is important here for the
development of global policy by the United Nations and various courts
and tribunals. It is essential to clarify that violence may be perpetrated
against gender-typical as well as gender-atypical individuals on the basis of
their gender. The same concerns apply more locally when the victims of
violence are gender atypical (Jauk (18A); Everhart & Hunnicutt (18A)).
Greenberg and Messner review the trajectory of GBV prevention in the

United States showing notable progress in the development of policies and
the provision of services before and after violence occurs, but at the cost of
movement away from the feminist roots of attention to such matters.
Bimbi’s research reveals that service providers and those served may be
working from very different views of the events and their needs. Freedman
shows that when services are provided to a narrowly construed group of
“victims,” NGOs seeking funds and individuals seeking services may attempt
to manipulate the system to gain resources or services while Harris illustrates
how taking a broader perspective can actually create the circumstances to
reduce violence. Subramaniam also looks at the activities of NGOs outlining
the different approaches that those serving women have taken in Gujarat in
response to violence precipitated by religious nationalism. Some approaches,
in effect, obscure the gendered impact of the violence.
Post-conflict situations may provide platforms for the continuation of
violence, its resolution, or new forms of violence. Purkayastha and Strother
relate the impact of continuing border tensions in India. No official con-
flicts are occurring, but in the name of security governments have devel-
oped policies that normalize or routinize violence. Subramaniam examines
the aftermath of religious conflict that has its roots in the partition of the
Indian subcontinent. Freedman and Harris write about post-conflict situa-
tions in Sub-Saharan Africa. As Mount shows in the case of Bali in the
aftermath of the downfall of a dictator, the well-meaning intermingled
actions of the World Bank, the Indonesian state, NGOs, and economically
profitable tourism had the unintended consequence of amplifying burden-
some family obligations making it more difficult for women to exit abusive
marriages.
The meanings of being male or female are entangled in many ways with
violence. As Hearn points out, violence can relate to hegemonic masculinity
in multiple ways, as “an accepted, if not always acceptable, way of being a
man” (2013, p. 162) or a way to demonstrate being a man. Dauber’s chap-
ter shows that this renders it difficult to see women as potentially violent
actors. As Novek demonstrates, in the virtually all-male environment of a
prison, finding a reason or a means to express oneself in nonviolent ways is
as difficult for the guards, even the occasional woman guard, as it is for the
prisoners. Greenberg and Messner show how new conceptions of masculi-
nity are being built into programs that seek to prevent interpersonal vio-
lence. Harris reports on the use of participatory gender analysis as a means
of violence reduction among people returning from displaced persons
camps. Zaccai (18A) looks at how serving in a military unit that might be
called on to engage in combat came to define citizenship in Israel leading

some women to volunteer for such units. Both Zaccai and Dauber note
that, using violence is a way for the women in their studies to move up in
status. Ekvall’s (18A) statistical analysis shows that in nation-states with
norms prescribing gender equality, that is places where women and men are
not seen as so very different, there is greater political and socioeconomic
gender equality and less likelihood of armed conflict. In her exploration of
the multiple meanings of honor in Turkey, Dilmaç shows how by tradition
being female requires a woman to maintain family honor through her sexual
conduct on pain of death and Mount shows that in Bali a woman’s perfor-
mance of temple maintenance duties outweighs her other roles including her
economic contribution as a paid worker. Just as men are often presented
one-dimensionally as defined by their ability to be violent, women are often
seen either as helpless and hapless victims, the grieving mothers in Zaccai’s
chapter or half-widows in the one by Purkayastha and Ratcliff or as selfless
peacemakers.
Kilby (18A) asks us to listen to, talk about and teach about the perpe-
trators of violence providing graphic dialogues to make her point. Several
contributors point to the way the media frame acts of violence (Dauber,
Dilmaç, Dutton (18A)). Baggiarini (18A) discusses how a victim must
frame her experience in order to gain a hearing. Balderston and Sherry
(18A) both note that the police, service agencies and the media often see
victims and perpetrators as having only one dimension, race/ethnicity, dis-
ability, or sexuality for example, rather than intersectionally thus missing
the complexity of the situation they are attempting to explain or the people
they wish to serve. When violence is not portrayed as inherently masculine
it is often portrayed in postcolonial terms as savage, primitive, something
characteristic of “others,” rural and non-western according to Dilmaç’s
young adults from Istanbul or Bimbi’s EU service providers. Freedman
cautions that in writing about the violence in particular locations even with
the laudable aim of calling much needed attention to humanitarian crises, a
kind of “violence pornography” may be created. Talking about violence is
more difficult for some than for others. Feinson and Meir take several steps
to obtain a sample of ultra-Orthodox Israeli Jewish women to respond to a
telephone survey with very basic questions about the violence they may
have experienced as children or may be experiencing now. Everhart and
Hunnicutt use the internet to identify and interview a sample of individuals
identifying as gender-queer. Novek allows the prisoners she worked with to
speak for themselves, seeing their perceptions of what occurs within prison
walls as valid data regardless of its truthfulness. Bimbi remarks on the
difficulty of constructing survey instruments that ask about GBV in terms

meaningful to people in and from a number of nation-states and in a vari-
ety of languages.
Our contributors have employed a variety of research methods. While
the authors of each chapter consult relevant literature, it serves as a pri-
mary focus for some and a way to provide a context for others. Bimbi’s
chapter uses reflections on empirical research to refine both theory and
research while Kilby along with Purkayastha and Strother use empirical
cases from existing sources to make their points. Greenberg and Messner
supplement the sources they review with their own empirical observations.
Both Pearce and Ward (18A) review legal documents. Baggiarini, Dauber,
and Dutton interrogate media sources. Balderston and Harris are engaged
in action research where the process and its outcomes is really the topic.
Freedman, Harris, Jauk, Mount, Novek, and Subramaniam share their
field experiences using various other means to supplement traditional
ethnography while Sherry offers an autoethnography. The majority of
chapters feature some interview material ranging from Zaccai’s complete
life histories, and Dilmaç’s topical interviews to brief telephone or email
conversations of the sorts used by Feinson and Meir and by Everhart and
Hunnicutt or sessions with strategic informants such as those recounted by
Freedman, Mount, Pearce, and Subramaniam. Feinson and Meir collected
survey data from a moderate-sized sample and provide a statistical analysis
of their findings, and Ekvall used large-scale data based on nation-state
statistics.
CONSTRUCTING KNOWLEDGE ABOUT GBV
The chapters in this volume contribute to a feminist social scientific con-

struction of knowledge. They assume that GBV is empirical and, therefore,
can be studied social scientifically through observation or experience. By
taking a feminist approach to GBV the authors, also, assume that in so far
as the empirical reality of gender inequality and the violence associated
with it is morally wrong, it should be corrected.
We tend to conceive of violence as a series of specific acts of greater or
lesser severity such as an attack on a village, a honor killing, a rape, emo-
tional abuse of a child, or bashing a transperson. However, to fully under-
stand violence we need concepts such as routine violence and symbolic
violence, concepts that help us to see how violence, and especially GBV,
exists on a continuum and is a product of social structures, cultures, and

their histories. Violence is gendered because social structures are gendered,
not necessarily because the victim or the perpetrator of a particular violent
act presents as female or male. Yet, as the recent collection edited by
Myrna Goldenberg and Amy Shapiro argues by its very title, Different
Horrors, Same Hell: Gender and the Holocaust (2013), understanding, resol-
ving, or preventing violence demands that gender be taken into account.
Our contributors show how policies can impact women and men differ-
ently, how gender roles can be redefined by new circumstances that are the
products of conflict or even of seemingly neutral peaceful policies or, in
positive ways, by carefully constructed action projects. They also illustrate
how NGOs can succeed or fail in their missions by focusing on or ignoring
gender. While a focus on gender is critical, our contributors show that a
failure to understand the intersectionality of gender with positions such as
race/ethnicity, social class, sexuality, religion, disability, or migrant status
has great potential to lead to missteps, misunderstandings and misrepresen-
tations. Intersecting the systematic and considerably slower paced feminist
social scientific construction of knowledge is the nearly instantaneous
report of GBV presented daily by the mass media. Journalistic accounts are
important in informing masses of people about an incident quickly.
Globalization, a key feature of contemporary life, means that events and
issues particular to locales across the globe quickly become topics of discus-
sion and action throughout the world. To the extent people are horrified by
the incident, they are motivated to sign a petition, donate money, volunteer
themselves, and so forth to help eradicate the problem.
While mass media accounts of GBV may stimulate the social scientific
construction of knowledge through, for example, drawing attention to
an issue that has been invisible they may, also, result in such negative
consequences as further harming victims, reifying gender, and overlooking
critical nuance. Thus, for example, in her analysis of the media coverage of
the rape of an infant, Dutton shows how the infant was victimized all over
again by the accounts and commentary surrounding the crime and how not
only the guilty rapist, but the mother and township were vilified. The
reporting of mass media incidences is graphic in a way not typically evi-
denced by social scientific accounts of GBV, and relative to the latter, reac-
tion to incidences is more immediate. By considering mass media accounts
and reactions to them, we can observe several ways in which the accounts
can promote a distortion of GBV knowledge from a feminist social scientific
point of view. Exemplifying some of the issues that are raised as social
science intersects with the mass media are two GBV incidences, discussed in
the introduction to volume 18A, that achieved mass media prominence.
These are the brutal gang rape of a young woman in Delhi, India, in 2012,
and the rescue in 2013 of three women in Cleveland, OH, United States, who
had been raped repeatedly and held captive over a ten-year period. A third
incident in 2013 involved three women described as having been held as
slaves for 30 years in a house in London. Simply juxtaposing the reports and
reactions to them of the Delhi incident with those of the Cleveland and
London incidences, it is clear that place matters. A narration of these horrific
incidences as it appears in western mass media accounts elicits shock that
women could be held captive in western cities for 10 and 30 years. People
react: how could that be possible? Couldn’t they have gotten away? While
the horror of the Delhi incident has been communicated throughout the
world, so has an explanation for it. The mass media informs us that Delhi is
the “rape capital” of India and that it is because of a rape culture that there
are so many rapes there. We know now why this has happened. Western
eyes are turned to India and the focus is on rape there, not rape here at
home in the United States or the United Kingdom. Yet, as is clear from
Greenberg and Messner’s chapter, sexual harassment including rape is a
major problem in the U.S. military. Further, in her final column in Network
News as Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS) president (2013), contri-
butor Bandana Purkayastha identifies the media coverage of the rape in
India as a “knotty problem.” Explaining that she was approached by stu-
dents on her campus and others interested in learning more about India’s
“rape culture,” she wrote: “They were not aware of the tsunami of sexual
assault complaints on US college campuses or about Title IX suits filed in
their backyards.” It is critical in studying, reporting on, and teaching about
GBV that we do not inadvertently “other” and re-victimize people living in
places different from our own and that we assume the courage to identify,
examine, and act to eradicate GBV in our own locale, at home.
NOTE
1. A list of authors and titles that appear in Gendered Perspectives on Conflict

and Violence Part A is appended to this introduction (see Appendix).
REFERENCES
Freire, P. (2000). In M. B. Ramos (Trans.), Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY:
Bloomsbury.
Goldenberg, M., & Shapiro, A. (Eds.). (2013). Different horrors, same hell: Gender and the
holocaust. Seattle, WA: Washington University Press.
Hearn, J. (2013). The sociological significance of domestic violence: Tensions, paradoxes, and
implications. Current Sociology, 61, 152 170.
Purkayastha, B. (2008). Building and sustaining the fabric of peace: Notes from the field. In
G. Caforio, G. Kümmel, & B. Purkayastha (Eds.), Armed forces and conflict resolution:
Sociological perspectives (pp. 393 411). Bingley, UK: Emerald.
Purkayastha, B. (2013). Inclusions and exclusions: Keeping our eyes on the larger prize.
Network News, 30(4), 1 2.
Reyschler, L. (2006). Challenges to peace research. International Journal of Peace Studies, 11,
1 5.
APPENDIX
Chapter titles and authors from Gendered Perspectives on Conflict and

Violence Part A
GENDERED PERSPECTIVES ON CONFLICT AND VIOLENCE: AN INTRODUCTION

Vasilikie Demos and Marcia Texler Segal
VICTIMIZED AGAIN? INTERSECTIONALITY AND INJUSTICE IN DISABLED
WOMEN’S LIVES AFTER HATE CRIME AND RAPE
Susie Balderston
FEMINIST REFLECTIONS ON DISABILITY HATE CRIME
Mark Sherry
INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE AMONG SELF-IDENTIFIED QUEER VICTIMS:
TOWARDS AN INTERSECTIONAL AWARENESS IN SCHOLARSHIP AND
ORGANIZING SURROUNDING GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE
Avery Everhart and Gwen Hunnicutt
IN LETTING THE PERPETRATOR SPEAK: SEXUAL VIOLENCE AND CLASSROOM
POLITICS
Jane Kilby
INVISIBLE LIVES, SILENCED VIOLENCE: TRANSPHOBIC GENDER VIOLENCE IN
GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE
Daniela Jauk
BELONGING TO THE JEWISH NATION: LIFE STORIES OF ISRAELI FEMALE
COMBAT SOLDIERS
Channa Zaccai
PRIVATE WAR, PRIVATE SUFFERING, AND THE NORMALIZING POWER OF
LAW
Bianca Baggiarini
SIGNIFICANCE OF WARTIME RAPE

Caterine Arrabal Ward
OUT OF SOUTHEAST EUROPE: GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE, PUBLIC

TRANSITIONS, AND THE SEARCH FOR HOME
Susan C. Pearce
LAYERS OF VIOLENCE: A GENDER PERSPECTIVE ON MEDIA REPORTING ON
INFANT RAPE IN SOUTH AFRICA
Jessica Dutton
GENDER EQUALITY, ATTITUDES TO GENDER EQUALITY AND CONFLICT
Åsa Ekvall
NGOs, and used a grounded theory approach to identify frames used to

defy gendered nationalism in India. Focusing on Gujarat, and the 2002
communal or sectarian conflict between Hindus and Muslims,
Subramaniam explains that the clash between the two religious groups is a
result of the attempt to establish Hindutva, an ideology holding that India,
constructed in 1947 as a secular state, should be Hindu, gendered and com-
munal. Subramaniam notes that women’s bodies were used to differentiate
the two religious groups from each other, and in that clash and subsequent
ones, their bodies were the borders of the religious groups to be killed or
raped, the rape of a woman, dishonoring not her but her husband.
Subramaniam identified three frames used by NGOs to address the issue
of a gendered communal nationalism. The communal harmony (not com-
munal violence) frame means that women are seen as un-gendered members
of their community; the endangered woman frame sees women as present,
but without agency, as passive, and the mainstreaming frame sees women
as relevant to all aspects of Indian life. She also notes that while a woman’s
rights frame may be evident on the global level, it is absent from the local.
Starting from the premises that child abuse is globally a major health
issue and that religiosity is associated with good health, Marjorie Feinson
and Adi Meir in “Is Religiosity Related to Reduced Abuse in Childhood? A
Community Study of Ultra-Orthodox and Secular Jewish Women,” analyze
telephone interviews of 261 ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) and 181 nonreligious
Secular Jewish women living in Israel to explore intra-denominational dif-
ferences in the reporting of three kinds of child abuse physical, emotional,
and sexual. They find that nearly half of the women said they had experi-
enced child abuse and more than half of these women said they currently
experience abuse (re-victimization). The experience of sexual child abuse
was the least reported. What Feinson and Meir find most remarkable and
contrary to expectations is that there are no significant differences between
Haredi and Secular Jewish women in the reported incidence of child abuse.
Their study is unique in examining childhood abuse across the range of
observance within a single religious denomination. It indicates that greater
religious practice and devotion does not present a buffer to child abuse.
Further research on the relationship between religious observance and child
abuse as it intersects gender is called for.
Jane Freedman’s chapter, “Treating Sexual Violence as a ‘Business’:
Reflections on National and International Responses to Sexual and
Gender-Based Violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” is based on
interviews with key informants including NGO and international aid
officials and 20 focus groups with local women and men. Her thesis is that
20 BANDANA PURKAYASTHA AND KATHRYN STROTHER RATCLIFF
activists’ concepts of routine violence and examine routine violence in the

United States.
Keywords: Routine violence; continuum of violence; interstices;
intersectionality; Irom Sharmila; water
Given the ubiquity of violence, especially violence against women (VAW)

and marginalized communities, it is not surprising that the scholarly litera-
ture on violence has expanded rapidly over the last several decades.
Feminist academic scholarship and activism has led to the recognition of
gendered violence, the fallacy of separating private and public violence,
and the need to examine, at multiple levels of structure and culture, the
complex processes that enable such violence. At one level, the success of
such efforts can be documented by examining the changes the declara-
tions, timing, and emphases that have occurred within the United
Nations. The Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against
Women (CEDAW) was passed in the 1979, but this Convention did not
explicitly include VAW. It was the 1994 UN Declaration on the
Elimination of Violence Against Women (DEVAW) and the establishment
of the Office of the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women
(SRVAW) that did so. Similar efforts to identify and mitigate violence are
evident within many countries. Over the years, activists and scholars in dif-
ferent countries, and the SRVAW have articulated more comprehensive
conceptualizations of violence (Erturk & Purkayastha, 2012). The imple-
mentation of measures to create a violence-free world or, at least, measures
to minimize violence significantly, remains an ongoing challenge.
This chapter focuses on routine violence (Pandey, 2006) and its intersec-
tions with feminist discussions of violence in intimate spheres and during
wars and conflicts to draw attention to the interstices of social life where
pervasive violence remains less visible. We use Erturk and Purkayastha’s
(2012) conceptualization of a continuum of violence extending from inti-
mate spheres to inter-state wars in a global context to highlight ongoing
violence in the interstices of wars, intra-state conflicts, and intimate
spheres. Drawing on the work of scholars, activists and cases from the
Global South, we highlight activist efforts (in the Global South) to draw
attention to facets of routine public violence, especially its normalization of
violence that occurs at the interstices of intimate violence and large-scale
wars and conflicts. We use these insights to briefly turn our gaze on the
Routine Violence: Intersectionality at the Interstices 21
United States and the extent to which we could fruitfully apply this framing
to different parts of the world. We conclude the chapter by reflecting upon
the ways in which our understanding of intersectionality is enhanced
through our attention to routine violence.
VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN: A BRIEF REVIEW OF

THE CONTINUUM
For at least the last fifty years, scholars and activists who work to mitigate
VAW have challenged the conventional focus on individual perpetrators
and victims of violence as it implies that violence within private spheres of
life is totally separable from public spheres. By the 1990s, feminist research
had criticized and moved beyond the narrow perspective that violence
consists of acts perpetrated by deviant individuals within households. They
argued that the private and public spheres were not separate (e.g.,
Abraham, 2000; Ferree, 1990). Instead they pointed to complex social, eco-
nomic, and political structures indeed a range of policies, institutional
arrangements, and practices that enable, instigate, and defend violence
within private spheres. The separation of spheres, often codified by laws,
has enabled selective penetration of public/state power into the innermost
recesses of households allowing some autonomous space for the hegemony
of the male heads of these households. Over the years, and especially within
the last two decades, activist and scholarly attention has shifted toward
linking intimate violence (within families, between partners) with larger
scale violence. Thus emotional, physical, and sexual violence is also linked
to violence within and between communities, between states, communities,
and between non-state actors and states. Such conceptualization empha-
sizes a global political-economy approach within which a variety of patriar-
chal, racialized violence is perpetrated within and between families,
communities, states, and in transnational arenas (e.g., Molyneux &
Rahzavi, 2002; Sutton, 2010; Sutton, Morgan, & Novkov, 2008). In their
discussion of the work of the SRVAW, Erturk and Purkayastha described
how the conceptualization of a continuum of violence is critical for the
SRVAW to raise consciousness about VAW, attempt to shape UN direc-
tives and actions, and to codify indicators that would require countries to
report on violence and its underlying causes in ways that are consistent
with the political-economy approach to understanding a continuum of
violence (for a longer discussion see Erturk & Purkayastha, 2012).
This changing understanding of violence is rooted in gender research

that increasingly adopts intersectionality as a frame for understanding
violence. This frame emphasizes structures of domination and marginaliza-
tion that produce raced/gendered/classed/aged/sexualized violence within
nations (e.g., Abraham, 2000; Collins, 1990). In addition to documenting
the effect of these structures, transnational feminists and scholars from the
Global South have highlighted the need to interrogate nation and the
unequal power of different nations within the world system as part of an
analysis of structures of domination and marginalization. Consequently,
violence, conceptualized through a post-colonial and/or intersectional lens,
is no longer only about women though women remain a legitimate focus
of research because of their widespread and continuing experience of vio-
lence. These approaches refocus our attention to multi-level, historical, and
contemporary intersecting structures that promote, enable, or legitimate
violence. Attention to the interstices allows us to understand the cultural
norms and structures that intersect from the most intimate to the supra
national political-economic conditions to routinize and normalize violence
as material foundations of everyday life.
BRIDGING THE CONCEPTS OF ROUTINE

VIOLENCE AND VAW
The term routine violence is rooted in the work of Gyanendra Pandey (2006)
and others, including an interdisciplinary body of scholars at the Center for
the Study of Developing Societies who have interrogated violence associated
with state formation and state operations. The parameters of the concept
are also evident in the work of feminist academic groups in India (see for
instance John, 2008) and grounded in the conceptualization, claims, and
protests by activists.1 Routine violence occurs at international, national,
and community levels; often states and other large entities are involved in
routine violence so it is made invisible because it is presented as “normal”
ways of organizing modern nation-states or international relations. Pandey
describes three indicators of routine violence. First, the larger the organiza-
tion that engages in the violence such as a powerful state and the more
widespread its scale, the more it is likely to be legitimated and routinized.
Second, the more technologically sophisticated the scale of the violence
for instance the use of remotely controlled drones the more likely these
technologies are presented as routine practices for maintaining the security
of states. Third, such violence is, most often, directed toward groups to
mark their race/class/gendered character (with associated interactions with
age, cultures, religions, sexualities) of individuals within these groups.
Pandey points out that routine violence, associated with modern states, is
not episodic in nature; it is almost continual, so much a part of our everyday
lives that we often no longer recognize it as violence.
This concept of routine violence and its focus on state practices overlaps
with facets of violence described by the subset of gender scholars who insist
on interrogating the roles of states as central to an understanding of
violence. Gender scholar-activists have pointed out many ways by which
states enable violence. The literature on violence among intimate partners
and within families that constantly treated VAW as actions of deviant
individuals enabled states to downplay that violence. In addition, state
inaction, through inability or will of communities and states to address
such violence or provide sufficient support for victims of violence, contin-
ued to facilitate violence. Similar explanations violence as random acts
of deviant individuals are widespread at the international level (Erturk &
Purkayastha, 2012).
The gendered literature on racialized minorities in the Global North has
also drawn attention to a range of violence hate crimes, and the brutality
of dominant groups toward racial minority groups including beatings,
shooting, lynching, and state sponsored violence through prison systems
that shape the lives of minority groups. Indeed many scholars have argued
that nation-states (and the political-economic systems that support such
nation-states) rely on violence to routinely create and sustain boundaries
between groups and maintain stratified citizenships (e.g., Glenn, 2004;
Hajjar, 2013; Pearce, 2011). States do so by demarcating who are more
likely to lead violence-free lives or can rely on the state to punish violence
they experience, compared to those who are routinely exposed to violence
with little chance of state intervention on their behalf. In her outstanding
work on the breakup of Yugoslavia, Dubravka Zarkov describes how states
and powerful citizens attempt to maintain “national purity” by vesting cer-
tain forms of masculinity and femininity with political meanings which, in
turn, create hierarchies of ethnicities, races, sexualities (Zarkov, 2007; also
see Moon on militarized masculinities in Korea, 2005). As states facilitate
violence by addressing violence in limited ways, a culture of violence pre-
vails, which in turn normalizes the escalation of violence in everyday life.
Gender scholars who have written about gendered violence (in its inter-
sections with other social positioning of privilege and marginalization) and
security have pointed out the rapid growth of the political economy of
violence, expressed through armed conflicts within and between nation-

states as well as the growth of global security regimes and prison
industrial complexes that draw sections of the marginalized into the ambit
of violence as soldiers, or as groups who experience the enhanced levels
of violence (Erturk & Purkayastha, 2012; Sheppard, 2008). Scholarly and
activist conceptualizations of VAW, especially in though not wholly lim-
ited to the Global South, have considered wars and conflict as part of a
continuum of gendered/raced violence for many decades. As people who
have experienced the violence associated with armed conflict between states
(and proxy wars of powerful countries fought on their territories), asym-
metric warfare, insurgency, and with recent historical memories of the vio-
lent legacies of colonialisms, scholar-activists have interrogated roles of the
state and the general political-economic basis of violence (e.g., Bangura,
2013; Gandhi, 2002; Sen, 1990; Shiva, 2005a, 2005b; Sutton et al., 2008).
They have pointed out that militaries use violence and abuse as weapons of
control, symbols of humiliation and threats to local communities (John,
2006) and increasingly use sophisticated weapons to subdue people (e.g.,
Bruin & Salaff, 1982; Saverimuttu, Sriskandarajah, & Jayapalan, 1999;
Todeschini, 2001). Both states and insurgents glorify violence with its mas-
culinist underpinnings of forcing others to do their will (although with dif-
ferent objectives); sexual violence becomes a “normal” currency of conflicts
or zones of conflicts.2 These discussions also overlap with Pandey’s discus-
sions about the complicity of states and the use of sophisticated technology
in routine violence.
For instance, in the 20th century, the United States has been engaged in
wars and military interventions “in all but six years of the 20th century and
at war every year of the twenty first century” (Sutton et al., 2008, p. 5).
Longitudinal data from the International Peace Research Institute has con-
sistently documented that there have been more deaths in the 20th and 21st
centuries from intra-state conflict than inter-state conflict. Gleditsch,
Wallerstein, Erikkson, Sollenberg, and Strand (2002) presented a new data-
base on “Armed Conflict 1946 2001” documenting that conflicts that kill
at least 25 people annually remains a serious issue during the post Cold
War period. Importantly they have identified that intra-state conflict has
become the dominant form since World War II. Other scholars such as
Fritz, Doering, and Belgin Gumru (2011), Keegan (1994), and Watkin
(2004) point out that as the mass production of weapons increased dramati-
cally in the 20th century, the power associated with these weapons of war
and violence remained concentrated among small groups, even as the range
of these weapons and their expanded ability to harm were borne by
interviewees’ is on namus, the concept of honor associated with woman’s

virtue, the loss of which disgraces her family and can most often only be
regained by killing her. Dilmaç shows that though honor killings occur
throughout Turkey including urban areas such as Istanbul, her interviewees
relate these “barbaric” acts to namus which they view as a concept of honor
belonging to the past and only adhered to by rural and uneducated indivi-
duals. Taking an educated nonjudgmental position in part while, also,
opposing honor killings, Banu, a 27-year-old interviewee is quoted as say-
ing, “Those who do that, they do that out of habit. They have no education
and they believe in some values that are behind the times and they try to
impose these rules in the 20th century. I must not judge them because we
don’t have the same social level, the same values, and the same education.
But they must stop killing.”
Dilmaç provides an understanding of namus in historical context
explaining that the introduction of modernity through the civil code of
1926 by the leader, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, meant the authorization of
women’s rights, and she shows how namus is at the crossroads of tradition
and modernity. Rather than calling for the end of namus as a principle
of honor, she argues that as a moral principle it is not simply associated
with women’s virtue, but also stands for such values as honesty and loyalty.
In “Symbolic Violence: Reshaping Post-Patriarchal Discourses on
Gender,” Franca Bimbi addresses the issue of how we can theorize and
research gender-related violence, physical and symbolic, in a globalized
Europe where, as people migrate, a wide variety of patriarchal and post-
patriarchal configurations come into contact/conflict in public and private
spheres. She starts with Bourdieu’s ideas of masculine domination and the
reproduction of symbolic violence toward women. However, meanings of
violence and how access to bodies is regulated differ between receiving
European Union (EU) countries and sending countries and even within
receiving countries. In order to do research including action-related
research easy dualities must give way to intersectional perspectives.
Drawing on a variety of sources, most explicitly Young and Bourdieu,
and without reifying or universalizing women or men, Bimbi frames the
dilemma for women as achieving a balance between protection and caring.
Whatever is included under these rubrics by a given nation-state, social
class or ethnic group, they are symbolic spaces where men achieve access to
women’s symbolic capital, including their bodies. Finally, she argues that it
is women within a context of masculine domination about whom the con-
cept of gender is possible, and that, therefore, “women-gender” should be
re-considered as the privileged locus of feminist discourse.
violence are not especially typical of the Global South. Each society is beset
with its multi-level maps of hegemonies and marginalization that vary
within societies. We picked these cases because they help us to identify
structures of violence in the interstices. We choose aspects of routine
violence that have been challenged by female activists, and have been the
subject of feminist writing in the Global South. Following this discussion,
we use the frames derived from India to analyze a few cases in the United
States.
The Case of Irom Sharmila and Challenging “Normal” Violence
While scholars implicitly realize that nation-states guard their national

boundaries zealously, less is recorded of the ways in which people who live
within border zones are often drawn into the zones of intense surveillance
and “conflict management.” In Manipur, in North Eastern India, the
public face of protest against such routine violence, is Irom Sharmila, who
started a fast-unto-death in 2000,4 two days after 10 civilians were killed
by a paramilitary force operating under Armed Forces Special Powers
Act (AFSPA) in that region. While she had engaged in the conventional
forms of protests petitions, demonstrations, etc. she found none
of these addressed the escalation of routine violence in Manipur; nor did
the demonstrations raise wider consciousness about the effects of such
violence. So she decided to protest by fasting indefinitely to draw attention
to “the unjust law that renders state brutality lawful” (Mehrotra, 2009,
p. 113). Irom Sharmila’s objective has been to pressure the government to
repeal AFSPA in her state, and in the longer run, to draw attention to the
ways in which legislation like AFSPA increases routine violence in every-
day life. Her ultimate objective is the creation of routine violence-free
societies.
In India, the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) empowers
paramilitary forces to operate within selected “disturbed” regions of the
country. Many of the regions defined as “disturbed” are geographically
located near the international boundaries with Pakistan, China, and
Myanmar. AFSPA has been in force in the North Eastern region of India,
including the states of Arunachal, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram,
Nagaland, located in the zone of India’s borders with China and
Myanmar. It has also been in force in Kashmir (which borders Pakistan
and China). AFSPA allows these armed forces to establish law and order
in these regions. The presence of armed forces has a specific contextual
implication in India. While this has changed in the 21st century, for several
decades after independence, the majority of India’s police force was armed
with sticks, not guns. Arms that is, guns were typically given to the
military or paramilitary forces. Thus, the presence of state entities with
guns is itself an escalation of the potential to engage in more extreme forms
of violence in these regions (compared to other states in India). Armed
forces in these areas are allowed to fire upon people after giving a warn-
ing in order to maintain law and order, or to destroy arms caches. They
are also allowed to stop people on suspicion, search their vehicles, and
arrest people on “reasonable” suspicion of wrong-doing (no prior warrant
is required, though the suspects are expected to be moved to the nearest
police station where they are supposed to be charged or freed under normal
legal jurisdiction). Officers who act under AFSPA are granted legal immu-
nity for their actions.
A casual reading of these powers today, in the first decade of the 21st
century, from the vantage point in the Global North, reminds us that these
types of laws stop on suspicion, extra scrutiny of people who live near
the borders of countries, surveillance and searches without warrants, and
the legal right to fire upon people on suspicion of “threats” are no longer
unusual circumstances. After all, several nation-states have instituted
similar provisions under a barrage of “national security” legislation. The
distinctions between local police and crime, and terrorism and conflict have
been diluted. In many, if not most, countries around the world the police
forces are now armed with guns and there is a rapid escalation of “benign”
weaponry such as lasers even among university security forces in countries
such as the United States. Activists like Irom Sharmila have been challen-
ging this expansion of armed forces, the expanded legal powers given to
them, and legitimating of the use of increasing levels of sophisticated tech-
nologies that hurt and harm people, and the ways in which the escalated
violence seeps into the all aspects of normal life.
In her excellent biography of Irom Sharmila Burning Bright: Irom
Sharmila and the Struggle for Peace in Manipur, Deepti Priya Mehrotra has
documented Irom Sharmila’s adoption of the Gandhian political tradition
of fasting (a form of protest that is described as “hunger strike” in the
Indian political context) for her protest. Her thirteen-year long hunger
strike has drawn public attention to several aspects of routine violence.
First, this protest highlights significant powers that states wield, and the
ways in which entire regions can be demarcated as “disturbed” or in need
of extra surveillance, thus legitimating AFSPA-type laws. These regions
co-exist with “normal” areas within nation-states, so that groups who are
subject to such violence lose their ability to protest violence inflicted by

states, unless the majority of the citizens, in other parts of the country,
consider such routine violence to be unacceptable.
Irom Sharmila’s protest has highlighted that AFSPA and similar
“national security” powers erode the separation between the “national
security and military operations” and “normal” law and order that is typi-
cally the domain of the police. This protest draws attention to the powers
conferred on armed forces, legitimating the widespread use of arms in every-
day situations, and legalizing shooting people within any country.
Ultimately activists like Irom Sharmila question the escalation of violence
by states into the fabric of everyday life, raising key questions about the
“normal” level of violence that is culturally acceptable by any nation-state,
region, or locale. Irom Sharmila and others do not use the terms masculinist
violence, but their protests draw our attention to gendered/racialized/classed
violence, often unleashed by elite groups, on behalf of states that buy
into violent masculine ways of operating. They simply question the signifi-
cant levels of violence that is normalized, and assert the right of people
groups that are most likely to experience such violence to define what con-
stitutes “normal” levels of violence.
A focus on gendered/racialized/classed routine violence points to a range
of intersectional implications. Who is safe in their homes when special
powers are conferred on armed forces to enter homes “upon suspicion”?
Who is safe to walk around freely and attend to work/family needs in their
daily lives? Who looks suspicious? Who is likely to be stopped and interro-
gated? Who is likely to be shot? While males in these designated areas are
more likely to be shot or stopped on suspicion, children and women are
not immune from such shootings. Among the 10 people who were shot in
Manipur in November 2000, the impetus for Irom Sharmila’s initial
protest, were a woman and a child.
Irom Sharmila’s protest has been carried to new arenas of action by
older, working class women and other supporters in Manipur (and else-
where in India). Accorded the honorific, “Imas,” (“mothers”) these women
draw on a critical cultural resource for their activism: the honor accorded
to young and older women alike by men (young and old). These groups
were among the first to embrace Irom Sharmila and inspire others to
protest. As Sharmila fasts and protests, the Imas have expanded the protest
about such routine violence to draw attention to routine sexual violence. In
2004, after the forcible arrest of a young woman on “suspicion” of her
dealings with insurgents, her subsequent disappearance, and the dumping
of her raped, mutilated body, a wave of protests erupted in Manipur.
Twelve Meira Paibi activists, Imas, staged a protest that shook parts of
India, especially via diverse non-English media (though it did not make the
global headlines like the recent Delhi rape case). In a significant protest
these activists shed their clothes, marched to the military base, “carrying a
white banner” emblazoned with a blood smeared sign Indian Army,
Rape Us and shouted “rape us, kill us” (Mehrotra, 2009, p. 92). These
activists brought these forms of sexual violence to the public arena, as pub-
lic crimes, perpetrated by agents of states and supported tacitly through
others who refuse to question such costs of maintaining “routine law and
order.” In a country where, even now, cultural norms accord a great deal
of respect to older women, the actions of these Imas raised a storm of ques-
tions in India about the precipitating factors that had forced mothers to
express their despair and resistance in this way (Sacw, 2005).
The Imas’ protests draw our attention to several aspects of gendered rou-
tine violence. The hunt for “insurgents” (or retaliation for attacks on armed
forces) inevitably involves women and children. “Private” homes are not
safe. Irom Sharmila’s protests emphasize that routine violence turns locales
into militarized zones, where civilians become part of collateral damage,
and violence and counter-violence and widespread presence of arms become
a normal part of life. Violent repression often leads to the development of
protest groups that also use arms to challenge state-sanctioned armed
forces. With ever-increasing production and marketing of arms, it is not dif-
ficult for these groups to secure arms. Thus, the level of violence in everyday
life is exacerbated not only because of the state-sanctioned violence by
armed forces but also by the groups that set themselves up to “protect their
communities” with violence of their own. Equally important, if armed resis-
tance develop in these areas, the armed resistance draws upon a version of
violent masculinities irrespective of who uses it, males or females, to wrest
forcible control and power over others that is exactly the opposite of the
forms of nonviolent masculinities and femininities these activists use to
challenge routine violence.
Thus, routine violence seeps into the interstices of social life. “Normal”
life which these activists envision as nonviolent lives where people can
establish lives of human dignity is further affected negatively by the lim-
itations imposed by the armed “protectors” of these communities, whose
presence extends the restrictions on mobility that are imposed by state-
sanctioned armed forces. As such conflicts linger on for years, with no clear
end in sight, diverse people in the community are drawn into the arena of
violence either engaging in it to protect themselves, falling victims to it
because of their vulnerability to groups that are able to inflict greater levels
of violence, and through shifts in cultures where questions of respect are

increasingly decided on the basis of who is able to protect whom.
In the midst of this violence, Irom Sharmila and other activists point to
the need to pay attention to the harm caused by normalization of these
cultures and structures of violence. They insist on nonviolence an ethical
discipline honed through suffering to challenge violence that is part of a
larger political economy of violence, pollution, and fragmentation of life.
Equally important, these activists show that while women’s bodies are the
sites of much of this violence, women and men can demonstrate different
ways in which societies can disengage from or, at least, not facilitate
the processes that routinize violence. Their protests show that under
regimes of routine violence women qua women’s bodies are invested with
vulnerabilities that is, both states and insurgents argue women need to
be protected as a primary reason for unleashing new violence. At the same
time, women’s bodies are treated as ultimate territories whose conquest
through sexual violence signals victories over groups who were unable
to protect “their women.” Summarizing the work of the activists in
Manipur, Mehrotra states, “women’s bodies, in this radical paradigm, are
not [for] others to protect, (t)hey are not objects of male gaze, or what is
more extreme, of male violation … . (r)ather, the body is a woman’s means
of expression of intelligence, anger, dissent, resistance, fearlessness”
(2009, p. 99).
These Manipuri activists highlighted how routinized violence can be
addressed within these interstices of social life. By drawing on their tradi-
tional cultural sources of power and respect, and their own strong, angry
bodies, they protest the shifts in ideologies and practices that make women
vulnerable to violence. Their activism highlights that the cumulative effect
of routine violence was both reducing women’s dominant status and
increasing their vulnerability to various forms of violence. Thus the women
brought their angry, older bodies, to resist violence by states, their armed
opponents, and the cultures of feminine vulnerability that were being
imposed upon them.5
Routine Violence and the Half-Widows of Kashmir
The facets of violence in public, in private, and in the interstices are not
only evident in Manipur. Based on her work on Kashmir, Angana
Chatterji (Chatterji, 2012, Ali, Bhatt, Chatterji, Mishra, & Roy, 2011)
points to other gendered aspects of such routine violence and how it seeps
into the interstices of social life. First, in areas which are declared or under-
stood to be security concerns, all struggles (and protests) can be framed as
“anti-national” or “suspicious” activity. People can be held without judicial
oversight, which in turn exacts significant gendered costs. Since the targets
of such violence and the constitution of armed protest groups are
primarily working-age males, in places like Kashmir there is a growing
category of “half-widows,” that is, women whose husbands have
disappeared either imprisoned or in armed groups making it nearly
impossible to get news of them. These half-widows and other working-age
women those who are responsible for the care of family members are
forced to shoulder heavier burdens of providing for disrupted families,
including seeking news of and or petitioning to hear about the fate of broth-
ers, husbands, uncles, and fathers. They have to do so in areas that remain
unsafe because of the presence of armed forces and protest or insurgent
groups. The ongoing imbalance between those who are unarmed and those
who use arms creates the situations where larger numbers of people are vul-
nerable to sexual violence. The “corporeality of militarized governance”
(Chatterji, 2012, p. 185) leads to prolonged suffering even as the sheer
scale and ongoing structures of violence become the “normal way of life.”
The activists and scholars who have been documenting these dissenting
voices and actions seek to halt the spread of such routine violence. Their
point is that without mechanisms to halt the routinization of escalated vio-
lence by states and by those who use arms to protest the actions of states,
such “normal” violence builds cultures of violence as people accept this as
a normal state of life. Thus, intimate violence within families is likely to go
unreported and unaddressed if there is a possibility of encountering more
violence from the representatives of the state. At the same time, reporting
violence by “one of our own” carries its own risks relative to armed groups
that claim to protect communities. Relatedly, such violence affects cultures:
more people are willing to accept such violence as normal, the cultural cur-
rency for dealing with all others, every day.
These implicit and explicit references to culture are important. These
activists and scholars are critical of the violent masculinities whether
these are enacted by states or armed challengers/insurgents, and irrespective
of who are part of the violence (contingent, males or females) and critical
of the ideologies, interactions and institutions that normalize them. Their
voices and visions converge with the academic voices and writings of Moon
(2005), Zarkov (2007), Purkayastha (2008), Sheppard (2008), Sutton (2010)
and others who have pointed to the routinization of violence by militaries.
Irom Sharmila and the other activists’ modes of protest are important. Just
as Gandhi offered a feminized nonviolent mode of protesting extreme colo-

nial violence consciously moving away from engaging in masculinist vio-
lence these activists adopt modes of protest that are intended to sustain
nonviolent ways of life where nonviolent protest and nonviolent ways of
life sustain their moral force. Their objective is to sustain strong cultures of
nonviolence that continue to challenge the expansion of routine violence
and ultimately affect structural changes.
Routine Violence through the Lens of Water Rights
Another way of thinking of routine violence is to examine the ways in

which it affects access to basic resources. In 2012, Erturk and Purkayastha
among others, argued that in order to truly understand violence we need to
focus not merely on culture or state structures, but on the material condi-
tions of life and the political economy of violence. In her excellent discus-
sion on Argentina, Barbara Sutton points out that pervasive routinized
structural violence that is perpetrated through the neoliberal regimes “deny
people access to food and health-care … and [leaves scars] on the bodies of
women who become physically exhausted as they try to stretch their
families survival chances in the midst of unemployment, wage cuts, with-
drawal of public services, and community disintegration” (2010, p. 129). In
this section we focus on water to discuss ways in which this pervasive, but
usually unmarked violence, is being interpreted and resisted by activist
groups. Like the previous section, the activist protests draw our attention
to parts of social life that are not usually the subject of our discussion as
we talk about violence associated with wars and families.
As Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt has argued on the basis of her research in
Bengal, India, water is socially constructed its material, spiritual, cultural
significance is shaped by the context in which it is used, revered, commodi-
fied or polluted (Lahiri-Dutt, 2006). However, as a basic necessity of every-
day life, water is often a gendered burden: poor women have to toil
relentlessly, often walking many miles each day, to get some water for the
provision of everyday needs. Indeed international efforts through Women
in Development (WID), Women and Development (WAD), and Gender
and Development (GAD) have continued to emphasize the role of women
and the need to include women in policies on water. On the other hand,
the emphasis on “women” without significant consideration of inter-
sectionality in development plans has had some unintended consequences.
Inclusion of “women” has often meant the more elite women within
communities are brought in to represent “women’s views” so that the needs

of marginalized women are not always addressed.
Scholars have begun to document the links between water and routine
violence. In locales such as Manipur, Nagaland, and Kashmir, activists
have pointed to the additional hazards of accessing water in places where it
is not always safe to walk. Public water supplies are often disrupted in con-
flict areas; in rural regions, access to streams, springs and other natural
sources are often disrupted through structural violence as land and water
resources are forcibly privatized.
Scholar-activists have described the links between routine violence and
water. For instance, quoting Ismail Serageldin, vice president of the World
Bank who predicted the wars in the 21st century would be fought over
water, Vandana Shiva (1997) critically described the process through which
water resources are being converted to a private commodity. Focusing on
the intersectional/gendered impact of the race to privatize water, the authors
in Zwarteveen, Ahmed and Gautam’s edited book, Diverting the Flow
(2012), also describe the process through which water is controlled. As water
is turned into a commodity based on market value, the commodity is pro-
tected through the deployment of security forces. For many of the activists
and scholars, this unleashes a regime of violence as security forces begin to
forcibly restrict the supplies of a resource that was, till that point in time,
culturally understood to be a resource of all humanity. Moving from a cul-
tural norm where quenching someone’s thirst voluntarily, from a com-
mon resource of humanity is a routine expectation, to a new cultural
norm where it becomes normal to pay for the same commodity, involves
large-scale coercion and force. Those who control the commodity also build
an infrastructure to protect their property. As neoliberal forces shape gov-
ernments and companies, like AFSPA, new laws legitimate the use of vio-
lence to protect the rights of the owners of the new commodity. Depending
on the ability of the controlling group to protect their “commodity” private
armed guards are not uncommon in places wherever “modern” water is
pumped and bottled.
The violence associated with neo-liberalization and privatization, com-
modification of water, pollution and profit-making has engendered protests
in many parts of the world, but especially in the Global South. For
instance, Navdanya’s farmers in 2,500 villages in India have organized to
ask for food and water as human rights. Navdanya’s farmers have started
water-self-sufficiency (jal swaraj) and air democracy movements to oppose
the privatization, commodification, overuse, and unchecked polluting of
these resources. In the process they have publicized the ways in which the
legitimate protests of farmers and marginalized populations are redefined

as “impediments to modernity and progress” of the state, and the process
through which these groups are politically labeled as insurgents. Once this
redefinition is achieved, governments and private mercenary groups of
some of the large companies are able to violently attack and repress the
people who oppose them. The earth democracy movement and its nonvio-
lent tactics of resisting armed repression challenge the ability of the armed
groups to spread violence. They offer their ways of life beliefs and prac-
tices as a way of arresting the spread of routine violence and promoting
more peaceful human-environment coexistence (Shiva, 2005a, 2005b).
During the Chipko movement in the 1970s in India, the activists began pro-
testing widespread logging as deforestation increased water run-off and
with less water seeping into the ground, springs and streams ran dry, and
negatively affected their access to sources of water in the region. They
developed a range of slogans to show the links between forests, water, air,
as they challenged the forcible appropriation of lands and forests. “What
do the forests bear? Soil, water and pure air” or songs that tell people to
“resist the digging of mountains/Which kill our forests and streams”
(Quoted in Shiva, 1993, p. 247).
Here again, like the activists in Manipur, activists and scholars highlight
two facets of routine violence. They are critical of the increased force (and
violence) instituted through legal processes that enable companies to priva-
tize resources such as water (as well as air and forests) and the associated
violence that is unleashed to protect privatized commodities.6 Marginalized
communities, those with the least economic and political power, are most
likely to suffer from violence associated with protecting privatized com-
modities in their everyday lives even when they are not directly attacked by
state or private security forces. They point to the ways in which these
processes disproportionately affect groups usually women who are
responsible for providing for household needs for water for drinking and
cleaning.7 Faced with increasing levels of state and privatized violence, the
second issue is what types of actions should these groups choose: violence
or nonviolence? Would the latter path have any effect if violence is a
normal part of everyday life?
The protest and writings by these activists have revealed another facet
of routine violence that is important for understanding the contemporary
nature of routine violence: there has been a steady increase in the privatiza-
tion of security so that companies often hire armed guards of security com-
panies to ensure their commodity is protected. Laura Dickinson (2011) has
documented for the 21st century, that many countries have outsourced
their war and peace-keeping operations military contractors that fight

wars and provide private security, NGOs that deliver humanitarian aid
as contractors, and various subcontractors that provide a range of other
services we normally associated with governments truly represent an
invisible but momentous shift in who is responsible for these tasks. In a dis-
cussion of violence, this shift has two significant implications. First,
resources apportioned for maintaining violent structures are diverted from
tasks of sustaining human security: life, food, shelter, health, education,
and needs for peace (Dumas, 2011). Second, as these tasks of controlling
people are privatized, the legal edifices in any country (or at the interna-
tional level) that are supposed to protect citizens from excessive violence
are significantly weakened if contractors who are held to the same
standards as government entities are in charge of violence.
Thus, these activist actions draw our attention to the organization of
violence, and importantly the ways in which cultures shift, without active
intervention, to become cultures which facilitate routine violence.
TURNING THE GAZE ON THE UNITED STATES
To what extent do these insights apply to developed countries? A brief

discussion of some conditions in the United States illustrates the global
nature of this phenomenon.
Even though it is rarely the focus of dominant feminist discussions of vio-
lence in the United States, the militarized border region between the United
States and Mexico offers a good parallel to the conditions in Manipur,
India. As the United States entered another period of escalated political
scrutiny of immigrants, amidst the rhetoric about too many immigrants
who are negatively affecting the nation, and constant political vilification of
“illegal immigrants,” the country has further enhanced the securitization of
the border with Mexico. As the activists of the Border Action Network
(BAN) in the United States (Kil, Allen, & Hammer, 2011) have pointed out,
since 1994, when the federal government in the United States embarked on
a prevention through deterrence policy, walls, towers, a rapidly increasing
number of border protection agents, and a vast network of surveillance
technologies maintain the boundary between the two countries. Along
with this buildup of armed presence in the region, legally armed vigilante
groups groups that use a variety of guns that are legal to own in the
United States roam the border areas, looking for “Mexicans.”
In a Ford Foundation report on cases of human rights abuses in the

United States, a member of BAN narrated this story:
The Border Patrol used to come here every day. They used to come into the yard, into
our homes. No warning, no warrant. The people would run, terrorized. The children
were very afraid. Then we heard from a social worker about The Border Network for
Human Rights and decided to set up our committee. The day we hung up our sign, The
Border Network for Human Rights: Reporta Abusos de la Migra, Policia, Aduanas y
Otras, the Border Patrol stopped coming. They still drive by, but they don’t come in.
(Ford Foundation, 2004, p. 64)
Summarizing the context of the Border Action Network, Kil et al.

(2011) argue “Current practices function to systematically dehumanize
immigrants and people of color, often literally depriving them of life
from the toleration of armed vigilante groups patrolling the desert for
migrants and systematic racial profiling perpetrated by federal and local
law enforcement agents, to border patrol agents shooting at the backs of
fleeing people … (i)n many cases local communities have come to accept
this everyday human rights and civil crisis as the norm” (2011, p. 149).
Even a casual study of the militarization of this border shows every facet
of routine, gendered, raced, classed violence: large-scale action by states,
technologically sophisticated weapons, and concomitant marginalization of
selected groups are evident in this region. Equally importantly, as the acti-
vists in Manipur and Kashmir have pointed out, the violence pervades
every interstice of life. Marked people whether by the government
or armed vigilantes live in fear, curtail their mobility or activities, and
ultimately their life chances because of the massive buildup of structures of
violence in the areas in which their communities have lived for centuries.
Like Irom Sharmila, many of the activists of BAN started protesting by
filing petitions and reporting daily violence but there were few results, but
they persevered and trained a number of key members to become experts in
documenting abuse.
In BAN’s writing and activism we find echoes of Irom Sharmila and
the Imas resistance to the political normalization of routine violence. The
tactics are necessarily different, the marginalized status of older women,
especially older Latina women in the United States, and the cultural under-
standings of nudity precludes protests similar to those of the Imas in
Manipur. Nor is it clear if courting arrest would unleash the same storm of
protest in support of these Mexican American activists, who are already
marginalized in the United States.8 Furthermore, the growth of the political
economy of incarceration, the rapidly growing system of federal, state and
private prisons, and the violent control of prisoners in these prisons as well
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Purkayastha, B. (2008). Building and sustaining the fabric of peace: Notes from the field. In
G. Caforio, G. Kümmel, & B. Purkayastha (Eds.), Armed forces and conflict resolution:
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Purkayastha, B. (2013). Inclusions and exclusions: Keeping our eyes on the larger prize.
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1 5.
health of their families and communities are compromised, activists like

Maria Gunnoe have said: “The women are more fierce … the reason is they
are more responsible and obligated to the future … (w)hen you see your
kids’ water future water being polluted so that you can keep your lights
on, it just becomes a no-brainer” (Bell, 2013, pp. 21 22). In their narratives
of activism, these women document how their nonviolent activism has been
met with increased threats or acts of violence against them. The state fails
to protect them, rather, siding with powerful politicians and mining compa-
nies, they are told to go back to their homes, to tend to their children and
spouses. People have used gender-specific derogatory terms, threatened to
burn their houses, run them off the road with bigger vehicles, slashing their
tires, destroying their property and, in general, engaged in escalation of vio-
lence in so many ways that many of their children were going to bed with
their clothes on, ready to run out of houses which had been set on fire.
In sum, these activists, and many others in the United States, draw our
attention to the same issues that the Indian activists raise: more and more
people are being drawn into ambits of violence even as the range and ability
to use violence expands rapidly. We recognize wars and conflicts, intimate
violence, but it is the less visible violence, normalized as routine everyday
events, that are the foci of these activists. They point to the need to halt the
escalation of violence, the need to build cultures that challenge the normali-
zation of a continuum of violence, and the urgent need to reclaim peaceful
cultures so that violence does not become the normal currency of life.
ROUTINE VIOLENCE AND INTERSECTIONALITY
In this chapter we discussed the need to recognize routine violence.

Melding feminist insights into domestic violence especially the ways in
which the public realm intersects with the private and the insights from
scholars and activists who focus on conflicts and peace, we drew attention
to the increasing normalization of violence in everyday life. As we become
inured to this level of violence whether it is in the level of law and order,
or security, or the idea that all resources should be privatized and protected
through force we become complicit in the processes of making violence a
normal part of our cultures. Using examples from India and the United
States, we showed that this violence is not, as many scholars have argued
a feature of non-modern civilizations or states, but a part of the routine
practices of modern states.
Second, an emphasis on routine violence allows us to understand the links

between public (wars, conflicts, large-scale institutionalized violence), private
(domestic, intimate setting) violence and violence at the interstices. Routine
violence becomes a regular feature of everyday life, it continues well after
the episodes of formally-defined violence have ended. It becomes invisible.
Yet, it also alters and erases peaceful cultures and practices, creates hierar-
chies between those who control increasing levels of weaponry and those
who do not. Most of all, it builds cultures of violence as more people
accept the escalated levels of violence as “normal” ways of organizing life.
Third, we drew attention to the materiality of violence. We provided
some examples to illustrate the political-economic underpinnings of
violence and the effects across multiple levels. The neoliberal policy envir-
onment and the proliferation of armed conflicts, often caused by struggles
to control power and productive resources, have set back women’s and
less powerful groups’ access to such resources. It has also increased their
exposure to violence. Conflicts, as well as post-conflict crisis situations,
while creating new contradictions in gender relations, often draw upon
some prevailing gender, class, and ethnic inequalities deepening some
and/or creating new ones in the process. The current reconfiguration of
entitlement structures, which rarely benefit women, also adds to women’s
vulnerability to violence. These political-economic agendas and practices,
along with fundamentalist movements, conservative political trends and the
militarist security agendas both destabilize some, and reinforce other patri-
archal (racialized/classed/gendered) structures. The processes that create
intersectional structures of privilege and marginalization are supported to
ever-increasing levels of violence.
Women’s physical security and freedom from violence, and human
security and freedoms of less powerful groups, are directly linked to the
material basis of relationships that govern the distribution and use of
resources and entitlements. Cultural rationales for limiting or negating
rights of the marginalized are always grounded in particular economic
interests and power dynamics. The focus on routine violence in its
gendered/racialized/classed forms emphasizes the need for scholars to
pay attention to the effects of normalization of violence in everyday life.
NOTES
1. We use various terms such as activists, activist scholars, and scholars in this
chapter, but, methodologically these distinctions are often blurred since individuals
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WELL-INTENDED MEASURES:
CONCEPTUALIZING GENDER
AS A SOCIAL STRUCTURE IN
POST-CONFLICT POLICY
DEVELOPMENT
Elizabeth A. Degi Mount
ABSTRACT
Purpose This chapter critically analyzes the outcomes of a legal
reform enacted in Bali to address unintended consequences of a World
Bank policy that undermined women’s economic, legal, and human
rights.
Design/methodology/approach This qualitative exploratory inquiry
employs ethnographic data including participant observations and 18
interviews conducted in Denpasar, Bali.
Findings The analysis suggests that policy measures intended to
empower women which fail to address the influence of gender in the for-
mation and functioning of social institutions reinforce conceptualizations

ISSN: 1529-2126/doi:10.1108/S1529-21262014000018B006
45
United States and the extent to which we could fruitfully apply this framing
to different parts of the world. We conclude the chapter by reflecting upon
the ways in which our understanding of intersectionality is enhanced
through our attention to routine violence.
VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN: A BRIEF REVIEW OF

THE CONTINUUM
For at least the last fifty years, scholars and activists who work to mitigate
VAW have challenged the conventional focus on individual perpetrators
and victims of violence as it implies that violence within private spheres of
life is totally separable from public spheres. By the 1990s, feminist research
had criticized and moved beyond the narrow perspective that violence
consists of acts perpetrated by deviant individuals within households. They
argued that the private and public spheres were not separate (e.g.,
Abraham, 2000; Ferree, 1990). Instead they pointed to complex social, eco-
nomic, and political structures indeed a range of policies, institutional
arrangements, and practices that enable, instigate, and defend violence
within private spheres. The separation of spheres, often codified by laws,
has enabled selective penetration of public/state power into the innermost
recesses of households allowing some autonomous space for the hegemony
of the male heads of these households. Over the years, and especially within
the last two decades, activist and scholarly attention has shifted toward
linking intimate violence (within families, between partners) with larger
scale violence. Thus emotional, physical, and sexual violence is also linked
to violence within and between communities, between states, communities,
and between non-state actors and states. Such conceptualization empha-
sizes a global political-economy approach within which a variety of patriar-
chal, racialized violence is perpetrated within and between families,
communities, states, and in transnational arenas (e.g., Molyneux &
Rahzavi, 2002; Sutton, 2010; Sutton, Morgan, & Novkov, 2008). In their
discussion of the work of the SRVAW, Erturk and Purkayastha described
how the conceptualization of a continuum of violence is critical for the
SRVAW to raise consciousness about VAW, attempt to shape UN direc-
tives and actions, and to codify indicators that would require countries to
report on violence and its underlying causes in ways that are consistent
with the political-economy approach to understanding a continuum of
violence (for a longer discussion see Erturk & Purkayastha, 2012).
Well-Intended Measures 47
I call “structural gender,” that attempts to reconcile the theoretical and the
pragmatic for improved future research and policy development related to
gender. The need for such reconciliation is vital, as the gap between rich
theory and wan application has yielded unintended outcomes that have
materially, politically, and emotionally stymied gender equality.
The tale of further unintended consequences stemming from a policy
implemented in Bali, Indonesia in response to unintended consequences of
a World Bank investment made in the aftermath of the fall of Soeharto’s
New Order in 1998 illustrates the urgency of innovative ways of conceptua-
lizing gender in research and policy development. The result of the World
Bank investment had devastating implications for victims of domestic
violence (DV); the subsequent legal measure to address these implications
relied heavily on providing access to economic capital as a means for
women to escape abusive marriages. Both the World Bank investment and
the subsequent measure to address the resulting unintended consequences
failed to account for the ways pervasive cultural perceptions of gender
intrinsically affected the formation and functioning of social institutions.
This led to the measures more deeply entrenching juridical-political
and social institutions that marginalize women from positions of social
power the reductionist view of “empowerment” further reified structu-
rally violent cultural intuitions.
The outcomes of this further entrenchment manifests as an acceptance
of physical, emotional, and psychological violence toward women.
Moreover, these consequences reinforce historical patterns of social life
that exclude women from full participation in the economic, social, and
juridical-political institutions comprising the public and private spheres of
a society (Henley & Davidson, 2008; Lake, 2010; Lorber, 1994; Martin,
2004; Pugh, 2004; Risman, 2004). The implications of these outcomes call
for greater attention to the impact of gender as a social structure (Risman,
2004) in the development of post-conflict policies. While this case study
cannot provide a fail-safe roadmap for future policy development, it does
illuminate potential problems that future efforts to implement similar
policies may encounter.
THE CASE FOR RECONCEPTUALIZING GENDER
Incorporating an analysis of gender ideologies pervasive within societies

targeted for intervention may result in the development of policies that
48 ELIZABETH A. DEGI MOUNT
effectively shift such structurally violent cultural institutions, providing

space for cultural transformations that hold true potential for more fully
ensuring women’s rights (Bergeron, 2003). Looking to prevalent cultural
gender ideologies rather than simply the economic or legal status of
women would move away from policy development frameworks that
conceptualize taking gender into account as add women and stir
(Dharmapuri, 2011; Mertus, 2008). The paradigm would shift to recognize
and address gender as a social structure “built into the organization and
politics of all social institutions, the interactions of everyday life, and the
consciousness of self we call identity” (Lorber, 1994, p. 5). Resulting poli-
cies would have the potential to adapt structurally violent cultural institu-
tions to release pressure on social systems that place women in positions of
marginalized social and political power.
This shift would begin to focus attention to the structural influence of
gender on the formation and functioning of social processes in post-conflict
policy development. In 2000, the UN Security Council passed Resolution
1325, which called for the integration of gender issues into all levels of
peacebuilding practice as well as increased attention to the needs of women
in conflict zones. Despite tremendous gains in efforts at gender main-
streaming since the passage of UNSC Resolution 1325, many of the well-
intended measures have reduced concepts of greater inclusion and parity
to increased economic capital. These so-called empowerment measures
ironically define power in terms delineated by the very social structures that
fostered the inequalities polices are designed to address. Policy efforts to
reform existing juridical-political institutions or establish new systems in
post-conflict contexts that continue to be guided by neoliberal discourses
place the onus on individual marginalized actors to successfully transcend
structurally violent systems, rather than pressuring societies to transform
systems that form the bedrock of familial, legal, and economic inequalities
(Bergeron, 2003).
To substantively grapple with the ways structural gender influences the
construction and function of social intuitions, a policy construction frame-
work is needed that conceptualizes gender not as “what is happening to
women?” but rather as “how do cultural norms and attitudes about gender
constrain and order individuals’ behaviors in everyday life, the propagation
of cultural norms, and the functioning of social and political-juridical
institutions?” A shift to a structural approach in policy development that
builds from the theoretical innovations of work by Lorber (1994), Martin
(2004), and Risman (2004) would hone in on the ways that social systems
which limit individuals’ ability to acquire social and economic capital based
on their gender status (Lorber, 1994) produce structurally violent institu-

tions (Burton, 1997). This shift will constitute the “deliberate restructuring”
(Lorber, 1994, p. 6) necessary for making manifest in women’s lives
the rights and safeties afforded to them by international treaties and
national laws.
Structural Gender
The gap between the theoretical richness of conceptualizations and the

needed applications of gender as a social structure in post-conflict policy
development reflects the challenges that feminist sociologists have had
reconciling conceptualizations of gender as a social structure distinct from
individuals that is produced and propagated by compliance with the dic-
tates of the structure. My analytical approach builds on Lorber’s (1994)
and Martin’s (2004) work but differs slightly in the conceptualization of
gender as a social institution. They focus primarily with the ways gender as
an institution is manifested in society. My analysis seeks to understand
how gender as a process influences the formation and functioning of social
institutions. This conceptualization is more closely aligned with Risman’s
(2004) work discussing gender as a social structure. She argues that gender
should be conceptualized as a social structure, rather than an institution,
“because this brings gender to the same analytic plane as politics and
economics, where the focus has long been on political and economic struc-
tures” (2004, p. 431).
However, she is quick to point out that this terminology, too, is proble-
matic, and as there is no widespread consensus as to what constitutes a
structure within sociological literature. Like Martin (2004) and Lorber
(1994), she is intent on situating “gender as embedded not only in indivi-
duals but throughout social life” (2004, p. 431). I find particularly compel-
ling Risman’s attention to the “mechanisms that produce gendered
outcomes within each dimension of the social structure” (2004, p. 430),
which include individuals’ actions in accordance with gender ideologies.
Lorber also touches on this dialectic process:
Without individual actions (voluntary or coerced) there would be no social institutions,
since the social structures we call “gender,” “government,” “family,” “economy,” and
so on must be enacted every day in order to continue and in that enactment are
strengthened or weakened, sustained or resisted (D. E. Smith, 1987) … The patterned
and intertwined structures of work, family, culture, education, religion, and law are
gendered, and they deeply and continuously shape the lives of individuals. Through
This changing understanding of violence is rooted in gender research

that increasingly adopts intersectionality as a frame for understanding
violence. This frame emphasizes structures of domination and marginaliza-
tion that produce raced/gendered/classed/aged/sexualized violence within
nations (e.g., Abraham, 2000; Collins, 1990). In addition to documenting
the effect of these structures, transnational feminists and scholars from the
Global South have highlighted the need to interrogate nation and the
unequal power of different nations within the world system as part of an
analysis of structures of domination and marginalization. Consequently,
violence, conceptualized through a post-colonial and/or intersectional lens,
is no longer only about women though women remain a legitimate focus
of research because of their widespread and continuing experience of vio-
lence. These approaches refocus our attention to multi-level, historical, and
contemporary intersecting structures that promote, enable, or legitimate
violence. Attention to the interstices allows us to understand the cultural
norms and structures that intersect from the most intimate to the supra
national political-economic conditions to routinize and normalize violence
as material foundations of everyday life.
BRIDGING THE CONCEPTS OF ROUTINE

VIOLENCE AND VAW
The term routine violence is rooted in the work of Gyanendra Pandey (2006)
and others, including an interdisciplinary body of scholars at the Center for
the Study of Developing Societies who have interrogated violence associated
with state formation and state operations. The parameters of the concept
are also evident in the work of feminist academic groups in India (see for
instance John, 2008) and grounded in the conceptualization, claims, and
protests by activists.1 Routine violence occurs at international, national,
and community levels; often states and other large entities are involved in
routine violence so it is made invisible because it is presented as “normal”
ways of organizing modern nation-states or international relations. Pandey
describes three indicators of routine violence. First, the larger the organiza-
tion that engages in the violence such as a powerful state and the more
widespread its scale, the more it is likely to be legitimated and routinized.
Second, the more technologically sophisticated the scale of the violence
for instance the use of remotely controlled drones the more likely these
technologies are presented as routine practices for maintaining the security
for survival. As gender serves as a major determinant of one’s social posi-

tion (Lorber, 1994; Martin, 2004; Risman, 2004), individuals’ access to
goods and services necessary for their survival is in part dictated by indivi-
duals’ culturally perceived gender identities (Burton, 1997). Therefore, the
processes by which these institutions are reified through these interactions
are inevitably influenced by structural gender. This process gives rise to
institutions that limit or permit individuals’ attainment of basic needs
necessary for their survival access to food, water, shelter, and safety
from psychical violence from other individuals or geopolitical conflict
based on individuals’ position within a society, which is in part dictated by
individuals’ culturally prescribed gender identities.
My particular attention to the influence of structural gender that gives
rise to structural violence is based on my concern one shared by a grow-
ing number of feminists working in development and academia3 that the
growing attention to gender in conflict following the passage of United
Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 has eschewed from addressing
structural violence. While national and international organizations have
increasingly incorporated gender into their practice in the eleven years
following the passage of 1325, their attention has primarily conceptualized
“gender” as women, rather than as a complex process, “of social construc-
tion, a system of stratification, and an institution that structures every
aspect” of social life (Lorber, 1994, p. 5). This limited framework has failed
to yield changes to the social institutions that have historically limited
women’s autonomy, as well as their abilities to fully access the services and
goods necessary to provide for their safety and well-being (Bergeron, 2003).
METHODS
My analysis is grounded in ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2011, in

an urban village situated on the outskirts of Bali’s capital city, Denpasar,
in Indonesia. My exploratory research design was guided by a series of
questions aimed at understanding how the fit and frictions between the
intended outcomes of the 2010 legal reforms, as envisioned by the women
who advocated for their passage and the actual lived experiences of women
who had attempted to leverage the reforms in the time since their passage.
I employed a cross-sectional inductive research design for this exploratory
study, informed by grounded theory methodology and feminist approaches.
An exploratory research design was appropriate for several reasons.
Paramount among them was the need to establish a preliminary in-depth

understanding of how the 2010 reforms have impacted women, as to date
no empirical research had been conducted on the outcomes of the reforms.
Secondly, an exploratory research design was ideal for allowing me to
understand the relational and contextual dynamics surrounding the 2010
reforms. My goal in understanding this impact of the 2010 reforms was to
get a greater sense of the way social power is constructed in Bali, and how
this construction is gendered.
My design drew from grounded theory methodology, which offered an
ideal approach for this inquiry as it hones in on social processes underlying
phenomena observed (Glaser, 1992) and places emphasis on processes of
social construction (Charmaz, 1990). Moreover, grounded theory allowed
me to focus on how women’s gender-ideological identities are socially
constructed within the context of Balinese culture, and how the processes
guiding this construction are informed by larger social constructions of
power, access, and privilege.
My sample of 18 individuals included academics, legal activists, profes-
sionals employed in NGO programs directly addressing gender-based
violence in Bali, adult children (over 18 years of age) of Balinese women that
have been abused by their husbands, and women who themselves were peti-
tioning for divorces under the 2010 reforms. I augmented semi-structured
and informal interviews with extensive participant observations in the
community where I lived while conducting my fieldwork. This included
the family in whose home I lived in Bali, as well as the members of the
community with whom I interacted daily at the market, at local food stalls,
at religious ceremonies, and while doing the “deep hanging out” (Geertz,
1998) that constitutes much of ethnographic participant observation.
Definition of Terms Used in Research Design
The 2010 reforms addressed economic, proprietary, and custodial structural

challenges encumbering women’s ability to leave violent marriages.
Therefore, an analysis exploring the how legal reforms assisted in women’s
ability to leave violent marriages should evaluate the success of a divorce in
part on a divorced woman’s ability to economically provide for herself
and any dependent children, attain property rights of joint marital property,
and gain custody rights of her children. For the purposes of my
study, I relied on language from the 2004 Indonesian national law Undung
undung 23/2004, which outlaws the affliction of “physical, emotional and
psychological” harm between spouses. I limited my working definition of

DV to specific incidences of a husband physically, emotionally, or psycholo-
gically harming his wife, constraining the definition not just by the gender
relationship but also by situating it within the juridical-political institution
of marriage. This limited scope allowed me to focus more closely on my
research questions.
A Note on the Philosophy Guiding My Methodological Approach
At every stage, my aim was to make this research process a feminist endea-
vor, firmly rooted in feminist methodological theories to the fullest extent
possible. For me, this meant first and foremost that this inquiry would be
informed by an overarching rejection of “science and science-making [that]
tends to serve and reinforce dominant social values and conceptions of
reality,” (Du Bois, 1983). The subject matter with which I have chosen to
engage and my aims in answering the questions I have laid out are intrinsi-
cally informed by my commitment to a feminist agenda that compels me
to question how gender has influenced the construction, dynamics, and
propagation of the social world.
GENDER TROUBLE IN PARADISE: UNINTENDED

CONSEQUENCES OF POST-CONFLICT POLICIES
IN BALI
Uneasy Inheritances
Standing on the fourth floor terraces of one of the neighboring houses to

mine in the urban village outside of the Balinese city of Denpasar, my
downward gaze to block the hot evening sun meets the tightly compressed
patchwork quilt of roofs jammed tightly within the family compound. The
compound itself, similar to the hundreds of others in the village, is home to
about 70 people, cousins, uncles, brothers, teenage boys posturing over
guitars and making eyes at teenage girls whose arms are shielded against
the sun by cotton gloves and long sleeve hoodies, young mothers, chickens,
and a pack of children. The kids run in between the maze of enclosed
rooms that house individual nuclear families, temples in which dwell the
souls of relatives departed but not yet reincarnated into the family, outdoor
kitchens, and open pavilions where aunties and grandmothers sit hours on
end preparing offerings for the dozens of rituals that provide the frame-
work for every event of social and spiritual life on this island. The offerings
are painstakingly handmade intricate vessels, made of palm fronds, flowers,
reeds, and other materials grown on family compounds or, with the
increase in transnational commerce, imported from neighboring island of
Java. The offerings, dozens of which are called for in the ceremonies that
punctuate daily life in Bali, vary in size from small hand sized bowls to
two-foot high baskets covered in fruit and flowers.
Women and teen girls weave the fronds into offerings, arranging the
flowers just so, as toddlers scramble after each other, their little limbs weav-
ing around the tight alleyways of the family compound. The reality of life
in these cramped quarters, made all the more tight by the half dozen motor
bikes that line the entry way of the compound, leaves little to the imagina-
tion as to how conflict over property rights who has legitimate use of
what in the compound could spark. The fact that families like the one
I am living with have inhabited the same compounds for centuries nearly
400 years in my homestay makes it even easier to understand how this
spark could quickly become a raging conflagration.
Conflicts over land ownership in Bali have been central to violent con-
flict for decades (Dwyer, 2010; Dwyer & Santikarma, 2003, 2006). In Bali,
the political violence of 1965 was carried out under the ostensible banner of
ridding the country of the threat of communism. In actually, the chaos of
mass killings of between 100,000 and 300,000 people on Bali in the four
months following the Thirtieth of September Movement (Gerakan 30
September) in 1965 were sometimes carried out to settle disputes over
tightly contested land.
Balinese customary law, Adat, prescribes the manners by which land is
inherited within families. The family compounds are divided among nuclear
families. As families contract and expand over lifetimes of marriage, child-
birth, and death, the use of different spaces within the family compound
passed from father to son on and on. Eldest sons received preference as to
the inheritance of land. Four hundred years is plenty of time for resent-
ments to swell.
It’s not just the inheritance of land that is contested, and, because of
Adat, tied to gender. The upkeep of family lands, upon which sit three
family temples in which the spirits of family members dwell until being
reincarnated in a newly born family member, is the responsibility of the
women in the family. Tut’s hands flail as he continues his story about the
house his uncle lives in that should have gone to Gede. “Now, because [my
uncle] Gede, has no land in this compound, and because he and my other
uncle married a modern Western woman, there are no women to help my
mom with the offerings.” I look up from staring at Tut’s knotted curls, and
my eyes rest on Nengah, who has been dating Tut’s brother for eleven
years. “I think that’s one of the reasons they won’t get married. She doesn’t
want to have to stay at home and help my mom make offerings.”
Under Adat, daughters married into their husband’s family, and lived on
their lands. As daughters transitioned from their family of origin, their sta-
tus and role also transitioned. Their work shifts from being helpers to their
mothers, aunties, and grandmothers in the daily grind of preparations for
rituals to being the upkeepers of their husbands’ family temples. In addi-
tion to being a stringent patrilineal system of inheritance laws, Adat also
signifies an ambiguously defined but still highly influential ideological
canon regarding ideal ordering of social life, which “are invoked in varying
proportions, and with varying levels of sincerity, to pursue ends that range
from the disempowerment of rivals to the protection and mobilization of
the underprivileged” (Henley & Davidson, 2008, p. 818). In contemporary
context, the historical law structure of Adat effectively ties together history,
land, and law; the paramount tenant of the law is the control of the land,
and that land rights originate from historical ownership of land. Men’s role
in upkeeping the familial land had historically been one of providing finan-
cial resources. Women were and continue to be responsible for the
upkeep of the spiritual aspects associated with the land, including ceremo-
nial offerings for “every fucking thing from getting a new chicken to having
a baby to buying a new car,” as one of my participants told me of the
Balinese ceremonies that gird all aspects of social life.
In the 32 years of Soeharto’s regime, Adat had begun to fall out of vogue.
The rule of law was centralized within Soeharto’s grasp on all things govern-
ance, and his open door policy that had ushered in a mass investment by
transnational businesses also brought with it more modern conceptions of
gender relations. The tight patrilineal inheritance of Balinese customary law
began to lessen in the wake of international tourism. Women left the home
to work in the spas and restaurants of Sanur Beach and red light clubs of
Kuta, and the burden of temple upkeep had to be squeezed into the early
morning hours before heading off to offer tourists “traditional” Balinese
massages for $6 an hour. As women’s earning potential increased, the
possibility for women to inherit familial property expanded. No longer
would family compounds stand to fall into disrepair if a marriage produced
only daughters. If no male heir was produced, the girls could one day
grow up and financially support the upkeep of the compound if necessary.
According to legal activists at the Indonesian Women’s Association for

Justice and Legal Aid Institute, known locally by its Indonesian acronym
LBH APIK, Balinese gender ideologies positioned a married women as
property of her husband’s family. LBH APIK operates similarly to The
Legal Aid Society in the United States, providing direct legal services to
individual clients, as well as conducting advocacy on issues of social welfare
and justice. LBH APIK lawyers had been instrumental in pushing for the
2010 reforms, and had been working hands on with DV victims petitioning
for rights granted by the reforms. Their intimate involvement from both
the institutional and the individual level provided rich insight about the cul-
tural context in which the reforms were enacted. When daughters married,
they transitioned from being a financial burden on their family of origin to
the property of their husbands. The transaction was necessary financially
for the daughter’s family as historically women were not able to bring in
income. It was also beneficial for the husband’s family, as the newly
acquired daughter became responsible for the upkeep of the family land.
My research participants from LBH APIK explained that these concep-
tions had slowly, tepidly begun to subside in recent decades with the influx
of Western culture and increased transnational tourism.
Third Party Post-Conflict Investment Sparks Resurgence of Traditional Law
When Soeharto’s regime fell in 1998, the World Bank made significant
investments in programs to strengthen local governance structures using
prescriptive economic policies that emphasize privatization of state
enterprises, market driven economies, and legal protection for property
rights an approach unleashed by Washington, DC based organizations
upon countries transitioning from crisis so uniformly that the model has
become known as the Washington Consensus (Williamson, 1989). In
Indonesia, the World Bank’s investment was made in an effort to limit the
likelihood of another central dictatorship from taking hold (Bergeron, 2003;
Henley & Davidson, 2008). What this “strengthened local governance”
translated to in many areas of Indonesia was a “frantic rediscovery”
(Henley & Davidson, 2008, p. 816) of Adat customary law structures, fos-
tered in large part by ideological and material support from the World Bank
for indigenous law structures. In Bali, the resurgence of Adat heralded a
renewed embracing of these gender ideologies in juridical-political institu-
tions. This in turn reinvigorated gender ideologies that marginalized women
from positions of power within family life. The strengthened Adat system
institutionally fortified cultural traditions of patrilineal inheritance, includ-

ing custody rights of children and joint marital property, codifying the
inheritance traditions that had begun to fall to the wayside in the era of
transnational economies.
For women caught in abusive marriages, the limitations of Adat pragma-
tically eliminated any possibility of escape. If a woman did decide to leave,
she did so without any economic resources. She had no legal standing to
petition for economic redress of property land or otherwise gained over
the course of the marriage or for custody of their children. Moreover,
she was now legally unable to inherit familial land from her family of
origin, necessitating that she remain in a marriage to ensure her livelihood
later in life.
Addressing Unintended Consequences of the World Bank Investment
In 2010, women’s legal activists, including women from the legal organiza-
tion LBH APIK, successfully partnered with Balinese customary law lea-
ders to formalize legal reforms constructed to remedy the proprietary and
custodial measures of Adat law which prevented women from gaining prop-
erty and custodial rights in the event of a divorce. The measures were
enacted with the aim of empowering women to leave abusive marriages by
providing them with economic, proprietary, and custodial recourse. The
activists that advocated for these changes include lawyers as well as social
activists who work within civil society to promote awareness of a vast
swath of social issues ranging from the impact of Bali’s tourism industry
on the local economy and environment, greater awareness of the fall out of
the 1965 political violence (Dwyer, 2004; Dwyer & Santikarma, 2003;
Robinson, 1995) to female sex workers’ health care. The lawyers and acti-
vists I interview and spend time with during the course of my fieldwork are
enthusiastic about my research; we are all eager to understand how the
2010 reforms have changed the community dynamic as a whole. Less than
18 months has passed in the time between the enactment of the laws and
my fieldwork, and the reality may be that too little time has passed to
gauge the measures’ full impact. Despite this, the LBH APIK attorneys,
activists, the women they advocated on behalf of, and I are eager to contex-
tualize the current state of play in Bali within the greater social context of
gendered violence and post-conflict policy implementation.
In the immediate aftermath of the 2010 reforms being implemented,
“divorce went up,” says Yan. We’re sitting in the front room of her clean
and quiet office at LBH APIK, and she is explaining to me why leveraging
the reforms has been challenging. “When the law initially passed, people
reported more abuse, because people were more aware. But the economy
was going down at the same time. As the economic conditions went down,
abuse went up and divorce also went up.”
However, the increase in divorce was not attributed by community mem-
bers to the economic downturn. I have taken my notes from my meeting
with Yan to my next meeting with a group of LBH APIK lawyers at one of
their offices outside of the city. I ask them about what happened when the
divorce rate initially climbed after the 2010 reforms were passed. “There
was this perception that ‘this is what happens when you educate women,’”
explained Ni Luh, throwing her hands up in frustration. She and I, along
with my translator and four of her staff members, two of whom are attor-
neys, are crammed into her tiny office.
The office is a small room off the front of her middle class home on the
outskirts of the village. My translator and I had pulled up to the house to
find half a dozen kids running through the yard, accompanied by scratching
chickens ducking their soccer balls and scrambled games of tag. The children
had followed us into the office, a few of them perched on staff members laps,
others leaning against the open door frame. Advertising stickers for “Levi’s
501” brand jeans dot the file cabinets, against which a little girl about six or
seven years old leans while listening attentively to us discuss the impact of
Undung undung 23/2004 in Balinese, Bahasa Indonesian, and broken English.
The blending of home life/care giver and professional life/attorney
doesn’t end at the casual blending of children’s play yard and grown up’s
work space. One of Ni Luh’s colleagues, G., has recently successfully peti-
tioned for divorce, gaining custody of her son in the process. She explains
to me that her background in law helped her through her own divorce. She
did not seek to gain custody under the 2010 reforms, but rather through a
clever leveraging of a “Blue Movie” law outlawing pornography. She
caught her husband making a pornographic film and reported him to local
authorities. When she began to explore divorce proceedings, her husband
told her she could have custody of her son if she repealed her report. She
took her son and left the marriage.
Martial Success and Failure Is the Responsibility of Women
While Ni Luh was able to leave her marriage with her son, and the women
being served by LBH APIK lawyers have the chance to do the same now
due to the 2010 reforms, there is a limit to the assistance the law has been
able to afford Balinese women seeking divorce. Ni Luh SGBV laughs as
she explains to me, “he made the movies, but it’s my fault!” Her laughter
is exasperated, not comedic. The other lawyers nod in silent agreement.
I ask more questions about this. “You have to follow your husband. How
successful he is is how successful you are. You are responsible for the mar-
riage. How people think of him is how they think of you. If the marriage
fails, it was not because of something he did, it was because of what you
didn’t do.”
A husband with a better wife wouldn’t have needed to make a blue
movie.
A husband with a more obedient or more helpful or more beautiful or
more useful wife wouldn’t need to beat her.
“So, if a marriage fails, it’s the woman’s fault?” Yan and the other
women I pose the question to bob their heads affirmatively in unison.
“When a woman gets divorced, the Balinese word she’s called means
‘widow’” says Yan. Balinese language doesn’t have a word for “divorcee,”
she tells me and the assembled women, children, and chickens surrounding
me. The prospects for remarrying are slim. The burden of marital success
that the “widow” has failed to live up to once spells disaster for future
courtships to be taken seriously in the unlikely event that another man
would pursue her. Her perceived inability to “serve” her ex-husband’s
family will undermine her attempts to gain any suitor’s family approval of
a new marriage.
“What’s the word for when a man gets divorced?”
Great peals of laughter ring out, each of the women bursting out in
hearty guffaws. “They call him a man! That’s what they call him!” shouts
Yan. The social stigma of divorce is the sole domain of women.
A divorced woman has little options for financial recourse, social
support, nor stable housing. “Most parents won’t take a daughter back
once she leaves the house to get married,” I am told by Helen, a European
academic who regularly consults for LBH APIK doing advocacy. The
woman is viewed as the husband’s “property” not just in the sense that
he controls her, but also in that he is responsible for her financial well-
being. “Some of this goes back to the land rights issues,” she says. It’s
important to remember, she explains, that women historically would not be
able to inherit family land. Having an unmarried daughter in the home was
not just a financial burden, but also did nothing to offer the parents stabi-
lity in their old age, as they needed a son to make sure that they would
have someone in the home to take care of them financially in their later
years. The son’s wife would take care of the cooking and responsibilities
for the ritual offerings.
The Gendered Burden of the “Ritual” Economy
The use of land, the economy, and the spiritual traditions of the island are
all tightly interwoven. Also, they are all deeply dependent on women’s
maintenance of culturally defined gendered norms. In the days leading up
to the ceremony of Galungan, which celebrates the conquest of the indigen-
ous Bali Aga by the Javanese (the island adjacent to Bali), women work
from early morning until late into the night to prepare thousands of offer-
ings. While the holiday has more shared origins with the celebration of
Columbus Day in the United States, the ubiquitous tourist explanation is
that Galungan is “Bali Christmas,” and is accompanied by elaborate and
enormous ritual offerings, for which women are primarily responsible for
producing. As the tourism industry has increased, so too has the complex-
ity and size of the offerings, and the amount of hours that women spend
producing them. A friend’s CPU went kaput the night before Galungan,
and the computer technician that was attempting to resurrect it was chat-
ting to me about his family’s preparations for the holiday while he poked
and prodded the obstinate machine as I sat in her kitchen munching on
tempeh topped with sambal.
My query as to how holiday prep was going at his house prompted the
technician to tell me that he and his wife were really eager to move back to
Java, where she was originally from, because the pressure for her to help
the women in his family prepare the ritual offerings was endangering her
health. Despite being six months pregnant with their first child, his mother,
aunts, sisters, and cousins had insisted on having her assistance, and she
had been working to prepare offerings from 3 a.m. until midnight for the
preceding three days. She had started bleeding vaginally. But the holiday
was upon them, and the bleeding was not too bad, his aunts had said. And
so the pressure for her to continue to assist in making ritual objects had
not ceased. And neither had the bleeding. Even though the computer tech-
nician was worried for her health and the health of their unborn baby, the
pressure from the family for her to assist in the propagation of Balinese
culture constrained his ability to advocate on their behalf.
The morning of Galungan, I awoke to the sounds of chanting, bells,
and the smell of (very, very strong and slightly unpleasant) garlic-y spice
wafting into my window at five in the morning. Stumbling sleepily to the
bathroom, I saw Wayan, the mother of the family with whom I was stay-
ing, dressed in full ceremonial garb and putting together an elaborate tower
of fruit for an offering for one of the many ceremonies of Galungan. Her
husband a generous, funny man who relishes his chance to practice his
English skills with me is sprawled face down asleep on the bed, the door
to their bedroom wide open to let in the morning breeze, his pillow stuffed
over his head so he can get a few more hours of sleep in.
Tut, who is related to Wayan, later tells me it is a point of contention in
the community that women like Wayan, who worked outside of the home
as a police woman, purchased rather than made by hand the hundreds of
smaller offerings that get placed around the temple. The money involved
not only reflects a class division for many women, but also speaks to con-
cepts of femininity. Femininity is service to the family’s temple. Not riding
around on a motorbike in a police uniform.
When Tut told me that women’s purchase of offerings was a point of
local gossip, my mind jumps to the events of most normal (as in, not
Galungan) mornings in the home where I was staying. Almost every morn-
ing Wayan would be in the shower, getting ready to go to work. The morn-
ings the shower was silent her motorbike, with her pink helmet perched
atop its resting handlebars, would already be gone. Her paid work outside
of the home is demanding, I know, from the stories her cousins tell me. She
is respected for her job, and thought well of in the community. The pictures
of her in her police uniform that line the family living room walls speak to
her family’s pride in her work. That she also balances the maintenance of
hearth, home and temple with her job leaves me with a feeling of exhaus-
tion just watching her. But she’s expected to make the ritual offerings by
hand rather than pick them up at the market on her way home from work
before she cooks dinner for her family.
Economic Structures Further Constrain Gendered Ritual Labor
The tremendous pressure to maintain familial temples, which might after

a cursory glance be viewed only as important to a particular family, is
better understood in the context of Balinese tourism. An overwhelming
amount of the island’s economy depends on tourism (World Bank, 2002),
which is driven primarily by the draw of Bali’s culture. Tourists seek
out this culture not just in dances like the public performances of kecak
and barong, which have been vastly altered to suit Westerner’s perceptions
of traditional Balinese culture (Pollmann, 1990), but also in family
compounds. During a friend’s father’s funeral, two buses filled with tourists
pulled up to his family compound eager to witness a traditional Balinese
cremation. The buses’ inhabitants flooded into his family compound, ate all
of the sate and sambal that had been prepared for the mourners, and hap-
pily slurped up the sodas (which are not cheap) set up for family members
while enjoying their first-hand encounter with Balinese culture. Tourists’
desire to engage with Balinese culture places pressure on each individual to
maintain the vast, elaborate ritual practices in both public and (what should
be) private spaces.
Attacking the Culture
The pressures to maintain familial lands and continue the ritual economy
further reinforced the legal and cultural tenants of Adat that were revita-
lized by the World Bank’s 1998 investment. Recognizing the constraining
influence of these economic, familial, cultural, religious, and legal institu-
tions is necessary to contextualize community perceptions of women who
sought divorce under the 2010 reforms. Following the passage of the 2010
reforms, women seeking redress from DV by leveraging the new laws were
met with extreme animosity. In addition to negative reactions from violent
husbands, husbands’ family members, and frequently from the women’s
own parents, women were cast as social pariahs guilty of “attacking the
culture” by members of the community at large. “In the villages, when a
woman tries to put her husband on trial, she is accused of putting the “cul-
ture” on trial,” explained one of my respondents, an attorney with LBH
APIK who had been active in advocating for the 2010 reforms. She is seen
as flying in the face of cultural mores that position her as both someone
that should be of service to her husband’s family as well as the economic
pressure to maintain his family’s temples.
TOWARD A STRUCTURAL UNDERSTANDING OF

GENDER IN POST-CONFLICT POLICY
DEVELOPMENT
The Constraints of Structural Gender
The assertion that women attempting to leverage the 2010 reforms were
“attacking the culture” can only be understood in the broader context of
economic and familial systems. Women were petitioning for land rights
that had been the privileged domain of men for centuries. Moreover, they
were claiming that they had rights to retain custody of their sons, to whom
familial land would pass once their husbands died. In addition to these
challenges to deeply entrenched sociocultural systems, these women’s
claims undermined the greater economic stability of the island by her abdi-
cating her responsibility for upkeeping family temples. In addition to chal-
lenging cultural norms arising from historical precedents, women
petitioning for their newly granted legal rights were flying in the face of
“traditions” so recently undergirded by the World Bank’s investment in
local governance that led to the resurgence of Adat. The duel influence of
Adat over land rights and social norms meant that women were not only
undermining property rights a tightly contested arena on an island home
roughly the size of Delaware they were also stepping outside of tightly
defined social identities that relegated them to nondominant roles.
While Henley and Davidson assert that the revival of Adat has led to
greater representation in local bureaucracies of groups marginalized under
Soeharto, girded local claims to land that had been appropriated by the
state, and provided effective means to circumnavigate notoriously corrupt
governance structures, they point out that this legal renaissance has had a
dark underside for women that has been “particularly visible and for
international supporters of the movement, particularly embarrassing”
(2008, p. 838). The subsequent undermining of women’s autonomy and
security resulting from the resurgence of Adat has manifested itself in var-
ious ways across Indonesia. It has led to fewer women occupying leadership
positions in Lombok villages, now than under Soeharto’s New Order, and
to resistance of women appointments as local officials in West Sumatra,
despite historical matrifocal kinship patterns (Henley & Davidson, 2008).
The lack of attention to structural gender throughout policy development
set the stage for policy outcomes that had the potential to privilege elites
during post-conflict reconstruction (Bergeron, 2003).
Mapping Structural Gender
The influence of structural gender in the fallout in Bali resulting from the
World Bank measures and 2010 reforms is better understood when viewed
as part of an interrelated system. The cultural, juridical-political, economic,
and familial structures that constrained individual actors’ abilities to lever-
age the 2010 reforms were all deeply informed by gender ideologies. When
intertwined as a systemic whole, the resulting gendered structure deprived

women of basic human needs and undermines their ability to leverage their
newly granted legal rights. Burton (1997) argues that the roots of structural
violence are policy and administrative decisions that deprive individuals’
rights and limit their access to basic human needs. The results stemming
from a lack of attention to the structural impact of gender in the formation
of both the World Bank’s post-conflict intervention and the 2010 reforms
clearly contributed to the propagation of social institutions that under-
mined women’s access to physical well-being, social capital, and economic
security.
Visually mapping the tenets of the 2010 reforms using a modified version
of Cheldelin and Lucas’s (2003) nestled framework for conflict analysis
highlights the ways the World Bank’s investment strengthened interrelated
cultural and economic aspects undermining women’s ability to leave abusive
marriages. The dynamics occurring within each circle are constrained by the
dynamics happening within each outer circle. Conceptualizing an abusive
marriage as existing within the sociopolitical structures mapped here clari-
fies the structural influence of gender on the formation and functioning of
social institutions. The backlash against women seeking property rights
under the new law the claim that women were “attacking the culture”
can be accounted for by the limited scope of the 2010 reforms. Data from
my fieldwork suggests that all factors mapped on this matrix contribute to a
woman’s ability to exit an abusive marriage. However, the 2010 reforms
addressed only the factors that are highlighted in bold text (Fig. 1).
Measures Reinforces Social Dynamics that Lead to Structural Violence
The fallout resulting from the World Bank measure’s and 2010 reforms’
failure to account for the ways structural gender would influence the inter-
vention’s outcomes calls attention to the interplay of structural gender
within social and juridical-political institutions and the reinforcement of
gender ideologies by individuals, both through their own compliance with
the tenets of these ideologies and their actions to pressure others to comply
as well. These interrelated processes lay the foundations for deeply
entrenched structural violence that impedes women’s abilities to escape
DV. Burton (1997) argues that the roots of structural violence are policy
and administrative decisions that deprive individuals rights and limit their
access to basic human needs; the results stemming from a lack of attention
to the structural impact of gender in the formation of both the World
World Bank intervention

catalyzed resurgence of adat
Patrilineal
inheritance
Adat laws
Community/societal
perception that if marriage
fails it is because the woman
was not an adequate wife-
leads to shame and silence.
Economic
Preference for male Wife’s family
pressures
heirs makes it unwilling to support
to retain
difficult for women to Dynamics once she is married
perception
Masculinity keep sons because of husband because she ‘belongs’ Femininity
of
tied to husband’s family will abusing to her husband’s tied to ‘traditional
ownership. try to retain custody. wife. home/ is his family’s service peace
financial responsibility:
Economic dependence loving’
stems in part because
on husband: culture to
the daughter could
responsibilities for attract
not inherit familial
childcare and ritual tasks tourism.
land.
encumbers work outside
of home.
Obligation for wife
to serve husband’s
family
Mores about social

life institutionalized
by adat.
Vestiges of colonialism: Balinese

woman as sweet, quiet and compliant
(not advocating in court) is part of the
“culture”.
Fig. 1. Cheldelin and Lucas’s Nestled Framework: Highlights the Structural

Constraints on Individual Level Outcomes of the 2010 Reforms.
Bank’s post-conflict intervention and the 2010 reforms clearly contributed

to the propagation of social institutions that undermined women’s access
to physical well-being, social capital, and economic security. The structures
surrounding the DV happening within the home were further exacerbated
by the structural violence imposed through social institutions that had his-
torically subjugated women, such as patrilineal inheritance and marital cus-
toms that positioned women in nondominant positions of power within
familial systems. Moreover, the World Bank’s investment had further rein-
forced pressures on women’s identity and orientation within society that
were already being constrained by the pressures imposed by tourism
(Picard & Wood, 1997) and vestiges of colonialism that had given rise to
the myth of “traditional” Balinese harmony (Pollmann, 1990). The limited
scope of the 2010 reforms did not address these economic and cultural con-
straints, setting the stage for the backlash against women who attempted to
assert their legal rights granted by the 2010 reforms, as these women’s
actions challenge deeply entrenched social ideologies of gender.
Marginalization of Women Results in Backlash against Women

Who Leverage Reforms
The community outrage directed at women attempting to leverage the 2010

reforms to assert their rights violated gender ideologies, which in turn
undermined the legitimacy of social power structures that draw authority
through the subjugation of others. This complicated dynamic is highlighted
by Foucault (1978), who argues that societal power structures assert and
reinforce their power over individuals by accessing control of the body.
The corporal body is the site where engagement between individuals and
macro-level power structures and societal institutions takes place, resulting
in the cultivation of population that is compliant with the dictates of domi-
nant social norms.
In Bali, individuals viewed their own economic success on the success of
the overarching community’s ability to portray a perception of culture in
line with the dictates of cultural tourism (Hitchcock, 2001; Picard & Wood,
1997; Wood, 1980). Women petitioning for redress from DV directly chal-
lenged the carefully cultivated images of docile, happy women performing
rituals. These petitions both undermined the legitimacy of Bali’s “tradition-
ally peaceful” social order, and also threatened the gendered division of
labor that ensured the upkeep of family temples. Women’s ritual labor in
the production of offerings, maintenance of family temples and perfor-
mances of ceremonies within the family compound and community temples
are central to the appeal of cultural tourism.
Elizabeth Gilbert’s juggernaut memoir Eat Pray Love (2006) captures the
vital role the maintenance of these structures play in Bali’s economy and
highlighting the cultural ubiquity of these constructions. She says in her
opening remarks on her time in Bali that, “the whole place has arranged
itself to help you, the Westerner with the credit cards. English is spoken
here widely and happily … everyone is desperate to help you, desperate for
work” (2006, p. 216). She continues highlighting the role culture plays in
tourism, saying of the village where she is staying that, “Ubud has long
been considered the cultural hub of the island, the place where traditional
Balinese painting, dance, carving and religious ceremonies thrive … the
tourists who come to Ubud would prefer to see an ancient temple ceremony
than to drink a pina colada in the surf.” The centrality of maintaining this
image of tourism illuminates the community backlash against women

attempting to leverage the 2010 reforms as an example of Mbembe’s (2003)
concept of necropolitics. Individual community members’ responses further
reinforced women’s subjugation, reifying the very social structures the 2010
reforms aimed to help women transcend.
PEACEBUILDING FOR WHOM?

The dynamics highlighted by the paradigmatic Bali case are emblematic of
dominant contemporary paradigms guiding post-conflict reconstruction.
The oversights of the structural impacts of gender are consistent with
trends of international investments and corresponding measures aimed at
addressing unintended consequences that detrimentally impact women.
Calls for the involvement of women in the conceptualization and imple-
mentation of post-conflict security measures and economic empowerment
programs (World Bank, 2011) have been limited by frameworks that solicit
women’s participation in pre-configured roles that, while eschewing overtly
“male” language, limit women’s abilities to substantively contribute to con-
flict transformation (Bergeron, 2003). The narrow purview of “empower-
ment” measures that address only economic factors reify the very factors
the measures were designed to address.
In Bali, this limited conception of “empowerment” led to the creation of
legal reforms that did nothing to address gender ideologies that conflate
women’s identities with service to family and upkeep of culture, nor to
address the economic systems that had placed further pressure on indivi-
duals to maintain these gender ideologies. Instead, the measures resulted in
further entrenching systems of social power that privilege traditional
elites in this case, men consistent with Pugh’s assertion that the reason
little scrutiny has been directed toward the role of peacekeeping and even
humanitarian efforts in sustaining power structures that reinforce the privi-
leges of the elite and of powerful states is due to the “framework of liberal
imperialism” underlying “efforts to control or isolate unruly parts of the
world” (2004, p. 39). International interventions have clung to positions of
ostensible “neutrality” that, when scrutinized, in fact privilege the status
quo politick real by not ensuring infrastructure or means for nondominant
groups’ needs to be addressed through the peacemaking process.
Attention to structural gender in policy making must be undergirded by
larger questions of inclusion and power. Who is setting the agenda in state
and/or peacebuilding? Whose voices are included and excluded from the
process of setting the peacebuilding agenda? What factors outside of local
interests are contributing positively or negatively to state and/or
peacebuilding efforts, especially pressures imposed by funders? Failure to
grapple with these questions of power and privilege bodes poorly for pro-
spects of greater inclusion in societies where women have historically been
marginalized from social power.
TOWARD A MORE EMPOWERED TOMORROW
Incorporating an analysis of the ways gender as a social structure (Martin,

2004) influences the formation and functioning of social institutions
(Lorber, 1994; Martin, 2004; Risman, 2004) into policy development holds
promise for highlighting the ways policies may reinforce structurally violent
social institutions. This would alert policy makers to potential problems
before the policies are implemented, reducing the potential for unintended
consequences that disproportionally impact women that would necessitate
further intervention to “clean up” after implementing a policy that further
ensnares women in structurally violent intuitions. Assessing the ways struc-
tural gender influences the formation and function of social institutions will
increase the effectiveness of policies aimed at assisting countries transition-
ing from a collapse in central governance structures and programs designed
to empower women in the midst of these transitions. Such assessments in
policy development have the potential for substantively grappling with his-
torical sources of structural violence. This expanded policy development
framework would finally hold the potential for transforming social institu-
tions that subjugate women in private life and relegate them to impotent
roles in macro-level social institutions, such as the economy and juridical-
political institutions, paving the road toward a tomorrow in which women
are no longer limited by gender ideologies that minimalize their rights to
safety and a secure future.
NOTES
1. I follow the example of Sciortino and Smyth and use the term “domestic vio-
lence” throughout to mean “physical or psychological assault within the
couple … by males against their female partners” (2002, p. 95). My choice to use
this term definition, rather than the broader term “intimate partner violence,” which
encompasses violence between GLBTQ couples and heterosexual women who phy-
sically assault their male partners, reflects my specific attention to women’s abuse
by men within intimate partnerships, as I am specifically arguing that DV is both an
overt manifestation of gender ideologies that position women in marginalized social
roles vis-à-vis men.
2. Johnson and Ferraro (2000) offer an excellent and exhaustive literature review
tracing the genesis of this argument. Dobash and Dobash (1979) also extensively
address the evolution of feminist theories related to DV.
3. See, for example, Barrow (2010), Bergeron (2003), Cheldelin and Eliatamby
(2011), and Shepard (2008).
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My sincere thanks to Leslie Dwyer for the guidance and time you poured
into this project, for your dedicated mentorship, and for generously open-
ing your home to me while I conducted my fieldwork. This final written
work would not exist without the support of my partner, William Mount,
as well as the intellectual support of Shannon Davis at the George Mason
University Department of Sociology, Sandra Cheldelin at the George
Mason School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, and Chris Swader at
the Higher School of Economics, Moscow; thank you to you all!
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RESISTING GENDERED
RELIGIOUS NATIONALISM:
THE CASE OF RELIGIOUS-BASED
VIOLENCE IN GUJARAT, INDIA
Mangala Subramaniam
ABSTRACT
Purpose Resistances of Nongovernmental Organizations (NGO) to

the construction of gendered religious nationalism are addressed. The
implications of such resistances and redefinitions of gendered religious
nationalism for the women’s movement in India and transnationally are
also assessed.
Design/methodology/approach Semi-structured interviews with lea-
ders and/or key informants of purposively selected organizations in the
state of Gujarat serve as the primary data for the chapter. Using a
grounded theory approach, the study is a qualitative analysis of the inter-
views and a reading of major published documents, unpublished reports,
and internal reports of the NGOs that were made available.
Findings The analysis discerns three main frames deployed by NGOs
in resisting attempts by the state to construct nationalism: Communal

ISSN: 1529-2126/doi:10.1108/S1529-21262014000018B007
73
74 MANGALA SUBRAMANIAM
Harmony (Not Communal Violence), “Endangered” Woman and

Gender Mainstreaming. The “communal harmony, not communal
violence” frame views women as an ungendered part of their communities.
Although women are made central to the religious violence and struggle,
they are viewed as passive persons without rights. This passive frame is
the “endangered woman” frame. But women’s groups and NGOs addres-
sing the violence have actively sought to emphasize the gender aspect
of all formal and informal political activities. This is the “gender main-
streaming” frame. However, the mere visibility of women in political
discourse should not be confused with the feminist framing of women’s
rights or mainstreaming women’s issues.
Originality/value The analysis brings an organizational agency
perspective to consider resistance to the gendered basis of the violence
perpetrated and embedded in nationalism.
Keywords: Gender; religion; nationalism; violence; India
The state of Gujarat in India has witnessed religious-based violence since

India’s independence in 1947. In 2002, about six weeks of Hindu Muslim
riots began when a Muslim torched a train carrying Hindu nationalists
killing some of them. This led to a new wave of rioting that continued for
months. The majority of the victims were Muslims. Both Hindu and
Muslim women were at the center of this religious-based violence or com-
munalism. Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs) in the state actively
sought to address the violence by resisting and redefining gendered
communalism in an effort to protect women’s rights. In this chapter,
I draw from theories of gender and nationalism to examine the strategies
used by NGOs to resist and reconstruct the notion of communalism.
Nationalist discourse, typically drawing on socially constructed ideas of
masculinity and femininity, serves to shape a gendered participation in
nation building (Banerjee, 2003). Moreover, such nationalism is expressed
in terms of an exclusivist, religious language (Basu, 1995, 1998). In fact, the
nationalist movement despite, the engagement of women, privileges a hege-
monic nationalist cause over women’s emancipation (cf., Jayawardena,
1986). Writing in the early 1990s, Yuval-Davis (1993) stated that little work
had been done on systematically analyzing the interrelations between gen-
der relations and different dimensions of the nationalist project. Since then
scholarship on nationalism has turned attention to the politics of difference
of violence, and through shifts in cultures where questions of respect are

increasingly decided on the basis of who is able to protect whom.
In the midst of this violence, Irom Sharmila and other activists point to
the need to pay attention to the harm caused by normalization of these
cultures and structures of violence. They insist on nonviolence an ethical
discipline honed through suffering to challenge violence that is part of a
larger political economy of violence, pollution, and fragmentation of life.
Equally important, these activists show that while women’s bodies are the
sites of much of this violence, women and men can demonstrate different
ways in which societies can disengage from or, at least, not facilitate
the processes that routinize violence. Their protests show that under
regimes of routine violence women qua women’s bodies are invested with
vulnerabilities that is, both states and insurgents argue women need to
be protected as a primary reason for unleashing new violence. At the same
time, women’s bodies are treated as ultimate territories whose conquest
through sexual violence signals victories over groups who were unable
to protect “their women.” Summarizing the work of the activists in
Manipur, Mehrotra states, “women’s bodies, in this radical paradigm, are
not [for] others to protect, (t)hey are not objects of male gaze, or what is
more extreme, of male violation … . (r)ather, the body is a woman’s means
of expression of intelligence, anger, dissent, resistance, fearlessness”
(2009, p. 99).
These Manipuri activists highlighted how routinized violence can be
addressed within these interstices of social life. By drawing on their tradi-
tional cultural sources of power and respect, and their own strong, angry
bodies, they protest the shifts in ideologies and practices that make women
vulnerable to violence. Their activism highlights that the cumulative effect
of routine violence was both reducing women’s dominant status and
increasing their vulnerability to various forms of violence. Thus the women
brought their angry, older bodies, to resist violence by states, their armed
opponents, and the cultures of feminine vulnerability that were being
imposed upon them.5
Routine Violence and the Half-Widows of Kashmir
The facets of violence in public, in private, and in the interstices are not
only evident in Manipur. Based on her work on Kashmir, Angana
Chatterji (Chatterji, 2012, Ali, Bhatt, Chatterji, Mishra, & Roy, 2011)
points to other gendered aspects of such routine violence and how it seeps
approach is useful for exploring the connections between women and

nationalism, it does not explicitly consider how specific markers (such as
religion) utilized in constructions of nationalism by actors such as the state
and political parties are challenged by local groups such as NGOs.
Following Clark (1991) and Silliman and Noble (1998), I use the NGO
label to refer to voluntary organizations that are relatively independent of
the state and private business sectors and therefore are a part of civil
society, and in the broader context are manifestations of social movements.
Organizational challenges to using women’s bodies in the contestation and
construction of religious nationalism have been strategic particularly as
they encounter institutional power (such as from the state and right-wing
movements). As right-wing movements appropriate the language of victimi-
zation and empowerment of women, women’s groups are compelled to con-
sider mechanisms to redefine these constructions which are visible in their
responses to episodes of violence. Resistances, as noted by social movement
scholars, are also shaped by local and national opportunities and con-
straints depending on how events are provided meaning (or framed) by
groups or specific agencies, and what the outcome of such an interaction
could be (Gamson & Meyer, 1996).
In an increasingly globalizing world, movements have frequently relied
on transnational opportunities to frame their cause and seek other forms of
support (Keck & Sikkink, 1998; Moghadam, 2005). These include the insti-
tutional anchoring of women’s rights in internationally ratified texts such
as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
against Women (CEDAW) and the Beijing Platform of Action as part of
the transnational gender equity agenda. In addition, the endorsement
of the Vienna Declaration of Human Rights in 1993 was a major victory
for the international women’s movement, and marked a significant change
in discursive opportunity for women’s movement organizations to mobilize
directly against many forms of violence against women. Thus, feminist con-
struction of a new structure supportive of women’s rights provides oppor-
tunities for women in many situations of violence.
The conventional construction of women less as individuals than as the
property of men and the representatives of the national or ethnic group’s
honor is also part of a shared discourse of patriarchal privilege that is only
partly undermined by the new discourse of women’s rights. Yet the exis-
tence of the “women’s rights” frame as a transnational structure of discur-
sive opportunity still does not explain which groups of women in what
situations of violence will actually label their concerns in these terms. The
choice of a mobilizing discourse is strategic, not dictated by a structure of
opportunity, which is inherently full of contradictions. Mobilizing specific
Resisting Gendered Religious Nationalism 77
groups to resist dominant discourses is possible through a variety of avail-

able discursive opportunities. But the question here is how organizational
agency is instrumental in mobilizing which ideas, and why, to engage in the
reconstructions of nationalism by resisting the use of women as symbols.
Organizational agency can be central to resisting and redefining gendered
nationalism (or gendered communalism in the case of India) for articulat-
ing women’s rights. How NGOs redefine and construct religion and nation-
alism and why, is critical to understanding the temporal and spatial aspects
of the ways in which women and nationalism are intertwined.
GENDER, RELIGIOUS NATIONALISM, AND

NGOS IN INDIA
In this chapter, I examine NGO responses to the construction of a gen-

dered nationalism through a religious lens, the project of advocating
Hindutva and constructing the “Hindu Rashtra” (Hindu nation) with speci-
fic reference to the 2002 religious-based violence in Gujarat, India. The
idea of the Hindu Rashtra as advocated by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad
(VHP), the World Hindu Council/Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)
(Hindu religious groups), and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) (Indian
People’s Party) was utilized to gain political power in the state of Gujarat
and the federal level and served as their basis for policies and actions.1
“Hindutva really means, as understood by its advocates, conformity to the
idea that India has primarily been a Hindu rashtra. It is not a religious phi-
losophy or a social reform movement. … At the heart of the Hindutva
ideology is the idea that the good of a majority should also be seen as the
good for any minority, and that any assertion of minority rights is essen-
tially a threat and a challenge to the political authority of the majority”
(Devy, 2002, p. 263).
The 2002 episode of violence, based in the notion of Hindutva, involved
drawing on “communalism” (implying tension between religious commu-
nities as noted in Pandey, 2006). Communalism is rooted in India’s history
and typically used women as “tools” to highlight the differences between
communities.2 This is what I refer to as gendering nationalism. Women’s
bodies are used as tools by subjecting them to violence in the form of
assault and rape to establish power which continues as an ongoing process.
The use of women’s bodies to settle debates between national cultural
ideals and a nation’s present and future is complex because of the struggles
between state institutions, movement groups, and the media engaged in
into the interstices of social life. First, in areas which are declared or under-
stood to be security concerns, all struggles (and protests) can be framed as
“anti-national” or “suspicious” activity. People can be held without judicial
oversight, which in turn exacts significant gendered costs. Since the targets
of such violence and the constitution of armed protest groups are
primarily working-age males, in places like Kashmir there is a growing
category of “half-widows,” that is, women whose husbands have
disappeared either imprisoned or in armed groups making it nearly
impossible to get news of them. These half-widows and other working-age
women those who are responsible for the care of family members are
forced to shoulder heavier burdens of providing for disrupted families,
including seeking news of and or petitioning to hear about the fate of broth-
ers, husbands, uncles, and fathers. They have to do so in areas that remain
unsafe because of the presence of armed forces and protest or insurgent
groups. The ongoing imbalance between those who are unarmed and those
who use arms creates the situations where larger numbers of people are vul-
nerable to sexual violence. The “corporeality of militarized governance”
(Chatterji, 2012, p. 185) leads to prolonged suffering even as the sheer
scale and ongoing structures of violence become the “normal way of life.”
The activists and scholars who have been documenting these dissenting
voices and actions seek to halt the spread of such routine violence. Their
point is that without mechanisms to halt the routinization of escalated vio-
lence by states and by those who use arms to protest the actions of states,
such “normal” violence builds cultures of violence as people accept this as
a normal state of life. Thus, intimate violence within families is likely to go
unreported and unaddressed if there is a possibility of encountering more
violence from the representatives of the state. At the same time, reporting
violence by “one of our own” carries its own risks relative to armed groups
that claim to protect communities. Relatedly, such violence affects cultures:
more people are willing to accept such violence as normal, the cultural cur-
rency for dealing with all others, every day.
These implicit and explicit references to culture are important. These
activists and scholars are critical of the violent masculinities whether
these are enacted by states or armed challengers/insurgents, and irrespective
of who are part of the violence (contingent, males or females) and critical
of the ideologies, interactions and institutions that normalize them. Their
voices and visions converge with the academic voices and writings of Moon
(2005), Zarkov (2007), Purkayastha (2008), Sheppard (2008), Sutton (2010)
and others who have pointed to the routinization of violence by militaries.
Irom Sharmila and the other activists’ modes of protest are important. Just
1986, 1990). The nationalist project of the nineteenth century focused on

the separation of the home and the world for all women (Kumar, 1993).
By the 1940s, India’s independence from the British was in sight and the
women’s movement was absorbed into the struggle for independence.
With independence in 1947, gender inequalities, it was assumed, would be
set right. The nationalist feminist woman activist was seen both as a sym-
bol and a bulwark of women’s emancipation: the fact that the image of a
woman activist constructed in this period itself limited and restricted
women remained unquestioned. Though activist women themselves
did not mention it, nationalists saw a threat in women’s activism and
tried to restrict it (Kumar, 1993). The pre-independence period was char-
acterized by some ambivalence toward the notions of women’s rights.
Demands for parity with men were based in equality and sameness with-
out much attention to class or religion. This changed significantly after
independence.
India’s independence in 1947 involved the partition of the sub-continent
into two nations, India and Pakistan. While Pakistan was seen as essen-
tially a Muslim nation, India defined itself as being secular. The partition-
ing highlighted Hindu Muslim differences and the nationalist agenda
focused on defining Muslims as the “other” who did not belong in the
land of the Hindus. The partitioning itself was accompanied by violence
largely religious in character. Gender-based violence was central to this
initial major set of religious riots across towns and cities as women’s
bodies were used to highlight religious differences. Women’s organizations
confronted and engaged with victims of violence, with the religious fanati-
cism, and with divisions among women on the basis of religious commu-
nities during the period of partition. Women were victims of both groups,
Hindus and Muslims. Although the trauma finds little articulation in the
literature, the scale of the tragedy was enormous (exception is Butalia,
2000). The women’s movement, then aligned with the freedom movement,
clearly had to locate its work in a broader political struggle while under-
standing the specific impact of religious communalism on women
(Karat, 1997).
Exposing gendered violence began in the mid-1970s in India but escalated
toward the end of the decade. Even as questions of violence against women
have brought a new and significant focus to the women’s movement, other
issues have fragmented this new solidarity. The gravest challenges have
come from a revitalized and gendered communalism as illustrated by the
Shah Bano case and the dispute over the mosque at Ayodhya (Kumar,
1993; Subramaniam, 2006). The Shah Bano case is directly related to
the controversy of family law and personal law pertains to marriage,

divorce, property, and maintenance which is differentiated on the basis of
religion. Shah Bano, a Muslim, was divorced by her husband after roughly
a half-century of marriage. He gave her a small amount as maintenance for
about two years and then abruptly stopped. Her appeal to the local court
led to a discussion on the interpretation of the family law and protests by
feminists. These protests posed two main issues for the future. The first was
the difference in the understanding of secularism by feminists and the state.
While feminists subscribed to the classical view of separating religion and
politics, the state stance was that all religions had the “right to representa-
tion within the law and, indeed, had the right to make their own laws”
(Kumar, 1993, p. 171). The second issue was about representation or repre-
sentativeness. It was to address this issue that the Committee for the
Protection of the Rights of Muslim Women was set up. But the demands for
reform of personal law were viewed as not representing the real desires of
real Muslim women particularly in the arguments presented in the courts.
The pressure on Shah Bano led her to give up the right she had demanded
(Kumar, 1993). The state and political parties are directly implicated in the
gendering of religion.
Appropriating the rhetoric of the feminist movement of the 1980s, the
BJP has made violence against women its rallying call (for details see Basu,
1998; Sarkar, 1996; Sen, 2008). Sarkar (1996) observes that women in the
right-wing movement come into the streets and engage in violence only
when men determine their presence is useful. She also cautions against
valorizing the activism of these right-wing women. In her analysis of Hindu
nationalist paramilitary camps for women, Sehgal (2007) identifies two
intertwined discourses focusing on Hindu women’s victimization and
empowerment. She asserts that “There is a common nationalist trope in
which metaphors of the “nation-as-woman” and the “woman-as-nation”
reduce women to the “symbolic markers of the nation,” the “carriers of
tradition,” and transform women (as bodies and cultural repositories) into
the battleground of group struggles” (p. 172). This struggle is directly
related to violence in a broader scale with the “woman” at the center and is
related to India’s freedom movement and the partition that ensued.
The effects of partition find parallels in recent discourses on rise
of religious-based violence in India. All social movement activity in India
has been considerably influenced by the rise of the “Hindutva” forces in
the post-1980s among other trends such as the political restructuring and
emergence of caste-based parties (Subramaniam, 2006).
DATA AND METHODS
My data is drawn from field-work undertaken during the summer of 2004

in the state of Gujarat (western India) and I have followed developments in
the state since then. The data include major published documents such as
Report of the Public Civil Liberties Union (PUCL) of Vadodara (Gujarat),
alternative publications, and unpublished reports at local libraries and
internal reports of the NGOs that were made available to me (not available
to the public). These include Progress (internal report on initiatives);
Women’s Agenda (internal report on initiatives); and the Report of People’s
Union for Civil Liberties, Vadodara and Vadodara Shanti Abhiyan: At the
Receiving End: Women’s Experiences of Violence in Vadodara May 31,
2002.
Primary data comprises eight interviews conducted with leaders or repre-
sentatives of seven NGOs engaged in “reconciliation” efforts during and
after the 2002 riots in Gujarat (see Table 1). Three of the organizations
facilitated my visit to the neighborhoods and suburbs in which they are
working which provided some observational data as well. A snowball sam-
pling method was used to select the organizations. The fear and anxiety
among the leaders and staff of the organizations about the possibility of
being targets of right-wing groups even a few years after the incident made
it impossible to seek out a sampling frame or develop a systematic sampling
strategy. The data collection strategy adopted has to be understood within
the context of this study; the violence, the fear, and possible retaliation
against organizations working with the affected and particularly women.4
In fact, interviewees whose organizations have worked with both commu-
nities repeatedly detailed, in the interviews, the threats they continue to
face (cf., Huggins & Glebbeek, 2009).
Table 1. Profile of NGOs.

Scope of Operation Issues Addresseda
Women Development Minorities Involved in relief

(religious/tribal) work in past riots
International 1 1 0 0
Local (Gujarat state) 3 2 3 2
a
One organization may address more than one issue.
Interviews with leaders or key informants of NGOs (see Table 1) were

conducted in June July 2004 and took place at the homes or offices of the
interviewee. The interviews were conducted primarily in English and Hindi
interspersed with Gujarati (the local language). The author is familiar with
these languages. The average interview was two hours, but they ranged
from one hour to four hours. The identity of interviewees is confidential
and pseudonyms are therefore used for the interviewees and their organiza-
tions. Other details that may identify the interviewees are also deleted from
the quotes.
All the seven organizations covered in this study have been active in the
state of Gujarat between two and twenty years and work on development
issues, minority rights issues, gender and domestic violence issues, urban
slum development, women’s livelihood activities, support for Muslim
families, and legal and counseling support. All the NGOs, with the
exception of Women’s Cause, work with people of different class, caste, and
religious background. Women’s Cause has focused on providing support,
moral and legal, to lower and middle class Muslim women who often feel
threatened by the religious violence that has occurred across years in the
town in which they are located.
Of the seven NGOs, one is an international NGO (Health & Nutrition:
Women and Children) that is primarily involved in child and nutrition
programs as well as disaster relief in India. The remaining six NGOs are
Development Options; Challenging Domestic Violence; Women’s Agenda;
Progress; Peace and Calm, and Women’s Cause. Three of these six NGOs
were partners in a “communal harmony” initiative (post 2002 riots) of the
Health & Nutrition: Women and Children. Yet these NGOs did not identify
with any one single discourse or frame. This is attributable to the larger
concern of the gendering of nationalism that has been occurring in the state
since the 1960s (see below). The activists associated with the NGOs have
varied backgrounds in terms of their age and experience. As is typical of
those working with NGOs, all the activists have some college education
and so they write and publish. Most of them are closely aligned with the
women’s movement in India.
A “grounded theory” approach was used to determine dominant frames
in the interview data and corroborated using the internal reports and pub-
lished reports of the selected NGOs. I discuss below the details of the 2002
religious violence in Gujarat which serves as a basis for discerning the three
frames strategically deployed by the organizations to contest gendered
religious nationalism: the endangered woman; gender mainstreaming; and
communal harmony (not communal violence).
Frames in the Context of the Case
First, the state of Gujarat (western India) has a history of what is called
“communal,” that is religious-based violence. In Ahmedabad, the capital
city of the state of Gujarat, the first serious Hindu Muslim riots occurred
in 1969 as a result of a local dispute over a religious procession; they were
followed by more violence in subsequent years. Gujarat was then relatively
peaceful from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s (barring some minor inci-
dents). Then, there were riots in 1992 connected to the destruction of the
Babri Masjid mosque in Ayodhya in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh,
followed by the six weeks of Hindu Muslim riots in the spring of 2002
that left more than a thousand people dead and a hundred thousand in
makeshift shelters. The latter riots began when a Muslim mob torched a
coach of a train carrying sloganeering Hindu nationalists (referred to as the
Kar Sevaks) in the town of Godhra, killing 59 of them (see Varadarajan,
2002 for details). A wave of retaliatory rioting rolled over Gujarat; the
overwhelming majority of the riots’ victims were Muslims. Unlike earlier
riots that ended as abruptly as they began, the bloodletting in Gujarat did
not cease for weeks. Daily instances of murder, looting, and arson, contin-
ued for months. The federal and state governments, both run by the Hindu
nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), were slow to act against Hindu
retaliation. While the national parliament debated the dismissal of the
Gujarat government for failing to restore the rule of law, reports of sexual
violence against women emerged. The leader of one NGO (Progress)
covered in this study noted that “these riots [2002] were entirely different,
differently engineered and took place differently. So thereafter, it was
beyond comprehension for some time that why should they have happened
and whatever.”
Second, this violence has to be placed in the national context. The past
decade has seen the Hindu nationalist movement become a powerful cluster
of political and cultural organizations with growing respectability in con-
temporary society (see for instance, Bacchetta, 1996; Basu, 1993, 1998;
Butalia, 2001; Hansen, 1999; Jaffrelot, 1996; Jeffery & Basu, 1998; Sarkar,
1996; and Sarkar & Butalia, 1995). The growth of Hindu nationalism has
been polarizing, producing both an increasing consciousness of the Hindu
identity and severe marginalizing of minorities, especially Muslims. The
new cycle of violence thus spawned is framed in India as being “commu-
nal” rather than religious, with each religion being thus defined as consti-
tuting a separate “community.” This “communal violence” frame does not
see women as especially significant but only as an ungendered part of their
own communities (discussed below as the frame of “communal harmony,

not communal violence”). This in no way implies that women are not cen-
tral to the conflict between the two groups or communities, Hindus and
Muslims. In fact, women are important signifiers of differences between the
two groups. The framing of the violence between them, Hindus and
Muslims, therefore also involves the protection of women which is an
important aspect of the discursive struggle around interpreting and respond-
ing to this violence. I call this frame the “endangered woman” frame. Rather
than emphasizing women as persons with rights, this passive frame situates
women as representatives of their communities on the fault line of the
violence which is then played out over and through their bodies.
Third, these discourses also relate to the mobilization of women against
violence, and in relation to class, caste, and the party system. Both the dis-
course of “communal violence” and the frame of “the endangered woman”
invoke historical resonance with the religious violence that immediately
followed partition and the formation of India and Pakistan as two separate
nations in 1947. In the contemporary context, political parties in India also
frame the violence, primarily as gender-neutral. Here the issues of class
and caste are best institutionalized and expressed in party platforms that
provide an opportunity structure for talking about violence in these terms.
Both the rise of the BJP and associated “Hindutva” forces in the post-
1980s has resulted in framing nationalism around religion by specifically
referencing the “other” as across the national northern border (Pakistan
and terrorism) and in that sense drawing on the historical notion of
communalism without referring to it as such. There is certainly a concern
about the effects of these developments on the women’s movement as it
now covers a complicated mix of women playing “public roles” (Forbes,
1996, p. 252). Women’s movement groups actively sponsor a “gender main-
streaming” frame drawing attention to the need for considering the gender
dimension of all political activities and policies. This frame is used by the
organizations to emphasize the gender dimension in all action. Each of the
three identified frames is discussed below.
RECONSTRUCTING GENDERED RELIGIOUS

NATIONALISM BY ORGANIZATIONS
Although two NGOs in the sample had engaged in relief activities in past
riots; none of the organizations or activists had worked locally in long-term
rehabilitation activities after religious riots until 2002. As the leader of

Development Options puts it, “we were paralyzed as we had not encountered
violence in such scale … it took us some time to think about how to
respond.” In a similar vein, the leader of Progress reminisced as follows.
Now, this communal situation that happened, we in a way clearly … something hap-
pened, in that many people suffered losses, some others died, whatever happened, then
for you to go there for relief, for rehabilitation work is a different issue. But to continue
to work on that issue is a different matter. Because that which is different; to be
approached/addressed differently has the organization thought about that, does the
organization have a sense of working on that issue? Can the people in the organization
understand the issue and are they prepared to take it forward or not, whether they have
the understanding or not, and the complete point is not like let us make a house for
them; it is not about getting them water, or getting them grains [food], or working on
natural resources; that is not the issue. In this instance, we have to work with humans
[with people] and we have to work with their sadness and pain. So, whatever program
happened and whatever the implications of that, the organization first sat down and
thought whether we are ready [prepared] for this? Up to where can we take this? And
whatever is happening has historical reasons so what are the historical reasons and
do we know about that? There are international implications too for this, and what or
how do we understand that? Because to do the work, a leader doesn’t have to go and
work in the field, yeah, it is the people we have who have to go and work. And they
have to keep this issue separate and work. So, the first bit of work we did was to look
at our own team of people: do they understand this issue; are they agreeable to work
on this or not, or what?
Constructions of gendered nationalism that define social problems as

such are both structures of opportunity that organizations seize to make
their concerns resonate with others and strategic claims that organizations
make when they attempt to create such resonance. Organizations such as
women’s groups seek to set agendas by bringing new or greater attention to
nationalist projects such as that of the BJP that have implications for
women’s rights. My analyses focus on organizations engaged in the three
main strategic constructions. I begin with a discussion of the communal
harmony frame.
Communal Harmony (not Communal Violence)
At the local level, religion remains at the center of framing of activities in

the interest of promoting communal harmony. This frame, communal har-
mony, differs from the “endangered woman” frame as it does not situate
women in a “community” and unlike the mainstreaming frame it focuses
on just the issues where women are victims rather than agents. Essentially
the passive frame in its universalizing form was deployed to seek communal
harmony and not communal violence.
While there was an acknowledgment of the sexual violence against
women, the NGOs did not frame their activities around that issue. They
believed that the fragile nature of communal relations was not conducive to
such an approach; and their focus instead should be on “protection.” This
is in spite of the framing of women’s rights as “right to life free of violence
for women” actively championed by Women’s Agenda in working against
domestic violence in Gujarat and thus projecting a difference between
women as women and women as bearers of “culture.” In fact, leaders of
Women’s Agenda and Women’s Cause argued for focusing on women from
both religious communities to enable the process of recognizing the com-
monalities rather than the differences based on religion.
Locally, several NGOs in the state responded promptly to the violence
by organizing relief activities and facilitating the distribution of basic neces-
sities such as food and water. The rehabilitation activities followed the
relief work. During this phase, Health & Nutrition: Women and Children
formulated a “communal harmony” project aimed at activities for reconci-
liation between the two religious groups, Hindus and Muslims, with
emphasis on restructuring livelihoods, the rebuilding of the economy, and
capacity building (including sensitizing programs and training programs
for several groups of individuals). Two other international NGOs partici-
pated in relief activities immediately following the violence but did not pro-
pose or initiate any long-term project or program. The three-year program
of the Health & Nutrition: Women and Children was created with funds
from external agencies (other national governments) as this particular pro-
ject differed from other activities of the Health & Nutrition: Women and
Children in several parts of India. This program involved partnerships with
eight NGOs across the state with the Health & Nutrition: Women and
Children as the coordinator and resource provider.5 The program was flex-
ible in that each NGO presented a proposal of activities that would fit in
with the “communal harmony” frame. Neither the predominant activity of
the NGO nor the time span for which they had been active influenced the
Health & Nutrition: Women and Children’s choice of partners.
Emphasizing the need to provide support to all groups of people, (that is
not gendered per se but inclusive) the Health & Nutrition: Women and
Children leader summarized their intent as follows: “we were interested in
helping everyone affected by the riots; women, men, and children.”
Moreover, some of the support was through specific economic initiatives to
open avenues for both communities to earn even at a minimum level. “For
example, we have this livelihood restoration; so it is also not again only to

the Muslim community; it is for both and it is very important to have both;
because both were affected actually, it is not true to say that only the
Muslim community that was affected; both were affected,” said the leader
of Health & Nutrition: Women and Children.
Health & Nutrition: Women and Children and its NGO partners defined
“communal” harmony as rebuilding social relations among religious
groups. This specific aim was an issue that organizations had to also
address among their own volunteers and employees. As the leader of
Development Options put it, “we had to seek volunteers from our own
NGO only three people (out of over 50) offered to work for relief and
rehabilitation, that is be involved in the project.” NGO partners devised
unique means of building “harmony.” Development Options prompted an
urban slum community, predominantly Muslim, to work on basic needs
(water, roads, and other infrastructure) in an effort to build confidence
within the community to act for change. This process of building involved
input from a neighboring slum, predominantly Hindu, where such projects
had already been initiated. Working with the urban and rural poor,
Women’s Agenda followed a similar strategy but focused on workshops for
Hindu and Muslim women (initially separately and then together) to dis-
cuss the similarities in the conditions of their lives first by pointing to every-
one being “human.”
For the harmony initiative, our pattern of working was to talk to individuals; that is to
talk to individuals among the Hindus and among the Muslims separately. And then we
used to try to take them to a point a … first, on the first day, we would let them talk
and say whatever is on their mind. For instance, the Hindus would say that the
Muslims are bad and they should be beaten up and whatever happened was right. And
Muslims said they [the Hindus] are like that, they don’t let us live; meaning their inner
thoughts were being revealed. On the second day or on the evening of the first day we
steered them towards the following: what if you don’t think of yourself as a Hindu or
as a Muslim but if you think of yourself only as insaan (meaning a “human being”),
then what difference would it make?
This initial attempt at focusing on being human irrespective of religious

affiliation was further reinforced by calling attention to setting aside super-
ficial differences.
And on the second day we focused on what is the religion for someone who is humane.
She is a Hindu woman or she is a Muslim woman; what about both of their feelings, is
there a difference in their feelings? Even whether there is or there isn’t such a difference?
Merely a difference in religion is on the “outside”/“superficial,” someone who wears a
burkha (veiled and completely covered) versus someone who is in purdah (covering of
their war and peace-keeping operations military contractors that fight

wars and provide private security, NGOs that deliver humanitarian aid
as contractors, and various subcontractors that provide a range of other
services we normally associated with governments truly represent an
invisible but momentous shift in who is responsible for these tasks. In a dis-
cussion of violence, this shift has two significant implications. First,
resources apportioned for maintaining violent structures are diverted from
tasks of sustaining human security: life, food, shelter, health, education,
and needs for peace (Dumas, 2011). Second, as these tasks of controlling
people are privatized, the legal edifices in any country (or at the interna-
tional level) that are supposed to protect citizens from excessive violence
are significantly weakened if contractors who are held to the same
standards as government entities are in charge of violence.
Thus, these activist actions draw our attention to the organization of
violence, and importantly the ways in which cultures shift, without active
intervention, to become cultures which facilitate routine violence.
TURNING THE GAZE ON THE UNITED STATES
To what extent do these insights apply to developed countries? A brief

discussion of some conditions in the United States illustrates the global
nature of this phenomenon.
Even though it is rarely the focus of dominant feminist discussions of vio-
lence in the United States, the militarized border region between the United
States and Mexico offers a good parallel to the conditions in Manipur,
India. As the United States entered another period of escalated political
scrutiny of immigrants, amidst the rhetoric about too many immigrants
who are negatively affecting the nation, and constant political vilification of
“illegal immigrants,” the country has further enhanced the securitization of
the border with Mexico. As the activists of the Border Action Network
(BAN) in the United States (Kil, Allen, & Hammer, 2011) have pointed out,
since 1994, when the federal government in the United States embarked on
a prevention through deterrence policy, walls, towers, a rapidly increasing
number of border protection agents, and a vast network of surveillance
technologies maintain the boundary between the two countries. Along
with this buildup of armed presence in the region, legally armed vigilante
groups groups that use a variety of guns that are legal to own in the
United States roam the border areas, looking for “Mexicans.”
First, Health & Nutrition: Women and Children had an agreement with
the federal government of India for several other initiatives/interventions
across various states. They relied on resources from the state and its inter-
national affiliates. To maintain their own interests and the relationship
with the government, Health & Nutrition: Women and Children was unlikely
to be inclined to formulate a rights-based project or a minority related pro-
ject. Moreover, they had no past experience working on responses to com-
munal violence. Second, the Gujarat state government was less than
responsive to attempts at reconciliation and rehabilitation of affected
Muslims, and the threats (such as obscene phone calls and death threats)
that local NGOs were already receiving for providing aid and assistance.
Moreover Health & Nutrition: Women and Children had raised resources
close to 2 million US $ from the developed world that the leader noted was
itself “difficult to obtain” for this project.
In spite of the NGOs directing efforts at reconciliation combining the
theme of harmony and peace to address differences based on religion as set
out by the donor, they were not deterred from also drawing on a frame for
protecting the women of both religious groups.
“Endangered” Woman
An alternative feminist approach has been to emphasize the need for

protection of women who become objects in the use of violence. The frame
“endangered woman” was drawn upon in initiatives to collect facts/
evidence of violence against women as well as for calling for state action.
Examples include the fact finding teams of activists and organizations such
as, Awaaz-e-Niswaan and the Forum against Oppression of Women, Sahmat,
AIDWA, Citizen’s Initiative, PUCL/Shanti Abhiyan, compilation of testi-
mony such as that attempted by International Initiative for Justice in
Gujarat (IIJG), and documentary films such as Final Solution and Evil
Stalks the Land.6
The focus on sexual violence draws attention to the objectification of
women in the violence as the burden of representation of women of a parti-
cular religious groups’ identity which has also brought about the construc-
tion of women as the bearers of the honor of that particular religious
group. Representations by organizations to the state to end the violence
against women appear to seek protection of the endangered woman rather
than for the empowerment of women as subjects with rights, and an inter-
est in all issues as being women’s issues as the gender mainstreaming frame
would. This abstract women’s rights frame in its universalizing form does
not attend to differences in who is affected by caste and/or religion. In fact,
safety and security of women is central to efforts of civil society groups to
protect women. The report of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties
(PUCL), Vadodara and Vadodara Shanti Abhayan (2002) describes this
eloquently.
Concerns over safety and security have reshaped their [women’s] daily lives even as they
participate in the creation of such an environment [of fear]. Affluent Hindu women rou-
tinely stayed up all night with the men in middle/upper class housing societies for fear
of Muslim attacks, albeit in traditional gender roles, providing tea and snacks at regular
intervals to the local vigilante women. Others who have not gone along with the domi-
nant outlook, have been threatened/abused for helping Muslims or even professing
secular ideology. (p. 6)
This aspect, safety and protection, was also articulated by women who
were interviewed by the PUCL as part of their fact finding mission.
“Above all women ask for safety and justice. NB, a social worker [of a
neighborhood] told PUCL members that she had told the Commissioner of
Police, “you have to protect us … There is no protection” (p. 8).
Remaining safe and protected as a priority included avoiding crossing of
“borders.” Borders were defined by the communities and neighborhoods as
the riots had divided Hindus and Muslims. “Persons of one community did
not frequent roads in localities which were populated by “the other” com-
munity. There was no mixing though the members know one another well”
(internal report of Women’s Agenda). “The communlisation of neighbor-
hood spaces has also hit women very hard. They live in constant anxiety
that children of livestock will cross the border” notes the PUCL 2002
report (p. 15). This affects peoples’ access to civic amenities such as medical
facilities, water and so on. This notion of the “border” was confronted by
Hindu and Muslim women at a joint workshop organized by Women’s
Agenda. The leader of Women’s Agenda narrated the following.
A young woman, S … by name had attended an exclusive workshop for Hindus, that
was somewhere near her home. She would look out and see women were coming walk-
ing. And, one day she was getting dressed and ready, so the mother-in-law asked,
“where are you going?” to a workshop, I’m going to that workshop do you remember;
I’m going there. But there is nobody there. I saw it. She said, no, no, no; I’m going
across the border. How can you? They’ll kill you. She said, no, no these people are
good, don’t worry. It is okay. The mother-in-law said, no, I can’t allow you to go there;
impossible, it is risky; you can’t go that far. So the younger woman said, how about
you joining me? If you think it is okay, we’ll come back after an hour or so, and if you
think it is not okay, we’ll both come back. She said, yes, yes, and the elderly woman
said okay; and they both came. That was in our B [name of neighborhood] center. And
this is about her; the first lane on the left. So, after 40 50 minutes, the elderly woman
said, bye, bye, and left; she was comfortable. This is how the concept of border was
conquered in a sense.
NGOs and women’s groups have relied on the social category of religion
as the salient identity for organizing considering the animosity left behind
by the riots. But these attempts could also indirectly reinforce the notion of
women as the bearers of “culture,” in this case, religion. Moreover, the
deployment of the frame of the endangered woman in the context of com-
munal violence coincides with the institutionalized ideology of the state
(“Hindutva”) about the need for protection of Hindu women in particular.
Deployment of this passive frame did not deter the NGOs from using a
frame to integrate gender into politics.
Gender Mainstreaming
The international context offers Indian women’s organizations a “gender

mainstreaming” frame which emphasizes the need for examining the gender
dimension in all political activities and policies, particularly the impacts on
women. These transnational movement ties also increase the availability of
the transnational women’s rights as human rights frame, but do not neces-
sarily make it effective in either the local or national context in which these
groups work.
We said that every issue is women’s issue. During communal riots women are most
affected persons whether they are as housewives, or as daily wagers, as tailors or
vegetable vendors, or whatever. And they are affected by all these things. And how can
we keep quiet? (TS)
As a partner in an organization working with women in the aftermath

of the communal violence in Gujarat, TS from Women’s Cause speaks to
the need for efforts by small community-based organizations to actively
work with Muslim women and young girls for change. The reference to “all
issues are women’s issues” by TS coincides with the gender mainstreaming
discourse.
The broader notion of mainstreaming was also evident in the ways
NGOs consciously worked with all groups of people without considering
what caste or tribe they belonged to. The representative of Progress noted,
“We had never thought this way that we’ll work only with Harijans or
dalits or we’ll work only with this coolie Patels, or we’ll not work with the
Darbar. That way we had not thought; and we had also not practiced
that.”7 In addition, violence whether in the home or the community was a

woman’s issue. Women’s Agenda made this link in its initiatives and their
work following the violence.
We work with women. So, this is the pattern we followed. Through this committee we
went to several neighborhoods; there were 40. That made it easy for us because then a
woman can talk with others in her neighborhood. She would organize a meeting; even a
small one in her home, call or include women neighbors, about 20 25 of them. And
our intent was to promote such meetings across neighborhoods. First, we would not
talk about harmony but instead begin talking about helping; or about violence.
The issue of “violence” provides a platform easily because we can talk about it as
follows: if a Hindu husband drinks and hits his wife; then that woman; her feelings,
would it be different from that of a Muslim woman? So this is the platform; this issue
has been significant because our other objectives are all connected such as drinking,
facilities, family facilities being reduced, income being reduced, and all these objectives
are ours.
Making women central to community organizing efforts was also a part

of the gender mainstreaming agenda. The leader of Health & Nutrition:
Women and Children argued that “women have to be taught, they must
learn how to organize the communities; they must learn to leverage
resources from the government.”
In the course of the 2002 violence, women (Hindus and Muslim) were
significant players in aiding and assisting others. The violence and the con-
sequences of the violence was a gender issue. This is recorded, with specific
examples, in the report of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL),
Vadodara and Vadodara Shanti Abhayan (2002).
Many women have taken the lead in protecting themselves and their families. … The
situation has also forced women to collectivise. … Despite enormous pressures, women
have protected their neighbors, menfolk and others in vulnerable and sensitive areas of
the city. In Kasamala Kabristan, Muslim women looked after their Hindu neighbors
and provided them food during the curfew days. Women have also been organising
relief for those in camps or sheltering with families. (p. 16)
Organizations have worked to provide spaces for women to narrate,

share, and recognize the impacts of the violence on women of both commu-
nities. The “inclusive” workshops organized by Women’s Agenda were
primarily initiatives to discuss the “oneness of participants as women”
(p. 12). An internal report of Women’s Agenda notes that the participants
were asked to narrate their experiences which in turn would make “women
of both communities aware of the suffering and would lead them to
conclude that women were worst sufferers” (p. 12).
In sum, the organizations did not face the violence against women ques-
tion directly. Their choice of frame of “communal harmony” was, no
doubt, in opposition to “communal violence” to ensure implementing their
project without specific reference to the violation of the rights of the minor-
ity or the sexual violence against women. However, in contrast to the gov-
ernment’s mixed signals of calls for harmony versus the power for the
majority (in line with the Hindutva ideology) NGOs have actively engaged
both communities in reconciliation efforts.
CONCLUSION
This chapter illustrates three main themes. First, in terms of theory, it

draws attention to the ways in which organizations strategically contest the
constructions of gendered religious nationalism. Second, it shows that in
making strategic choices, local organizations drew on passive (endangered
woman) as well as active frames (gender mainstreaming) but failed to spon-
sor the “women’s rights’ frame” vigorously utilized at the global level by
international women’s groups/international women’s movement. Third, it
demonstrates that the actions of local organizations in Gujarat are also
connected to the ongoing concerns about tensions and fractures around
class, caste, and religion within the broader Indian women’s movement.
At the local level, organizations have retained the “endangered woman”
frame in the context of communal harmony as well as communal violence
during and after the Godhra tragedy and its aftermath. This endangered
woman frame is directly related to the cultural meanings of honor as
related to gender which is central to the considerations of communalism
particularly the use of women’s bodies to highlight differences between the
communities (religious groups). However, this deliberate and tactical choice
is a mechanism for seeking action from and accountability of state institu-
tions without resorting to aggressive politics targeting the state. The con-
straints emerging from the political context surrounding the violence and
its aftermath were a deterrent to these progressive organizations’ direct
action. The discursive opportunity at the state and national level was cer-
tainly constructed around the “anti-nationalist” as the “other” (the minor-
ity). This enables the construction of nationalism that favors the centrality
of religion or the communal; a phrase that has historical connotations and
resonates at the local and national level in India. I suggest that such defin-
ing of the “other” reinforced the larger agenda of the BJP and its affiliates
in the construction of nationalism as essentially “Hindu,” communal and

gendered. Moreover, this emphasis may have limited the space for addres-
sing the issue of violence against women in Gujarat as the violation of
women’s rights as human rights to the center of discussions.
Like all social movements, the movement for women’s rights is dynamic,
historical, and hardly immune to disputes and disagreements over the
appropriate strategies, objectives, and agendas. Moreover, despite their
many accomplishments, advocates still confront numerous obstacles, parti-
cularly in what is often encompassed within “culture.” At least two major
obstacles confronted are the open-ended adoption of covenants and plat-
forms of action and the commitment of implementing institutions. The
open-ended adoption of the “rights” frame while recognizing and respecting
national and local differences in agendas, priorities, and practices, provides
a scope for framing of the women’s agenda within the dominant discourse.
This borrowing and co-opting of the transnational discourse has a greater
likelihood of occurring when state discourse is predominant. Moreover,
international instruments dealing with women have weaker implementation
obligations and procedures as far as state institutions are concerned. The
interpretation and implementation of such international instruments is con-
founded as the lines between political party ideology and constitutional
obligations are blurred.
In the case of the Gujarat violence, the NGOs at the local level did not
actively sponsor a “women’s rights” frame that is often deployed at the glo-
bal level by international women’s groups. The analyses of the local level
activism indicate that locally available frames that make women visible are
varied. The three important frames deployed locally, “gender mainstream-
ing,” “endangered woman,” and communal harmony (not communal vio-
lence), are preferred but have different consequences for different groups of
women. The discourse at the local and national level focused on communal
harmony and communal violence and framed women as “endangered”
members of the religious communities first and as women later if at all.
Both in trying to end the violence (communal harmony) and advocating
for one side to attack the other (communal violence), women were instru-
mentalized as victims to be protected rather than empowered as subjects
with rights. Moreover, the fact that rape is perceived as violating the honor
of men and not the integrity of women is problematic in and of itself.
Thus, the mere visibility of women in political discourse should not be con-
fused with the feminist framing of women’s rights or mainstreaming
women’s issues; and the objectification of women (for harmony or violence)
can “borrow” profitably from the resonance that the transnational
discourse gives to talking about women without actually connecting to the

themes expressed there.
These analyses also draw attention to the need for critically examining
the commonality in women’s oppression as a fundamental basis for unity in
struggles because it does not address reality. The inability to accommodate
intersecting systems of power relations along class, caste, ethnicity, and
religion, in organization building has created tensions and divisions. In the
post-1980s, these differences have been further heightened by the shifts in
political power at the national level (Subramaniam, 2006). The democrati-
cally elected political leadership at the federal level of the state in the post-
1980s represented a Hindu ideology, a Hindu nationalism that is troubling
for the women’s movement which was somewhat new for contemporary
activists (Butalia, 2003 as cited in Subramaniam, 2006). Moreover, as
mentioned above, the waves of right-wing movement activists have also
appropriated the language of gender and empowerment in a variety of
ways. These developments, particularly the differences have resulted in
variations in understanding gendered communalism.
NOTES
1. The BJP was created in 1980 and is one of the two major national political
parties in India. Its constituency is strengthened by the broad umbrella of the
Hindu nationalist organizations, informally known as the Sangh Parivar (League of
Indian nationalist organizations) which includes the VHP and the RSS. The ideolo-
gical rallying cry of the BJP is “Hindutva.”
2. The religious-based violence across cities and towns over the years is rooted in
India’s history. My data and analysis focus explicitly on NGOs responses to the
2002 episode of violence.
3. In social movement theory, a frame is an “interpretive schemata that simplifies
and condenses the world out there by selectively punctuating and encoding objects,
situations, events, experiences, and sequences of actions within one’s present or past
environment” (Snow & Benford, 1992, p.137). A frame (a noun and a product) can
be seen as a story line (Gamson & Wolfsfeld, 1993, p. 117), while framing (a verb
and a process) is the active process of creating the story line.
4. The author herself feared retaliation toward family and friends residing in the
state as well as the organizations (if identified) covered in the study and so held the
manuscript back for a while.
5. Some NGOs that were involved in the initiation of the program of Health &
Nutrition: Women and Children did not ultimately participate in the long-term pro-
gram. My probing resulted in some vague answers, such as, “the NGO wanted to
pursue structural issues that Health & Nutrition: Women and Children did not want
to consider,” or “fear of threats” led to reconsideration to participate” and so on.
6. The IIJG’s report titled, “Threatened Existence A Feminist Analysis Of The

Genocide In Gujarat,” has been compiled by an international panel comprising fem-
inist jurists, activists, lawyers, writers, and academics, based on their interaction
with women survivors, activists, doctors, and so forth. Documentary films such as,
Rakesh Sharma’s, Final Solution, covered much the same ground as the IIJG pane-
lists in the film (Banerji, 2003). The 30-minute video, Evil Stalks the Land, made by
the founder of the Hashmi Memorial Trust, intertwines footage from the history of
Hindu fundamentalism and interviews with survivors of the violence.
7. Harijans (or dalits), Patels, and Darbars refer to various caste and tribal
groups.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This project was made possible through a 2004 PRF summer faculty grant.
I thank the activists and organization representatives/leaders who partici-
pated in the study under continuing difficult local conditions.
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IS RELIGIOSITY RELATED TO
REDUCED ABUSE IN CHILDHOOD?
A COMMUNITY STUDY OF
ULTRA-ORTHODOX AND
SECULAR JEWISH WOMEN
Marjorie C. Feinson and Adi Meir
ABSTRACT
Purpose Although childhood abuse is internationally recognized as a
major problem, there is a dearth of data concerning potentially protective
resources, including religiosity. While studies document religiosity’s posi-
tive association with general health outcomes, little is known about its
relevance to abuse in childhood. A unique opportunity to explore the
relationship is provided by a community-based study of religiously
diverse, adult women within a single religious denomination, Judaism. A
distinctive aspect of this research, which places women’s voices and
experiences center stage, is the context within which it was conducted.
Israel is a deeply gendered society dominated by two patriarchal institu-
tions, the military and religious establishments.

ISSN: 1529-2126/doi:10.1108/S1529-21262014000018B008
99
Second, an emphasis on routine violence allows us to understand the links

between public (wars, conflicts, large-scale institutionalized violence), private
(domestic, intimate setting) violence and violence at the interstices. Routine
violence becomes a regular feature of everyday life, it continues well after
the episodes of formally-defined violence have ended. It becomes invisible.
Yet, it also alters and erases peaceful cultures and practices, creates hierar-
chies between those who control increasing levels of weaponry and those
who do not. Most of all, it builds cultures of violence as more people
accept the escalated levels of violence as “normal” ways of organizing life.
Third, we drew attention to the materiality of violence. We provided
some examples to illustrate the political-economic underpinnings of
violence and the effects across multiple levels. The neoliberal policy envir-
onment and the proliferation of armed conflicts, often caused by struggles
to control power and productive resources, have set back women’s and
less powerful groups’ access to such resources. It has also increased their
exposure to violence. Conflicts, as well as post-conflict crisis situations,
while creating new contradictions in gender relations, often draw upon
some prevailing gender, class, and ethnic inequalities deepening some
and/or creating new ones in the process. The current reconfiguration of
entitlement structures, which rarely benefit women, also adds to women’s
vulnerability to violence. These political-economic agendas and practices,
along with fundamentalist movements, conservative political trends and the
militarist security agendas both destabilize some, and reinforce other patri-
archal (racialized/classed/gendered) structures. The processes that create
intersectional structures of privilege and marginalization are supported to
ever-increasing levels of violence.
Women’s physical security and freedom from violence, and human
security and freedoms of less powerful groups, are directly linked to the
material basis of relationships that govern the distribution and use of
resources and entitlements. Cultural rationales for limiting or negating
rights of the marginalized are always grounded in particular economic
interests and power dynamics. The focus on routine violence in its
gendered/racialized/classed forms emphasizes the need for scholars to
pay attention to the effects of normalization of violence in everyday life.
NOTES
1. We use various terms such as activists, activist scholars, and scholars in this
chapter, but, methodologically these distinctions are often blurred since individuals
Religiosity and Childhood Abuse among Jewish Women 101
A distinctive aspect of this research, which places women’s voices and

tions the military and religious establishments. The militarization
of Israeli society is “perhaps the most insidious factor impacting gender
relations …” (Golan, 1997, p. 581) Indeed, the military is one of the
main contributors to the creation and maintenance of “… masculine
superiority in Israeli society” (Mazali, 2003, p. 42). Moreover, “prolonged
military conflict in our case the maintenance of a long and violent
occupation legitimizes the use of violence, possibly in part responsible
for the rise of … violence in the home” (Golan, 1997, p. 583). As
Professor Golan states: “It is difficult to describe just how central an
institution the military is in Israeli society and in the lives of almost all
its citizens …” (p. 581). In brief, the values and norms of the military
together with the power of the religious establishment may be the main
contributors toward gender equality not being high on the list of societal
priorities (Golan, 1997).
As regards the religious establishment, in Israel there is the “dispropor-
tionate influence of religion and, in particular, an archaic religious estab-
lishment wielding a good deal of political power” (Golan, 1997, p. 581)
While a full description of the Orthodox religious establishment’s domi-
nance is beyond the scope of this study, it is sufficient to note the “… con-
siderable entanglement between the Orthodox Jewish religion and the state,
in which religious illiberal groups have gained significant political power …”
(Stopler, 2013, p. 153). Israeli law has given jurisdiction in all matters of
personal status (i.e., marriage, divorce, conversion) to the Orthodox rabbi-
nical courts. Thus, personal status issues are decided according to halakha
(Jewish law) by judges who are male Orthodox rabbis (Graetz, 1998).
According to an in-depth analysis by Professor Gila Stopler, “the imposi-
tion of the religious personal laws … constitutes a violation of the right to
freedom of conscience and belief, as well as a violation of the rights of
women who are subject to the discriminatory patriarchal religious laws of
the various religious communities” (Stopler, 2013, p. 157). In brief, the
power and influence of these two dominant patriarchal institutions pro-
vides the context within which this study of women’s abusive experiences in
childhood was undertaken. As might be expected, no funding was received
from Israeli sources, but rather from two generous and concerned women’s
organizations in the United States.1
Despite the societal context, it is important to note that more religiosity
has been identified for its generally positive associations with health and
102 MARJORIE C. FEINSON AND ADI MEIR
mental health outcomes in a large body of research (e.g., Hackney &

Sanders, 2003). Even a meticulous 16-year study in Israel revealed consider-
ably lower mortality rates among residents of ultra-Orthodox kibbutzim
(collective communities) compared to Secular kibbutzim (Kark et al.,
1996). The results were attributed to the protective effects of living in a
cohesive, religious community.
In contrast to this extensive literature, religiosity’s relevance vis-à-vis
childhood abuse has received relatively little empirical attention, with just a
handful of studies that provide inconsistent findings. For example, no sig-
nificant differences were found in the frequency of childhood sexual abuse
(CSA) according to high, medium, or low levels of religiosity in a study of
5,417 university women (Doxey, Jensen, & Jensen, 1997). In contrast, a
study of 497 adult women revealed that respondents from families with
strong religious affiliations reported significantly lower rates of abuse
compared to their counterparts (10.5% vs. 23.7%, p < .01). Of particular
interest is the finding of strong religious affiliation significantly associated
with less sexual and physical abuse, but not less emotional abuse (Mullen,
Martin, Anderson, Romans, & Herbison, 1996). A qualitative study of 22
adult women with childhood experiences of sexual abuse is insightful
regarding religion (Valentine & Feinauer, 1993). Involvement in various
religious aspects was an important resource, contributing to the intervie-
wees’ resilience by providing a supportive network, assisting them “to
make meaning of the experience in a manner that served to free them of
blame and guilt for the abuse,” and giving them “faith to hold onto life
and find meaning and purpose in their lives.” Their religious involvement
also strengthened their belief in God while helping them to understand that
nothing could destroy them (Valentine & Feinauer, 1993, pp. 220 221).
Finally, a study of religiously observant Jewish women in the United
States revealed more CSA reported by women who became religious later
in life compared to those who were raised in religious families, a trend
found among both ultra-Orthodox and modern Orthodox respondents.
Despite the sampling bias associated with recruiting volunteers for a study
of sexual attitudes and practices, the fact that 380 religiously observant
women shared information about sexual abuse is an important step in
beginning to address the issue. In addition, the decision to become obser-
vant according to Orthodox Judaism involves “… a comprehensive change
in lifestyle, which almost always includes a manifest restriction in sexual
behavior.” That is, women who have been sexually abused might be espe-
cially attracted to a more structured and sexually restricted lifestyle
(Yehuda, Friedman, Rosenbaum, Labinsky, & Schmeidler, 2007, p. 1704).
Clearly, childhood abuse is a serious problem confronting the Jewish

community (Gardsbane, 2002), yet, to our knowledge, there are no
community-based studies concerning its frequency among all religious
observance groups including Secular Jews. Most community studies consist
of Christian denominations with Jews categorized along with various min-
ority groups as Other (e.g., Doxey et al., 1997). As George, Ellison, and
Larson (2002) point out (albeit regarding health research), a “valuable
contribution … would be to sample non-Christians in sufficient numbers to
permit both comparisons with the dominant religious affiliations … and
separate analyses of them.” (p. 197). A unique opportunity to examine
abuse issues within a single religion comes from a relatively large sample of
adult Jewish women in Israel. Respondents include more than 250 ran-
domly selected ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) women, an isolated and insular
group that often declines to be interviewed (Rier, Schwartzbaum, & Heller,
2008).
The Relevance of Religiosity
Religiosity, religious involvement, and religious observance, multidimen-

sional concepts used interchangeably, typically refer to behaviors (e.g.,
organized worship, praying), beliefs (e.g., theology), attitudes (e.g., forgive-
ness), and practices (e.g., private/public rituals) associated with organized
religions. In an effort to assess salient aspects of religiosity, researchers
have developed more than 100 instruments, although many have relied
primarily on brief (i.e., single item) and imprecise global indices, such as
frequency of church attendance, denominational affiliation, or self-rated
religiousness (Hill & Pargament, 2003). Despite generally positive connec-
tions between religiosity and health outcomes, as noted previously, there
have been numerous exceptions leading several researchers to conclude
that the type of instrument used undoubtedly influences the outcome
(Hackney & Sanders, 2003; Schnittker, 2001).
Some of these methodological issues are mitigated in the current study
with religiosity being self-assessed according to well-established observance
categories within Judaism.2 At one end of the continuum are Secular Jews,
a term that may seem contradictory, but, in fact, refers to Jews with little
or no involvement with religious institutions, laws, or rituals. Yet, there
often are strong connections to historical and cultural aspects of
Judaism, including Jewish values as the basis for social justice projects
(Werczberger & Azulay, 2011). At the opposite end of the continuum are
Haredi or ultra-Orthodox Jews, “those most extreme of Orthodox Jews,”

whose devotion to God and Jewish tradition permeates every area of daily
existence (Heilman & Witztum, 1997, p. 525). To sustain their religious
values and strict observance of numerous rituals and laws, they generally
live in segregated neighborhoods and maintain separate political, educa-
tional, and legal institutions. Haredim (plural) send their children to private
schools in which only those who share their values and lifestyles are
included (Heilman & Witztum, 1997, pp. 525 526). In the middle of the
religiosity spectrum are modern Orthodox and Traditional Jews, groups
that observe Jewish law and rituals, but are integrated into modern society.
Despite distinct differences, each observance group is heterogeneous,
consisting of many sub-groups especially regarding the roles of women.
For example, within the Haredi community there are numerous groups
with vastly differing ideas and practices that can “erupt in conflict and even
violence …” (Heilman & Witztum, 1997, p. 526). However, what divides
ultra-Orthodox groups from one another “pales in comparison with what
divides Haredim in general from the rest of society” (Heilman & Witztum,
1997, p. 526). Similarly, sub-groups ranging from extremely liberal to
extremely conservative exist within each observance category. Among the
Secular, for example, a small percentage are “anti-religious” in contrast
to the majority who are not anti-religious and even may observe some
religious traditions such as Passover seders or fasting on the Day of
Atonement (Arian et al., 2011).
Religiosity vis-à-vis Child Abuse
There has been relatively little empirical research regarding the relationship
between religiosity and child abuse, especially as compared to a vast litera-
ture connecting religiosity with better health outcomes (e.g., George et al.,
2002; Hill & Pargament, 2003; Kark et al., 1996). Yet, religious involve-
ment might be a vitally important resource for preventing a broad range of
adverse childhood experiences. In general, studies that examine the
religiosity abuse relationship tend to focus on whether religiosity amelio-
rates negative consequences of abuse. Seldom do studies focus on the role
of religiosity vis-à-vis the occurrence of abuse (Yehuda et al., 2007). Yet,
because religion “provides values, a way of life, and ethically appropriate
behavior” (Laufer, Solomon, & Levine, 2010, p. 648), more religious devo-
tion might be more protective. That is, for the rigorously observant, such
as Haredim, religiousness is not just a set of beliefs and practices divorced
from everyday life. Rather, it provides an overarching framework in which

all aspects of life are considered as sacred in significance (Hill &
Pargament, 2003) For ultra-Orthodox Jews, “Individuals only have merit
insofar as they serve God and follow the dictates of tradition; that is their
primary raison d’etre.” (Heilman & Witztum, 1997, p. 527). Within this
context, one might reasonably expect religious devotion to preclude or
minimize abusive behaviors toward children.
Analytic Focus
The current analysis provides a detailed description of the prevalence of

child abuse in a religiously diverse, community-based sample of adult
Jewish women in Israel. Child abuse is examined for three types of abuse
(sexual, physical, emotional) in two separate time periods (childhood only;
childhood plus recently). While we compare abuse across four religious
observance groups, specific attention is on observance groups at opposite
ends of the religiosity spectrum, namely ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) and
Secular Jews. In the absence of previous studies, we might find substantially
less abuse among the most religiously observant Haredi respondents for
several reasons:
• The Haredi environment, embedded in religious beliefs and values, might

be less tolerant of abusive behaviors;
• Social norms combined with individuals’ internalization of religious
norms and moral messages might obviate abusive behaviors;
• Fear of divine punishment or communal social sanctions may preclude
abuse;
• Haredi standards of secrecy and silence may result in less disclosure
about such private topics as abuse, a pattern similar to Asian cultures
where shame and preservation of family honor resulted in victims’ silent
suffering (La Flair, Franko, & Herzog, 2008).
Alternatively, the traditional patriarchal family structure found within

the ultra-Orthodox community may be associated with more abusive
behaviors, either because physical punishment is believed to be religiously
sanctioned, as in several Christian denominations (Bottoms, Nielsen,
Murray, & Filipas, 2004) or because corporal punishment may be consid-
ered a valid means of disciplining children (Gofin, Levav, & Kohn, 2004).
METHODS
Recruitment of Respondents
Female interviewees were recruited from primary health care clinics in

Jerusalem metropolitan areas and surrounding suburban neighborhoods.
Specific clinics were selected to achieve a religiously and demographically
diverse sample. Clinics are located in neighborhoods and provide services
to all residents without charge under Israel’s universal health care system.
Primary care utilization rates are frequent and among the highest in the
world, although not attributable to poorer health status (The World
Health Report, 2003 shaping the future). Since many visits by women
are associated with treatment for children or other family members, respon-
dents recruited in clinics are more broadly reflective of a sample drawn
from the wider community than a treated patient population. This was
substantiated by a majority of interviewees reporting no medical treatment
for any health conditions during the previous year.
While clinics were selected according to specific neighborhood character-
istics, recruitment of respondents within clinics was random, with inter-
viewers entering clinics at different hours and days of the week. All women
appearing to be age 20 and older were invited to complete a short, self-
report screening questionnaire (SQ). Participation was voluntary and
responses anonymous and confidential. SQs in Hebrew, Russian or English
took 3 5 minutes to complete with a final question soliciting participation
in a telephone interview covering a broad range of women’s health issues.
Those who agreed provided contact information (name, phone number,
convenient time for interview) and signed the SQ indicating consent to be
contacted for a phone interview. This process, of briefly meeting inter-
viewers in-person with full interviews done subsequently by telephone, may
have encouraged participation while also providing a degree of privacy for
those reluctant to answer questions in face-to-face interviews (Fairburn &
Beglin, 1990).
This strategy also may have facilitated the recruitment of a large and
demographically diverse sample of ultra-Orthodox respondents. Given
numerous research challenges associated with an insular population that
has a reputation for low survey participation (Rier et al., 2008), a relatively
large number of interviews was completed (n = 261). This may reflect a
highly trained team of religious female interviewers3 who were extremely
sensitive to respondents’ time demands. Indeed, after potential interviewees
met the interviewers, it apparently eliminated the need to first obtain the
rabbi’s approval for participation in the study. All field work protocols and
instruments were reviewed and approved by the appropriate institutional
review boards. The 22 Medical Directors from participating clinics also
reviewed and approved the recruitment protocols and instruments prior to
granting access to the clinics.
The study consists of two waves of interviews. The initial sample,4 col-
lected in 2002 2003, is demographically diverse and broadly representative
of adult Jewish women in Israel; thus, is considered a community sample.5
It includes a sub-sample of 8.8% ultra-Orthodox women which, although
slightly larger than the adult Haredi community at the time (5.7%; Central
Bureau of Statistics (CBS), 2002), the small number of interviewees (n = 44)
was not sufficient for an informative analysis. Therefore, a second wave of
interviews was conducted in 2004 2005 in clinics located within predomi-
nately ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods using the same recruitment process.
This produced an additional 217 interviews for a total Haredi sample of
261. Comparisons of Haredi respondents from the two waves of interviews
revealed no significant differences on most variables including abuse ques-
tions, health and mental health issues, and sociodemographic characteris-
tics. The expanded sample of ultra-Orthodox respondents (n = 261) is used
only for comparison with other observance groups. The initial sample of
500 respondents, also referred to as the community sample, contains only
the original 44 Haredi respondents, similar to their proportion in the
population.
Measures
The telephone interview questionnaire (TIQ) includes numerous topics

relevant to women’s health including mental health status, stressful life
events, childhood and recent abuse, sexist treatment and harassment, and
utilization of services. Interviewees were advised that all information was
confidential and anonymous and they could decline to answer any question
without explanation. The current analysis focuses primarily on the
frequency and types of child abuse with comparisons across religious obser-
vance groups.
Abuse
Consistent with other community studies (e.g., NCS-R, McLaughlin et al.,
2010), abuse was assessed with six straightforward, dichotomous questions
about physical, sexual, and verbal abuse that occurred during childhood (3)
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status: Does the family income (total income of all family members) cover
most of the basic daily needs and expenses (food, rent, clothing, transpor-
tation, etc.)? Response categories (does not cover most, covers only part,
or covers all or most) classify respondents into three groups: insufficient
income, partially sufficient, and sufficient. Education groups also conform
to CBS categories. Widowed and divorced respondents are classified as
previously married. Level of religiosity includes four groups, as previously
described.
RESULTS
Demographic Description of Respondents
Demographic characteristics of respondents are shown in Table 1 first for

the community sample of adult Jewish women (column 1) and for each reli-
gious observance group (columns 2 5). The community sample is demo-
graphically diverse and broadly representative of adult women (20 + )
regarding age, marital status, cultural origin, and religious observance
(CBS, 2003). Ninety percent are 25 + with a mean age of 44. More than
60% are married; almost one-fifth report insufficient family income.
Demographic distributions according to religious observance groups
reveal that ultra-Orthodox Jews are younger than Secular respondents
(p < .001) with no significant education or income differences. Almost all
Haredi are married compared to less than half of Secular respondents
(93% vs. 44.6%, p < .000). Almost half of Haredi are second generation
Israeli-born (45.7%) compared to half of the Secular (46.8%) who are first
generation Israeli-born.
Haredi Secular Abuse Comparisons by Demographic Characteristics
Although there are significant religious group differences regarding demo-

graphic characteristics (e.g., age, marital status), no significant differences
in child abuse rates are found within all demographic sub-categories
(data available upon request). For example, despite marital status differ-
ences, when comparing the frequency of any abuse for married respon-
dents from both observance groups, no significant differences are found
between Haredi and Secular respondents (45.1% vs. 39.5%, respectively).
Table 1. Demographic Characteristics of Respondents and by Religious

Observance Groups.
Demographic Community Religious Observance Categories
Characteristics Samplea
Ultra- Modern Traditional Secular
Orthodox Orthodox
(Haredi)
n = 500 n = 261 n = 181 n = 167 n = 181 F/χ2
Age (groups) (%)

<25 9.6 32.0 23.8 2.4 10.5 χ2 = 99.09h
25 44.5 42.8 40.5 50.8 40.1 40.3
45 64.5 38.0 22.8 18.8 44.9 39.8
≥65 9.6 4.6 6.6 12.6 9.4
Mean (sd) 44.0 (15.2) 36.3b (14.5) 37.1b (14.9) 47.5c (14.3) 44.0c (15.7) F = 25.04h
Education (groups) (%)
<12 17.5 5.0 7.3 28.7 11.7 χ2 = 100.83h
12 25.1 27.5 15.6 29.9 23.9
13 15 24.9 43.0 31.8 16.8 30.6
16 + 32.5 24.4 45.3 24.6 33.9
Mean (sd) 13.8(3.3) 14.0b(2.3) 14.8b (2.7) 12.9c (3.6) 14.2b (3.1) F = 13.00h
Income sufficiency (%)
Insufficient 18.7 17.1 11.4 21.8 17.3 n.s.
Partially 33.5 33.9 29.5 36.4 34.1
Sufficient 47.8 49.0 59.1 41.8 48.6
Marital status (%)
Single 18.4 3.5 12.9 10.0 29.4 χ2 = 141.72h
Previously married 20.2 3.5 9.0 22.5 26.0
Married 61.4 93.1 78.1 67.5 44.6
Cultural origin groupsd (%)
Israelie 22.3 45.7 34.7 13.6 27.7 χ2 = 82.28h
Sephardicf 36.0 21.7 25.0 54.9 25.4
Ashkenazig 41.7 32.7 40.3 31.5 46.8
Notes: Jewish women in Israel. It includes four religious observance groups: 8.8% (n = 44) are ultra-
Orthodox, 21.6% are modern Orthodox, 33.4% are Traditional, 36.2% are Secular (see Recruitment of
Respondents for additional details).
a
Findings in this column represent a sample drawn from the wider community that broadly reflects
the population of adult.
b
Superscripts indicate significant differences (Scheffe’s post hoc p < .05).
c
Superscripts indicate significant differences (Scheffe’s post hoc p < .05).
d
Cultural Origin Groups defined according to parents’ place of birth.
e
Respondents are 2nd generation Israelis.
f
Respondents are 1st generation Israelis whose parents come from North Africa or the
Middle East.
g
Respondents are 1st generation Israelis whose parents come from Europe or America.
h
p < .001.
Prevalence of Abuse by Religious Observance Group
Table 2 contains frequency rates of child abuse according to time periods of

abuse and types of abuse. Beginning with the community sample (column 1),
the overall frequency of ACA is 45%, there is a remarkably similar rate
across all observance groups (columns 2 5) with no significant differences.
ACA consists of two sub-categories, abuse that occurred during childhood
only (20.4%) and abuse that occurred both in childhood and also recently
(24.6%). Again, no statistically significant differences are found between
religious observance groups for either sub-category. Among those with any
abuse, close to two-thirds of Haredim (60%) experienced abuse both as
children and adults (26.4% out of 44.1%) compared to half of Secular
respondents (51%).
Table 2. Prevalence of Childhood Abuse Categories by Religious

Observance Groups.
Categories of Community Religious Observance Groups
Childhood Abuse Samplea
Ultra- Modern Traditional Secular
Orthodox Orthodox
(Haredi)
n = 500 n = 261 n = 181 n = 167 n = 181 χ2
Time periods of abuse (%)

ACA 45.0 44.1 48.6 41.9 47.5 n.s.
Childhood only 20.4 17.6 16.0 19.8 23.2 n.s.
Childhood + recent 24.6 26.4 32.6 22.2 24.3 n.s.
Types of childhood abuse (%)
Any sexual (CSA) 4.8 3.1 3.9 2.4 7.7 7.90c
Any physical (CPA) 24.2 18.8 20.4 24.0 23.2 n.s.
Any emotional (CEA) 40.2 39.1 44.8 38.3 42.0 n.s.
Co-occurring childhood abuse (%)
Physical + emotional 19.6 14.2 17.1 21.0 17.7 n.s.
Multiple abuseb 22.0 15.7 18.8 21.0 22.1 n.s.
a
Community reflects a broadly representative sample of 500 Jewish women in Israel (see
Table 1).
b
Two or three types of abuse.
c
p < .05.
Frequency rates for three types of abuse reveal that in the community sam-
ple, almost 5% of report CSA, a finding that is noteworthy in two respects.
First, it is the least frequent of the three types of abuse. Second, it is the only
abuse category in which religious observance group differences reach statisti-
cal significance (p < .05). In contrast to relatively low CSA rates, other types
of abuse are substantially more frequent. Almost one-quarter (24.2%) of the
community sample reports childhood physical abuse (CPA) while 40.2%
report childhood emotional abuse (CEA) with no significant differences
between observance groups. Regarding co-occurring types of abuse, 19.6% of
the community sample report both physical and emotional abuse, while 22%
report multiple abuse experiences. Again, no statistically significant differ-
ences between observance groups are found for these two categories of abuse.
DISCUSSION
To our knowledge, this is the first-ever study to examine the prevalence of
childhood abuse within a single religious denomination, Judaism. The find-
ings suggest that religiosity’s relevance as a potentially protective resource
is not straightforward. The prospect of substantially less abuse among reli-
giously devout respondents was based on studies showing religiosity’s pro-
tective contribution to better health outcomes. Less abuse might have been
found within an observant community, one that scrupulously adheres to
Jewish law and the highest moral standards. Indeed, Haredi culture
“… stresses the need to devote one’s life to the Almighty, to conduct one-
self according to Jewish law … it encourages a compassionate concern for
the other, and family-related values …” (Dehan & Levi, 2009). Within this
extremely observant context, abusive behaviors toward children might have
been relatively less frequent compared to Secular Jews, and yet, the findings
indicate otherwise.
Prevalence of ACA
Almost half of a broadly representative community sample of Jewish

women in Israel (n = 500) report some type of abusive experience in child-
hood (ACA). The overall rate of 45% is remarkably similar to a rates
of 43.6% in the ACE study of 4,000 + adult women (Edwards, Holden,
Felitti, & Anda, 2003) and 53% in a study of 668 gynecology patients
(Moeller, Bachmann, & Moeller, 1993) These two studies are especially
germane because three types of abuse sexual, physical, emotional were
assessed with community samples of adult women. In contrast, the majority

of population-based studies focus only on sexual and/or physical abuse
(e.g., Briere & Elliott, 2003; MacMillan et al., 2001; Molnar, Buka, &
Kessler, 2001; Thompson, Arias, Basile, & Desai, 2002; Vogeltanz et al.,
1999) or use convenience samples of young adults (e.g., Groleau et al., 2011;
Mazzeo, Mitchell, & Williams, 2008).
Abuse According to Religious Observance
Finding comparable abuse rates across religiously distinct groups of Jewish

women was unexpected. We anticipated lower rates or perhaps higher rates,
but not comparable rates. Although no comparable community studies
of Jewish observance groups were located, the current findings differ
substantially from studies in which better health outcomes among the ultra-
Orthodox are attributed to the protective effects of religious orthodoxy
(Friedlander, Kark, & Stein, 1986; Kark et al., 1996). A preliminary
conclusion is that religiosity’s protective mechanisms vis-à-vis health may
not function similarly with regard to abusive behaviors toward children,
especially physical and emotional abuse experienced by young and adoles-
cent girls. Although warranting further research, the clinical implications
of this credible finding are noteworthy.
Time Periods of Abuse
Among respondents in the community sample reporting ACA (45%), more

than half (24.6%) report having been abused both in childhood and recently.
These findings generally are consistent with studies showing that respondents
with a history of child abuse are at an increased risk for re-victimization in
later in life (Briere & Elliott, 2003; Leonard, Steiger, & Kao, 2003; Messman &
Long, 1996; Siegel, Sorenson, Golding, Burnam, & Stein, 1987). Among
those with any abuse, slightly more Haredi acknowledge abuse in both time
periods compared to their Secular counterparts (60% and 51%, respectively).
Types of Abuse
The rate of CSA in the community sample (4.8%) is substantially lower

than most population studies6 with rates ranging from 9% (Briere &
Elliott, 2003; Thompson et al., 2002) to 32.3% (Briere & Elliott, 2003).
Our rates also are considerably lower than a 17% rate reported by Jewish
gynecology patients (Moeller et al., 1993) and extremely low compared to a
24.7%7 rate among female primary care users in Israel (Schein et al., 2000).
The latter study reported significant religious group differences with the
highest CSA rate among Secular respondents, 38%, compared to 20% for
religious respondents (Schein et al., 2000), a pattern that parallels our find-
ings where CSA is significantly higher among Secular (7.7%) compared to
other observance groups including the ultra-Orthodox (p < .05). In addition
to CSA being the only abuse category with significant differences, it is note-
worthy that the highest Secular rate of 7.7% is lower than the lowest rate
(9%) in national studies of adult women.
Although our relatively low CSA rates cannot be readily explained, they
should be interpreted cautiously as they may reflect several methodological
issues. For example, the literature reveals that a large proportion of sexual
abuse consists of one-time experiences which respondents may forget
(Finkelhor et al., 1989; Molnar et al., 2001; Williams, 1994). Or, using a sin-
gle item to assess abuse may have produced artificially low rates. Finkelhor,
a leading researcher in the field, observes that single questions tend to be
associated with lower rates in contrast to multiple questions which produce
higher rates. He explains that more questions provide additional cues
regarding various kinds of experiences considered sexually abusive and/or
more opportunities to overcome embarrassment and hesitation about mak-
ing a disclosure (Finkelhor, 1994). Under-reporting also is a strong possibi-
lity (Hardt & Rutter, 2004; Williams, 1994). In one of the few prospective
studies of CSA, for example, nearly two-fifths (38%) of women did not
report abuse that was documented with hospital emergency room records
(Williams, 1994). As Mullen et al. note: there is “real potential for under-
reporting in a study such as this but how great that may be is difficult to
estimate” (1996, p. 17). Accordingly, the frequency of CSA in the present
study represents a conservative baseline estimate since only respondents
with unequivocal yes answers to a single question are included. While we do
not know if respondents’ experiences were consistent with research defini-
tions of CSA, which tend to produce higher rates than self-defined abuse
(Silvern, Waelde, Baughan, Karyl, & Kaersvang, 2000), positive answers
reveal that something sexually occurred which respondents consider abusive.
Unfortunately, relatively low CSA rates are not replicated with regard
to other forms of abuse. Almost one-quarter (24.2%) of Jewish respondents
in the community sample (n = 500) report CPA, a finding broadly consis-
tent with general population studies of adult women with rates in the range
of 7.8 40%, but clustering around 20% (e.g., Briere & Elliott, 2003,
19.5%; Edwards et al., 2003, 19.7%; MacMillan et al., 2001, 21.1%).

A somewhat lower CPA rate (16%) was reported by Jewish gynecology
patients (Moeller et al., 1993). Most remarkable is the absence of statisti-
cally significant differences between religious observance groups with
19 23% having been physically abused as children.
How confident can we be regarding the accuracy of these CPA findings?
Substantial variations regarding different types of abuse may suggest a
degree of accuracy. That is, in the full community sample, 24% report
physical abuse compared to less than 5% reporting CSA, while 40%
acknowledge emotional abuse. Alternatively, CPA also may be under-
reported, as suggested by a qualitative study of women’s health in which phy-
sical punishment was not considered abusive because it was justified. Women
said they were hit because they had been bad and deserved it or because it
was consistent with parenting norms at the time (Meadows, Thurston, &
Lackner, 2001). In a similar vein, physical punishment may be normative in
certain cultural or religious groups, especially patriarchal families, where chil-
dren are expected to obey unconditionally and physical punishment is justi-
fied for enforcing discipline and obedience. Accordingly, positive attitudes
toward corporal punishment may result in interviewees not considering phy-
sical force abusive (Guttmann, Lazar, & Makhoul, 2009). On this point, an
Israeli study reveals that more than half of adult Jewish respondents report
having received corporal punishment (57%), a finding associated with
responses favoring its use as a means of discipline (Gofin et al., 2004).
Despite the fact that using physical force against children even for educa-
tional purposes is prohibited by Israel’s Supreme Court, more than 60% of
respondents believe that parents will not comply with the Court’s decision.
Not surprisingly, those with a positive history of corporal punishment were
less likely to believe the public would comply (p < .0001) (Gofin et al., 2004).
In view of these under-reporting possibilities, a reasonable conclusion is that
the 24% CPA rate in present study also may be a conservative estimate. This
is supported by a substantial proportion of Israelis (22 47%) who agree
with hitting children “to foster good behaviour” (Gofin et al., 2004).
With regard to CEA, the relative paucity of studies is striking, especially
compared to a plethora of CSA and CPA studies. However, as Teicher and
others observe, emotional maltreatment may be a “more elusive and insi-
dious problem” to investigate (Teicher, Samson, Polcari, & McGreenery,
2006, p. 993). Rorty and her colleagues (1994) were early researchers to
consider emotional or psychological abuse an important part of the child
abuse spectrum, especially regarding eating disorders. They explored abuse
among two groups women with a history of bulimia nervosa and a
normative community sample. Psychological abuse in childhood was the

most prevalent within both groups, reported by more than 30% of the
community sample. Similarly, 33% of Jewish gynecology patients reported
emotional abuse. In contrast, the ACE study of over 4,000 women provides
a 15% rate of emotional abuse (defined as witnessing maternal battering), a
rate considerably lower than CSA and CPA rates (25% and 20%, respec-
tively, Edwards et al., 2003).
Our findings regarding CEA are consistent with emerging evidence that
emotional abuse is substantially more prevalent than either CSA or CPA.
CEA is the most prevalent type of abuse reported by 40% of our commu-
nity sample and also the most frequent form of abuse within all observance
groups (e.g., 39%, 42% Haredi and Secular, respectively). While emotion-
al abuse is becoming recognized as a distinct form of maltreatment
(Feinson & Ben Dror, 2010), some argue that all forms of abuse are emo-
tionally damaging. As Edwards and her colleagues observe: “an emotion-
ally abusive family environment interacts with abusive acts to amplify the
effects associated with maltreatment” (Edwards et al., 2003, p. 1454).
In summary, the current study does not provide empirical that supports
religiosity as a protective factor in mitigating abuse against female children.
Clearly, additional research needs to explore the dynamics underlying
abuse within all families. Naomi Graetz’s excellent analysis Silence is
Deadly: Judaism Confronts Wifebeating (1998) suggests one possible
dynamic relevant to religiously devout families, namely the influence of
rabbinic sources. In general, rabbinic sources agree that good wives do not
deserve beating. However, “the attitude of rabbinic sources toward ‘bad
wives’ (who do not behave the way good women should) is ambivalent,
and wifebeating is occasionally sanctioned if it is for the purpose of
chastisement or education” (Graetz, 1998, pp. 93 94). Future research
may reveal that hitting or beating “bad” children also is justified by rabbi-
nic sources among some religiously observant Jews.
In fact, a recent Israeli study is informative concerning maltreatment
attitudes (Schmid & Benbenishty, 2011). Interestingly, the majority of ultra-
Orthodox (60%) refused to answer the questions, but among those who did,
a relatively high proportion said they did not know how serious the problem
of child maltreatment is, while a relatively low percentage considered it a
serious social problem (Schmid & Benbenishty, 2011). These findings,
according to the researchers, are consistent with other studies which show a
connection between viewing child maltreatment as less serious and the con-
doning of physical punishment of children (Schmid & Benbenishty, 2011).
Future research might explore the extent to which corporal punishment
might be normative in patriarchal families, such as the ultra-Orthodox, and

whether it is used to enforce discipline and obedience or considered permis-
sible according to rabbinic sources.
With regard to gender, the Israeli attitudinal study found women signifi-
cantly more likely than men to consider parental maltreatment of children as
serious. In addition, more women than men felt it was important to punish
parents who maltreat their children and that the courts do not punish enough
maltreating parents (p < .01) (Schmid & Benbenishty, 2011). Although the
researchers do not account for these gender differences, one might speculate
that women’s attitudes may partially reflect childhood experiences which, as
our findings show, are similar across religious observance groups. Finally, a
broad consensus exists that the government does not sufficiently fund preven-
tion, thus underscoring the reality that violence and abuse against girls and
women have a relatively low priority on Israel’s public agenda.
Several limitations should be considered in assessing the current study’s
findings. Single abuse items with yes/no answers are used frequently in epi-
demiology studies, yet do not provide important information concerning
the frequency or severity of abusive experiences. It might be assumed, how-
ever, that positive responses reflect more frequent or severe experiences
since single abuse experiences may not be recalled or reported. Since single
items tend to produce lower rates of abuse (Finkelhor, 1994), the current
findings undoubtedly under-estimate actual prevalence rates. Including
only three forms of child abuse (e.g., Johnson, Cohen, Kasen, & Brook,
2002; Smyth, Heron, Wonderlich, Crosby, & Thompson, 2008) also may
result in under-reported rates. Most importantly, different understandings
of what constitutes abuse versus disciplinary actions may exist between
observance groups and affect the results. Also, behaviors that researchers
consider abusive may not be similarly considered by respondents. The
results also may be impacted by not distinguishing between respondents
born into religiously observant (or secular) families and those who became
more or less religious later in life (Yehuda et al., 2007).
These limitations notwithstanding, the study contains several note-
worthy methodological strengths. Most importantly, respondents’ self-
assessments of religiosity, a multidimensional concept reflecting beliefs,
norms, rituals, and behaviors, avoid a plethora of measurement issues that
plague previous studies. Idler and her colleagues (2009), for example, devel-
oped an instrument to illuminate what makes attendance at services such a
robust indicator of religiosity (Idler et al., 2009; Miller & Thoresen, 2003).
Interestingly, that indicator is less relevant to ultra-Orthodox women.
While daily prayer is extremely important, most Haredi women’s praying is
done in private. Jewish law does not obligate women to attend formal reli-
gious services and, in fact, they are not allowed to participate in many
aspects of communal services. Exempting religiously observant women
from formal prayer services is consistent with their primary obligations,
which are in the home as wives and mothers.
A related strength is that, to our knowledge, this is the first-ever study of
the child abuse religiosity relationship among adult Jewish women. Most
research, with few exceptions, comes from studies in the United States com-
posed primarily of Christian denominations and/or convenience samples of
university students. The current research expands the literature with a
community-based sample of women not previously studied, from the Middle
East, yet with comparable methodologies to those used in studies in the
United States. Finally, the relatively large sample with distinct observance
groups within a single religious denomination, including interviews with 261
Haredi women, is an important and unique contribution of the study.
CONCLUSION
Although child maltreatment is a serious public health and social justice
issue, there is little empirical evidence regarding the relevance of religiosity
and its potentially protective role. This study contributes to our understand-
ing that abusive behaviors toward children occur in families across a broad
spectrum of religiosity. In contrast to studies in which religiosity contributes
to better health outcomes, our findings suggest it is not similarly protective
vis-à-vis child abuse. Specifically, despite rigorous religious observance,
comparable amounts of childhood abuse are found among Haredi respon-
dents compared to their Secular counterparts. However, religious devotion
may be an invaluable resource in the aftermath of abuse, a possibility
explored in a forthcoming analysis (Feinson & Meir, forthcoming). In the
interim, these initial persuasive findings warrant increased government
funding for a relatively neglected public health issue, namely, the prevention
of childhood abuse in all families, religious as well as nonreligious.
NOTES
1. The Hadassah Women’s Foundation, New York provided generous support

for the initial study. Geula Charitable Trust, New York provided generous funding
for enlarging the study with an expanded sample of ultra-Orthodox respondents.
2. In the United States, modern Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox often are

combined into one category of Orthodox. This is despite vastly different levels of
observance. In Israel, these two religious observance groups are differentiated.
3. The religious observance category of the interviewers is easily identified by the
way they are dressed.
4. The initial wave of interviews includes 567 respondents, 67 of whom are
Muslims, Christians, Druze, or religion unknown. These 67 respondents are not
included in this analysis.
5. The initial wave of interviews produced a sample broadly representative
of adult Jewish women in Israel (n = 500). Accordingly it is referred to as the com-
munity sample and does not include the expanded sample of ultra-Orthodox
respondents, only the original 44 interviewees.
6. An exception is the low rate of 2.4% (females + males) from high-income
countries reported in the World Mental Health study (Kessler et al., 2010).
7. This rate of 24.7% excludes the 6% of females who reported exhibitionism
only.
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I call “structural gender,” that attempts to reconcile the theoretical and the
pragmatic for improved future research and policy development related to
gender. The need for such reconciliation is vital, as the gap between rich
theory and wan application has yielded unintended outcomes that have
materially, politically, and emotionally stymied gender equality.
The tale of further unintended consequences stemming from a policy
implemented in Bali, Indonesia in response to unintended consequences of
a World Bank investment made in the aftermath of the fall of Soeharto’s
New Order in 1998 illustrates the urgency of innovative ways of conceptua-
lizing gender in research and policy development. The result of the World
Bank investment had devastating implications for victims of domestic
violence (DV); the subsequent legal measure to address these implications
relied heavily on providing access to economic capital as a means for
women to escape abusive marriages. Both the World Bank investment and
the subsequent measure to address the resulting unintended consequences
failed to account for the ways pervasive cultural perceptions of gender
intrinsically affected the formation and functioning of social institutions.
This led to the measures more deeply entrenching juridical-political
and social institutions that marginalize women from positions of social
power the reductionist view of “empowerment” further reified structu-
rally violent cultural intuitions.
The outcomes of this further entrenchment manifests as an acceptance
of physical, emotional, and psychological violence toward women.
Moreover, these consequences reinforce historical patterns of social life
that exclude women from full participation in the economic, social, and
juridical-political institutions comprising the public and private spheres of
a society (Henley & Davidson, 2008; Lake, 2010; Lorber, 1994; Martin,
2004; Pugh, 2004; Risman, 2004). The implications of these outcomes call
for greater attention to the impact of gender as a social structure (Risman,
2004) in the development of post-conflict policies. While this case study
cannot provide a fail-safe roadmap for future policy development, it does
illuminate potential problems that future efforts to implement similar
policies may encounter.
THE CASE FOR RECONCEPTUALIZING GENDER
Incorporating an analysis of gender ideologies pervasive within societies

targeted for intervention may result in the development of policies that
TREATING SEXUAL VIOLENCE AS
A “BUSINESS”: REFLECTIONS ON
NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL
RESPONSES TO SEXUAL AND
GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE IN
THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC
OF CONGO
Jane Freedman
ABSTRACT
Purpose This chapter aims to question the ways in which sexual and
gender-based violence have been framed in international discourse and
policy and thus to examine some of the causes of the perceived failure of
international responses to this violence.
Methodology The chapter is based on qualitative research carried out
through key informant interviews and focus groups in the Democratic
Republic of Congo (DRC).

ISSN: 1529-2126/doi:10.1108/S1529-21262014000018B009
125
126 JANE FREEDMAN
Findings The research highlights the ways in which limited under-

standings of sexual and gender-based violence lead to interventions which
have unintended and sometimes negative consequences for gender rela-
tions in the DRC.
Social implications The chapter calls on researchers, policy makers,
and aid practitioners to rethink their approaches to tackling sexual and
gender-based violence and to incorporate these into a more coherent
overall approach to gender inequality.
Keywords: Gender; violence; Democratic Republic of Congo; interna-
tional organization
INTRODUCTION
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been called “the worse
place on earth for women” due to the high levels of sexual and gender-
based violence (SGBV) which occur in the country. The global media have
drawn attention to incidences of mass rape committed by soldiers and rebel
groups during the ongoing conflicts in the country, and international policy
makers have condemned the violence, calling for increasing interventions
to prevent violence and aid victims. This chapter will argue that despite the
large amounts of international aid now being spent on the campaign
against SGBV in the DRC little progress has been made in prevention, and
that some of the programs to support victims of violence have unintended
negative consequences which in fact reinforce gender inequalities in the
country. Based on empirical research in the DRC, including interviews
with members of international organizations, and with international and
local NGOs working in SGBV programs, as well as with focus groups of
Congolese men and women, the chapter will argue that too often a narrow
definition of SGBV focusing only on rape by members of armed groups
leads to interventions which ignore the basis of violence in underlying
sociocultural inequalities and discriminatory gender norms. Thus, these
interventions tackle the “symptoms” of violence rather than the underlying
“illness.” Further, in targeting interventions toward provision of medical
services or financial reparations for victims, programs may have unin-
tended impacts, providing “perverse” incentives for women to report rape
in order to access services which they need but to which they would not
normally have access. The analysis will suggest ways in which gender-based
Treating Sexual Violence as a “Business” 127
violence in conflict could be more appropriately understood in order to

tackle fundamental gender inequalities within Congolese societies.
RESEARCH METHODS
The chapter is based on research carried out over a five-year period,
between 2008 and 2013 in various locations in the DRC (principally in the
cities of Kinshasa, Goma, and Bukavu). Forty interviews were carried out
with policy makers, members of national and international NGOs, mem-
bers of international organizations, and local men and women. In addition,
20 focus group discussions were organized. These focus groups brought
together around 20 participants at a time, and were composed of mixed
groups of men and women. The focus group discussions were organized
with the help of local teachers and university professors who helped to
identify and bring together participants.
SGBV IN THE DRC
SGBV remains a major problem in the DRC, and despite prevention efforts
by national and international actors, incidences of SGBV seems to be on
the increase (Freedman, 2011). The high levels of SGBV can be seen (at
least in some part although the extent of causality is a matter of debate
as will be discussed later on in this chapter), as a consequence of the armed
conflicts ongoing in the DRC since the mid-1990s. The roots and histories
of these conflicts have been much debated (Autesserre, 2010; Lemarchand,
2008; Maindo Monga Ngonga, 2007; Prunier, 2008; Reyntjens, 2009), with
some analysts stressing the top down regional geopolitical dynamics and
others favoring a more bottom up explanation based on ongoing local con-
flicts. Indeed the causes of conflict are so complex and intersecting that
even a professor at university in the DRC told me in an interview in June
2013 that “It is impossible to understand the conflict. Just when you think
you understand what’s going on, something else happens and you realize
that you don’t understand at all.”1 What is common to all of the analyses
of the conflict however, and what stands out even in a cursory examination
of the wars in the DRC, is the extremely violent and murderous nature of
the conflicts and the extent to which this violence has affected the whole
population with civilians finding themselves targeted by all sides, official
128 JANE FREEDMAN
armies of all nationalities and militias. The high levels of extreme violence
against civilians during the conflict can be seen as characteristic of the
forms of “new war” which are said to be emerging (Kaldor, 1998), and has
led some survivors to suggest that the extreme forms of violence they suf-
fered were proof of a plan to destroy the Congolese people or at least
certain communities in the DRC (International Alert, 2005). SGBV has
been an integral part of this violence aimed at civilian populations, but it is
not limited to violence perpetrated by the army and militias against civi-
lians. Recent research has shown that even in areas of the DRC which have
become relatively peaceful and conflict free, SGBV persists, and that an
increasing proportion of the incidences of SGBV are committed by civilians
(Freedman, 2011).
Exact statistics on the extent of SGBV are difficult, or impossible to
obtain, because of the nature of this violence, and the many obstacles to
reporting and monitoring incidents of SGBV. Numerous national and
international organizations publish statistics on levels of SGBV, but there
is little coordination between these different organizations, and the logisti-
cal difficulties on the ground mean that for many the collection of data is
only partial. The practical difficulties in reaching many rural areas means
that it is virtually impossible to collect reliable nationwide data so that
much of what is available is an extrapolation to national level from various
local studies. In addition to the practical difficulties, there are the moral
and ethical issues involved in collecting data on SGBV. Many victims of
SGBV do not report the violence due to shame or fear of stigmatization or
recriminations if they do so. Further, due to the narrow definitions of
SGBV that have been utilized by some actors (to be discussed further later
in this chapter), some victims do not even classify their experiences as inci-
dences of violence. And these narrow definitions used by some actors mean
that the statistics that they collect do not reflect the entire spectrum of
SGBV within the DRC, focusing in some instances, for example, just on
instances of rape (or on rape by armed forces and militia) against women.
In addition to the above-mentioned factors leading to under-reporting
of SGBV, it has also been suggested that there are some factors which may
in particular circumstances lead to over-reporting. These factors are linked
particularly to the ways in which some international interventions to sup-
port victims of SGBV are organized, and in particular the management of
these interventions through a results-based framework in which the princi-
pal indicator is the number of “victims” who are helped. As will be
discussed further in this chapter, these types of systems mean that NGOs
and international organizations are often keen to recruit “victims” and

may inflate their statistics, while the lack of cooperation and joint monitor-
ing mean that the same person may be counted two or more times by var-
ious different organizations as they move around between them trying to
access various services. This double, triple (or even more frequent) counting
of the same individuals makes any statistics which are reliant on data col-
lected from individual NGOs and international organizations and then
added together, run the risk of overestimating the scale of SGBV.
Despite these difficulties in collecting reliable statistical data, the evi-
dence suggests that the DRC is experiencing SGBV on a massive scale. An
article published recently in the American Journal of Public Health which
claims to be the most systematic analysis of sexual violence in the DRC,
maintains that in 2006 over 400,000 women were raped (or as many head-
lines put it “48 women raped every hour,” Peterman, Palermo, &
Bredenkamp, 2011a). The authors state that “these estimates demonstrate
that the level of sexual violence is both magnitudes higher and more geo-
graphically dispersed than previously estimated” (Peterman, Palermo, &
Bredenkamp, 2011b, p. 2). This study, based on the 2007 Demographic
Health Survey, was the center of a lively debate within the DRC where
some questioned the reliability of the demographic data used to extrapolate
from the survey’s direct findings to give a national total (Douma &
Hilhorst, 2012). This research must then be treated with some precaution,
particularly as the estimates it provides are of a far greater magnitude than
others previously reported.
Taking into account the widely differing statistics, as well as the difficul-
ties inherent in collecting accurate data on SGBV, and the particular obsta-
cles related to the situation in the DRC, it seems prudent to consider all of
these different reports and data with some caution. A more general lesson
may be, however, that the issue of statistics is not the key to understanding
or to dealing with SGBV in the DRC. It might be argued that the debates
over the number of women and men (although men are far less frequently
counted or included in the statistics) who have been victims of such vio-
lence acts to deflect attention from more fundamental questions relating to
the causes of such violence and means of prevention. While it is important
to recognize the scale of the SGBV which is going on in the DRC, it is per-
haps less important to have exact statistics than to explore the underlying
gender inequalities which cause this violence in order to provide solutions
which respond to the real experiences and needs of the local population,
both women and men.
130 JANE FREEDMAN
SGBV: NO LONGER AN INVISIBLE ISSUE
SGBV in the DRC can no longer be considered an invisible, or even a

neglected issue. Media reports across the world have highlighted the
so-called “war on women” which is in progress in the DRC, and incidences
of mass rape and sexual violence against women civilians have been widely
reported. Similarly, global political leaders, including UN representatives,
spokespeople for leading international NGOs, and national and regional
policy makers have condemned this violence against women. In fact, the
scale of media reporting on this issue has even led some to question
whether we are now focusing too much on the SGBV occurring in the
DRC (Stearns, 2009). Concerns have also been raised not only about the
volume of reporting on this issue, but on its style. Eriksson Baaz, and Stern
(2010, p. 7) evoke a concept of “SGBV (Sexual and Gender-Based
Violence) tourism” to describe the way in which journalists, human rights
activists, women’s rights activists, and representatives of various govern-
ments and international organizations have travelled to the DRC to listen
to, report on, and publicize victims’ stories of rape and sexual violence. In
this chapter we will argue that SGBV is clearly such a major problem in the
DRC, and such a fundamental attack on the human rights of the women
and men who are its victims, that it is necessary to report this issue mas-
sively to try and advocate and lobby for some real and effective action for
prevention of violence and protection of victims. We would not, therefore,
agree that there is “too much” reporting of SGBV in the DRC (or else-
where in the world). However, while it may be argued that all of these
stories and reporting of victims’ experience has worked to bring the
problem of SGBV in the DRC to the attention of the public worldwide,
and thus to move this issue higher up the global agenda, there may also be
concern that the way in which SGBV is conceptualized and understood in
these reports could actually lead to failure to address the gender inequal-
ities which lie at the root of the violence. Stereotypical colonial images of
“savage” or “barbaric” acts of sexual violence, and claims about the excep-
tional nature of the violence in the DRC are often used in such reports to
bring home to the public the seriousness of the issue. A report in the New
York Times, for example, asserts that the DRC has become “the world
capital of rape, torture and mutilation” (Kristof, 2010, p. 12). Other reports
describe the sexual violence as the result of bestial behavior by soldiers and
militia, with some even comparing them to the gorillas which live in the
DRC’s forests (Freedman, 2014). As one commentator has observed, these
types of reports produce a “pornography of violence” with different
journalists and reporters trying to outdo each other to recount the most
horrific and brutal stories of rape (Stearns, 2009). The reporting of horrific
sexual violence is not confined to newspaper reports, but also characterizes
several reports by international NGOs, and academic research and articles.
One article published in 2009 recounts how: “Women’s vaginas are tor-
tured and mutilated with spears, machetes, sticks, broken bottles, and gun
barrels … Other accounts of horrific brutality include the cutting off of
breasts, clitorises and vaginal lips with machetes and razor blades. Fathers
are forced to rape their daughters at gunpoint and sons forced to rape
their sisters and mothers … Incidents of cannibalism were reported with
mothers forced to eat the bodies of their raped children …” (Carlsen, 2009,
p. 476). This detailed reporting of the minutiae of sexual violence and tor-
ture is surprising given that the author begins her article by quoting
Carolyn Nordstrom’s warning that “studies done on rape can constitute a
form of violence in themselves … we must take care not to reproduce
systems of violence in speaking about them” (1994, p. 23).
This “pornography of violence” and the numerous shocking images and
descriptions used in reporting SGBV in the DRC might be argued to be
useful and justified in that this type of reporting has contributed to focus-
ing the attention of global political leaders and the global public at large,
on an issue which may have remained hidden. Indeed feminist analyses of
conflict and security have for many years pointed to the fact that sexual
violence (and particularly sexual violence during conflict) is a hidden or
invisible issue (Enloe, 1996, 2001), and thus it might be seen as a good thing
that this violence is made visible. However, the ending of silence on SGBV
during the conflict in the DRC has happened in a way which has not per-
haps been conducive to effectively tackling or ending this violence. As
Kirby argues, the way in which SGBV is narrated and theorized can also
have an impact on behaviors, and thus there is a pattern of co-constitution
of SGBV and accounts of SGBV (Kirby, 2012). If we accept this co-
constitution, then narrative of SGBV are important as they will have an
impact on the way those involved as perpetrators, victims or those involved
in interventions for “prevention” or “support of victims” behave and inter-
act, which can in some circumstances be problematic. In the case of the
DRC, reports of rape and sexual violence might be said to be the most
visible and most reported aspect of the conflict, and thus silence is no
longer the greatest problem (Kirby, 2012). What is more difficult is not just
making this violence visible but providing adequate theoretical and analyti-
cal frameworks and ways of understanding SGBV in particular circum-
stances. It might be argued that in the case of the DRC this is clearly what
132 JANE FREEDMAN
is missing, with many interventions being carried out in a hurried and pie-
cemeal fashion as responses to the perceived emergency of sexual violence.
We must stress here that a critique of the way in which SGBV is
reported or of the way in which some of the interventions to prevent SGBV
and to protect its victims are constructed, does not in any way imply a
belief that SGBV is not a critical problem in the DRC (as elsewhere in the
world). As argued above, arguments about the style of reporting on SGBV,
and on the nature of interventions by international organizations in preven-
tion of violence and protection of victims, do not in any way support a
view that SGBV has been over-reported, or exaggerated. Even if we have
argued that statistics in this area are unreliable, there is clear evidence that
this is a major problem. In arguing for a more nuanced and complex under-
standing of SGBV in the DRC, this chapter does not, therefore, intend to
support the argument of the 2012 Human Security Report that there has
been an overall decline in sexual violence in conflict (Human Security
Report, 2012). This report has been widely criticized for the data it has
used to support this claim and for the way that the data is interpreted. We
would support these critiques in arguing that levels of sexual violence dur-
ing conflict cannot be seen to be declining, and in fact in the DRC it seems
that the levels of SGBV are increasing even though there has been some
progress toward conflict resolution at least in some parts of the country.
However, while maintaining that SGBV is still a major problem in the
DRC and one that requires intervention for prevention at both national
and international levels, this chapter will attempt to point to some of the
difficulties and paradoxes within current intervention programs and strate-
gies, highlighting various unintended consequences that may in fact worsen
the situation in some cases.
DEFINING SGBV: IS IT JUST ABOUT RAPE

(OF WOMEN)?
As has been argued above, many of the dominant representations on
SGBV in the DRC which have been prominent in international media and
international political discourse have focused on rape of women by soldiers
and armed combatants. All of the armed forces and groups operating
in the DRC, and particularly in the Eastern Provinces of the country, as
well as the DRC’s official army the Forces Armées de la République
Démocratique du Congo (FARDC) have been named as perpetrators of
this violence (Amnesty International, 2004; Eriksson Baaz & Stern, 2009).
While it would be wrong to argue that this type of violence is not present
or not prevalent in the DRC, this narrow focus might be seen to distort the
types of programs and interventions that are planned to prevent SGBV and
to protects its victims. Clearly, as we have seen there is some link of causal-
ity between the armed conflicts that have been ongoing in the DRC and the
prevalence of SGBV, but this does not mean that rape in the context of
war is the only form of SGBV that exists in the country, nor that the armed
conflicts are the sole cause of SGBV. Indeed, in DRC, as in all societies,
incidences of SGBV are based in underlying cultures and norms of gender
inequality, norms which in many cases preexisted the current armed con-
flict, and which persist even in periods of “post-conflict” reconciliation.
Research on gender relations and constructions of dominant models of
masculinity and femininity in the DRC show a history of gender inequal-
ities and patriarchal social structures and norms (Meger, 2012). As scholars
have pointed out, variations in levels of SGBV during conflict across differ-
ent countries and regions, and across time, demonstrate that SGBV is not
an inevitable or permanent feature of armed conflicts but rather a result of
social constructions of gender inequality (Thornhill, 2012) which may in
their turn be aggravated by situations of war.
SGBV in the DRC is not limited to rape and sexual violence during
conflict but takes many forms, including rape and sexual violence, but also
domestic violence, sexual harassment, forced marriage, early marriage, and
other forms of customary violence. During focus group discussions, many
participants, both male and female, pointed to the common belief that once
married a man is entitled to have sexual relations with his wife whenever he
wants, even without her consent. The possibility of rape or sexual violence
within marriage is thus not admitted.2 Other focus group participants
pointed to a growth in the number of early and forced marriages, which
they ascribed to changing economic conditions and the desire of parents to
ensure that their daughters’ marriage was as “profitable” as possible to the
family. These are just a couple of examples of the many forms of SGBV
which currently exist in the DRC, and which are clearly linked to the inci-
dence of rape and sexual violence committed during “conflict” or by armed
groups. Despite this, many of the interventions by NGOs and international
organizations aimed at preventing violence or helping survivors, focus nar-
rowly on “sexual violence” or “rape,” and even more specifically on sexual
violence perpetrated by armed groups or soldiers. In an interview on
SGBV in the DRC, a representative of MONUSCO, the UN mission in the
DRC, argued for example that their programs on gender violence could
134 JANE FREEDMAN
and should concentrate only on rape and sexual violence in the East of the
country, because that is where armed conflict was still ongoing and where
the vast majority of the war-related sexual violence was taking place. She
argued that conflict-related sexual violence could be seen as separate from
other forms of gender-based violence, and that as it was incomparably
worse, it should be the focus for international intervention.3 This focus on
sexual violence and rape in conflict, and the insistence that it is somehow
“different” and “separate” from other forms of violence acts to “ungender”
these other forms of violence (Eriksson Baaz & Stern, 2010). In other
words, it leads to a neglect of the gendered nature of other forms of
violence and of the links between these other forms of violence and sexual
violence and rape in conflict. This neglect might be seen as a cause for the
failure of many interventions to prevent SGBV in the DRC. As many fem-
inist scholars have pointed out, all of the various forms of gender-based
violence can be seen as a continuum (Cockburn, 2004), which is based in
unequal gender relations and prescriptive gender norms. Thus, to under-
stand the fundamental causes of rape and sexual violence in conflict, it is
necessary not to treat these as separate phenomena, but to link them to
other forms of gender-based violence which exist in societies and to seek to
understand how the underlying gender relations and the dominant con-
structions and norms of masculinity and femininity in a society can pro-
duce varying forms of violence. To consider rape and sexual violence as
somehow separate from these other forms of violence and inequality is
both to remove a source of comprehension of the roots of this violence,
and also to risk concentrating resources on preventing one type of violence
while ignoring others. Considering the question of impunity for perpetra-
tors of rape, for example, it is difficult to understand judges’ unwillingness
to hear claims of rape and the police’s reluctance to investigate these
claims, without placing these acts within a continuum of violence experi-
enced by Congolese women, which has been “normalized” and become
socially acceptable (Lincoln, 2011).
Thus, SGBV in the DRC should not be viewed only as a product of the
conflicts in the country, but must also be considered in relations to persis-
tent gender inequalities that characterize Congolese society (Freedman,
2011). These gender inequalities remain visible at all levels of social, eco-
nomic, and cultural life. Concerning women’s economic status, for exam-
ple, statistics show that 61.5 percent of female headed households are living
below the poverty line as opposed to 54.3 percent of male households.
Women’s economic activity is largely concentrated in traditional agricul-
ture and in the informal sector, where they have no protection against
exploitation of various kinds. And even where women do most of the agri-
cultural work, they frequently do not profit from this work as their hus-
bands still control their earnings. Women have little access to services such
as health or education. One in two adult women is illiterate (as opposed to
one in five adult men), with the rate of illiteracy remaining significantly
higher for women than for men 41.1 percent for women and 14.2 percent
for men (Freedman, 2011). These inequalities are unlikely to diminish in
the near future as girls have consistently less access to education than boys,
with families judging that it is a better investment to place their scarce
resources into boys’ education. In addition, discriminatory laws and cus-
tomary laws still exist which limit women’s access to land resources and
inheritance. If we understand SGBV as stemming from underlying struc-
tures and processes of inequality, then it is important to find means of
prevention of such violence through addressing gender inequality in a com-
prehensive way. The approaches which focus only on rape as a separate
form of violence are thus unlikely to be effective in finding a sustainable
solution to the problem.
In addition to creating a theoretical and conceptual separation between
different forms of gender-based violence, this approach to rape and sexual
violence as only conflict related (and not as a product of more generally
unequal gender relations in society) means that many anti-violence pro-
grams also target only specific geographic regions of the DRC (particularly
the Eastern Regions of North and South Kivu which are considered to be
those where the “worst violence” is taking place. Thus, many international
organizations and NGOs have targeted all or almost all of their funding
and resources to these areas, leaving the rest of the country with few exter-
nally funded programs to prevent SGBV or support its victims.
Another important blind spot or neglect of many of the programs to
prevent SGBV and protect its victims in the DRC is the failure to consider
male victims. While it seems clear that women do make up the majority of
victims of SGBV, SGBV against men is an important phenomenon, and
one that is often overlooked. It is even more difficult to assess the scale of
SGBV against men and boys because of the even greater stigma attached to
this form of violence for the men who are victims and thus they rarely
report violence. And organizations working in the area of SGBV rarely
provide statistics on male victims. This very strong stigma attached to sex-
ual violence and rape of men can be explained in contexts such as the DRC
by the dominant constructions of masculinity which are strongly dissonant
with any kind of victim status (Eriksson Baaz & Stern, 2010). However,
anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that sexual violence against men is
136 JANE FREEDMAN
a relatively frequent occurrence.4 El Bushra relates that International

Alert’s partners who provide refuges for abused women in South Kivu
have been increasingly approached by men victims of sexual violence who
are looking for support, and for whose needs there is no provision (El
Bushra, 2011). Russell also points to this lack of any support or treatment
facilities for men who have been victims of sexual violence and identifies
this as a significant failure of the international agencies approach to the
issue (Russell, 2007). Men who have been victims of such violence often do
not talk about or admit to having been victims, but the psychological
effects may be severe. In focus group discussions around the incidence and
causes of SGBV men were keen to stress that women were also perpetrators
of violence and had raped men. These opinions stated forcefully seem to
demonstrate a form of vulnerability or a fear felt by many of the men parti-
cipants, who without wishing to talk openly about experiences of violence
of which they may have been the victim, clearly felt that this type of
violence was a real issue for Congolese society. The fact that nearly all of
the funding for SGBV prevention and protection activities is channeled
into programs that target women victims of violence is thus a real problem.
CREATING A “MARKET” FOR PREVENTION

AND PROTECTION
One of the possible implications of the way in which the problem of SGBV
in the DRC has been framed and understood, and of the way in which
international organizations, funding agencies, and donors have tried to
intervene to prevent violence and protect victims, has been the creation
of a “market” for services for prevention and protection. This “market” or
“commercialization” of rape and sexual violence can be understood at sev-
eral levels, both in terms of various organizations competing for the large
amounts of international funding being channeled into SGBV programs,
and in terms of individuals adapting to these new programs and coming to
understand the potential “benefits” of being or being perceived as a victim
of rape or sexual violence. These unintended and unforeseen consequences
can be understood in the context of a country experiencing widespread and
extreme poverty and lack of basic social or health services, with little
national or local infrastructure or governance. Into such a setting, interna-
tional organizations and bilateral and multilateral donors have begun to
pour relatively huge financial resources to fight against rape and sexual
Paramount among them was the need to establish a preliminary in-depth

understanding of how the 2010 reforms have impacted women, as to date
no empirical research had been conducted on the outcomes of the reforms.
Secondly, an exploratory research design was ideal for allowing me to
understand the relational and contextual dynamics surrounding the 2010
reforms. My goal in understanding this impact of the 2010 reforms was to
get a greater sense of the way social power is constructed in Bali, and how
this construction is gendered.
My design drew from grounded theory methodology, which offered an
ideal approach for this inquiry as it hones in on social processes underlying
phenomena observed (Glaser, 1992) and places emphasis on processes of
social construction (Charmaz, 1990). Moreover, grounded theory allowed
me to focus on how women’s gender-ideological identities are socially
constructed within the context of Balinese culture, and how the processes
guiding this construction are informed by larger social constructions of
power, access, and privilege.
My sample of 18 individuals included academics, legal activists, profes-
sionals employed in NGO programs directly addressing gender-based
violence in Bali, adult children (over 18 years of age) of Balinese women that
have been abused by their husbands, and women who themselves were peti-
tioning for divorces under the 2010 reforms. I augmented semi-structured
and informal interviews with extensive participant observations in the
community where I lived while conducting my fieldwork. This included
the family in whose home I lived in Bali, as well as the members of the
community with whom I interacted daily at the market, at local food stalls,
at religious ceremonies, and while doing the “deep hanging out” (Geertz,
1998) that constitutes much of ethnographic participant observation.
Definition of Terms Used in Research Design
The 2010 reforms addressed economic, proprietary, and custodial structural

challenges encumbering women’s ability to leave violent marriages.
Therefore, an analysis exploring the how legal reforms assisted in women’s
ability to leave violent marriages should evaluate the success of a divorce in
part on a divorced woman’s ability to economically provide for herself
and any dependent children, attain property rights of joint marital property,
and gain custody rights of her children. For the purposes of my
study, I relied on language from the 2004 Indonesian national law Undung
undung 23/2004, which outlaws the affliction of “physical, emotional and
138 JANE FREEDMAN
the creation of a huge number of local NGOs which claim that they are
devoted to providing services to victims of SGBV in the hope of gaining
some part of the international aid money which is being focused on this
theme. It is impossible to give reliable figures on the numbers of local and
national organizations which have been created to implement programs to
prevent SGBV or give aid to victims, but one study in the North and South
Kivu Regions estimated that there are at least 300 400 organizations in
each region which claims to be providing services related to SGBV. The
authors (Douma & Hilhorst, 2012) of this label many of these organiza-
tions “opportunist”; some of them have existed for a reasonably long time
but without previously having claimed to work on women’s rights or
SGBV, others have been created recently in what can be interpreted as a
strategy to make money for their founders through gaining grants to work
on SGBV-related projects. In focus groups carried out in various locations
in the DRC, some participants pointed to this flourishing of organizations
devoted to SGBV-related programs, and evidence emerged of a competi-
tion for funding between different organizations, with members of some
NGOs criticizing others for their lack of authenticity or their failure to deli-
ver effective services. A professor and researcher interviewed in June 2013
described what he called the “NGO illness” in the DRC. He argued that
the incessant rush after funding from international donors led to a failure
to engage in real analysis or research, with the priority being to respond to
the donors’ needs and demands in order to receive the funding.
This “market” for services related to SGBV does not just affect organi-
zations, but also has impacts at the individual level. Our research in the
DRC has also pointed to a range of unintended and unforeseen conse-
quences of interventions on SGBV among both women and men who may
be possible clients of these programs. One interviewee working for a large
international NGO pointed to the paradoxes involved in opening a clinic
for victims of SGBV in a remote rural area of the DRC. She described the
surprise of her colleagues in the organization when the number of women
who came to the clinic they had set up for survivors of SGBV was more
than four times that which had been expected. They had apparently failed
to realize that in a region with no free local health care, any clinic that
offered free gynecological services would be quickly swamped with women
claiming to be victims of rape or sexual violence. In fact, many of these
women were “merely” suffering the consequences of having experienced
pregnancy and childbirth (and in many cases multiple childbirths) without
adequate medical care or attention, and the only way in which they could
get medical care was to claim to be a victim of rape or sexual violence.6
This type of story is repeated many times across the country, and not only
in relation to medical services. Other organizations may provide “victims”
of SGBV with financial aid, food, or access to training and rehabilitation
programs. All of these clearly provide incentives for women and girls to
claim victimhood in the hope of accessing these services. As well as creating
practical and ethical problems for those involved in administering these
programs, the existence of such strong incentives to victimhood serves to
reinforce the gendered divide between women “victims” and men “perpe-
trators” of violence. Thus, rather than reducing gender inequalities, this
type of program may reinforce the dominant norms and constructions of
gender roles.
During many of the focus group discussions carried out in the DRC,
both men and women participants pointed to the way in which women
could now use claims of SGBV to “entrap” men in order to gain some
financial advantage. They argued that the constant discourse of victimiza-
tion of women created conditions in which it was tempting for women to
claim that they had been victims of sexual violence in order to demand
compensation from the supposed perpetrator, or else to take revenge for a
previous dispute by attempting to get this supposed perpetrator arrested.
One participant described a case where a woman had visited a man at his
home at night and had offered to have sexual relations with him, and then
later claimed that he had raped her in order to gain financial compensation
from him.7 Others reported cases of families claiming their daughters had
been victims of sexual violence in order to gain compensation from other
families (e.g., to gain land or cattle as compensation from the supposed
perpetrator’s family). Some participants in the focus groups pointed to
changes in the way that local police and courts were treating cases of
alleged SGBV and attributed these changes to external pressures on local
justice systems. They argued that due to the pressure of international orga-
nizations and NGOs claiming an end to impunity for aggressors and perpe-
trators of sexual violence, local police, and courts were too quick to arrest
supposed perpetrators in cases like this, and that innocent men could too
often find themselves in court, faced with charges of rape and sexual vio-
lence, and be imprisoned even if the evidence against them was not substan-
tial.8 Some interviewees and participants in focus group discussions went
so far as to claim that men were now the “real victims” of sexual violence
in the DRC because of the way in which women and their families could
instrumentalize rape claims in this way to gain financial or other benefits.
These findings of perceptions that women are somehow using claims of
SGBV to entrap men, and for personal or financial gain, are echoed in
140 JANE FREEDMAN
other research from the DRC. A report on community perceptions of sex-

ual violence in the Eastern DRC quotes local men who believe that
“women are starting to profit from the term rape in order to avoid paying
their debts” (Dolan, 2010, p. 28). The spread of such perceptions is dama-
ging in that it acts to discredit all claims of SGBV even from those who
actually are victims. To compound this problem, these perceptions and
remarks that men are now the “real victims” of SGBV, were made not only
by men, but by women themselves. Thus, the remarks cannot be explained
away as a mere backlash by men against advances made in the protection
of women’s rights, but must be understood more as a common understand-
ing co-constructed with dominant representations of SGBV and the inter-
national initiatives which aim to address this issue.
CONCLUSION
This chapter has sought to demonstrate the ways in which limited defini-
tions of SGBV have led to the failure of some international interventions
aimed at preventing violence or at providing support for its victims. Some
of these interventions have had perverse impacts which may actually have
worsened problems of gender inequality in the country. There is a real need
to take action to prevent SGBV in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
However, it can be argued that the current situation where the inflow of
international donor money has created a “market” for programs and pro-
jects for prevention of SGBV and protection of its victims is not doing any-
thing to help to solve the problem. What is needed is a more thorough
analysis and understanding of the roots of SGBV, including the persistence
of different forms of gender inequality such as economic inequalities, discri-
minatory laws and customs, and the exclusion of women from political
power and representation. The focus both of funding and programs on a
particular form of sexual violence rape in conflict or by armed groups
could be understood as a type of bio-politics of development (Harcourt &
Escobar, 2002), whereby UN and NGO interventions create a focus on
“women as bodies,” in this case bodies that are the subjects of violence.
While this focus emerges from a real concern with the fate of women in the
DRC, the impacts may in fact undermine their own struggle for rights.
Perhaps it may be argued that international organizations and NGOs
should spend more time analyzing the real situation of women in the DRC
and listening more closely to what these women have to say, in order to be
able to support their own local struggles, rather than imposing on them
this bio-political developmental framework.
NOTES
1. Interview, Bukavu (2013, June).
2. Focus group discussion with 30 male and female students, Bukavu (2013,
June).
3. Interview (2010, December).
4. Interview with UNHCR representative (2011, October).
5. This figure includes money devoted to USAID projects on victim protection,
health services, psychological support, behavior change for prevention of SGBV,
among others, as well as money donated by the State Department through various
partners following Hillary Clinton’s visit to the DRC in 2010.
6. Interview (2010, December). This story also illustrates the way in which inter-
national organizations and NGOs may come to over-count the number of “victims”
of SGBV, thus leading to the statistical inaccuracies which were discussed earlier.
7. Focus group participant (2012, March).
8. Focus group discussions (2012, June).
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According to legal activists at the Indonesian Women’s Association for

Justice and Legal Aid Institute, known locally by its Indonesian acronym
LBH APIK, Balinese gender ideologies positioned a married women as
property of her husband’s family. LBH APIK operates similarly to The
Legal Aid Society in the United States, providing direct legal services to
individual clients, as well as conducting advocacy on issues of social welfare
and justice. LBH APIK lawyers had been instrumental in pushing for the
2010 reforms, and had been working hands on with DV victims petitioning
for rights granted by the reforms. Their intimate involvement from both
the institutional and the individual level provided rich insight about the cul-
tural context in which the reforms were enacted. When daughters married,
they transitioned from being a financial burden on their family of origin to
the property of their husbands. The transaction was necessary financially
for the daughter’s family as historically women were not able to bring in
income. It was also beneficial for the husband’s family, as the newly
acquired daughter became responsible for the upkeep of the family land.
My research participants from LBH APIK explained that these concep-
tions had slowly, tepidly begun to subside in recent decades with the influx
of Western culture and increased transnational tourism.
Third Party Post-Conflict Investment Sparks Resurgence of Traditional Law
When Soeharto’s regime fell in 1998, the World Bank made significant
investments in programs to strengthen local governance structures using
prescriptive economic policies that emphasize privatization of state
enterprises, market driven economies, and legal protection for property
rights an approach unleashed by Washington, DC based organizations
upon countries transitioning from crisis so uniformly that the model has
become known as the Washington Consensus (Williamson, 1989). In
Indonesia, the World Bank’s investment was made in an effort to limit the
likelihood of another central dictatorship from taking hold (Bergeron, 2003;
Henley & Davidson, 2008). What this “strengthened local governance”
translated to in many areas of Indonesia was a “frantic rediscovery”
(Henley & Davidson, 2008, p. 816) of Adat customary law structures, fos-
tered in large part by ideological and material support from the World Bank
for indigenous law structures. In Bali, the resurgence of Adat heralded a
renewed embracing of these gender ideologies in juridical-political institu-
tions. This in turn reinvigorated gender ideologies that marginalized women
from positions of power within family life. The strengthened Adat system
146 COLETTE HARRIS
Practical and social implications Nevertheless, it shows the impor-

tance of participatory gender analysis for sociocultural transformation at
community level.
Originality/value This chapter makes a contribution to the literature
on the use of participatory gender analysis in the global south.
Keywords: Gender identities; masculinities; dispositional power;
episodic power; northern Uganda; violence
INTRODUCTION
It is axiomatic that violence plays a significant role in armed conflict and it

has long been realized, particularly by feminist scholars, that at the grass-
roots level at least, violence does not end with the signing of peace treaties.
In fact, it has become endemic even in many societies where this kind of
conflict has not occurred. In both cases, making positive change requires
tackling the root causes of the violence, which are likely to be complex and
include political, economic, and social issues. In all this, the role played by
gender has been little considered (Pankhurst, 2003).
In this chapter I suggest tensions between traditional notions of gen-
dered power relations and the realities of contemporary life, particularly
but not exclusively to do with men’s dwindling economic capacity, play
a significant role in multiple kinds of violence at both community and
domestic levels, especially in post-conflict settings. I explore this through a
study of the Acholi people of northern Uganda in the return home after
years of incarceration in displacement camps, examining the role of gender
in both causing violence and providing potential solutions, focusing mainly
on the use of participatory gender analysis within an overall context of
community-based development.
Within the development field, gender is often understood as a proxy for
women or women’s rights and gender analysis associated with improving
aspects of women’s lives. However, here I use the term gender in a some-
what different sense in relation to the sets of social norms which people
are pressured into conforming to in order to be viewed as acceptable
members of their communities (Harris, 2004, p. 14). A major focus of gen-
der analysis will then be the impact on gender relations of the efforts males
in particular find themselves making in order to deal with these pressures.
Using Participatory Gender Analysis for Violence Reduction 147
It is my contention that this is at the root of much interpersonal violence

(see Harris, 2012a).
This chapter is based on data collected under the auspices of the
EU-funded MICROCON project, a multi-country, multi-institution pro-
gram that researched micro levels of violence, for which I acted as gender
advisor. I was also principal investigator for the northern Uganda project
described here, an area chosen because of my strong links with the country
as both researcher and community educator. The fact that the war was
drawing to an end at the time this project started made it an appropriate
site for studying the aftermath. Using an approach I have successfully
deployed in other conflict-related settings such as post-civil war Tajikistan
(1997 2001), and riot-prone northern Nigeria (2007 2011) (see, e.g.,
Harris, 2007, 2014a), I established the education project that is the focus of
this chapter, with the aim of mitigating the impact of the war, paying
special attention to reducing levels of interpersonal violence.
The project ran from mid-2007 to mid-2011. It started with a brief
visit to the displacement camps and continued from 2008 to 2009 with a
one-year ethnographic research project studying social conditions in two
villages in Gulu District. The project focused largely on masculinities,
which had been highlighted as an issue by the older men in the camps. The
data collection was carried out by local fieldworkers, one male and one
female, who paid weekly visits to each village. On the basis of the findings,
in 2009 a one-year community education project was established. Some of
the instruction for this was carried out by me but the majority was done by
local facilitators, whom I trained in post-Freirean pedagogies, with a strong
focus on gender. In 2010 and again a year later the project’s impact was
evaluated through discussions with participants from both the project sites
and nearby villages (see Harris, 2012b). In February 2013 it was assessed
once more by the London-based organization, International Alert.1 The
project data consisted of my own notes, the fieldworkers’ write-ups of
the ethnographic study, and the observations of the facilitators of the
education project.
The project attracted a core group of some 40 participants, divided fairly
equally among junior and senior men and women, but in line with the local
demographic there was a preponderance of young people and more older
women than men. The participants chose the topics they wished to study,
among which were the multiple violences they felt exposed to. These
included high levels of violence against women2 and children as well as
male-on-male violence, but especially a general atmosphere of mistrust and
aggression within and between families and communities (Harris, 2012b).
148 COLETTE HARRIS
I argue in this chapter that much community and domestic level violence
in northern Uganda today, as indeed in most other African communities
where I have worked, emanates from struggles to ward off chaos by an
insistence on preserving gender norms no longer coherent with a material
environment altered almost beyond recognition by (neo)colonialism and
neoliberal globalizing capitalism (Harris, 2012c). Carrying out participa-
tory gender analysis allows populations to make the issue explicit and find
their own ways of dealing with it, coherent both with the new material
circumstances and their sociocultural norms.
The chapter starts by presenting my conceptual framework. This is
followed by a look at the historical and cultural background of the partici-
pants, after which the central section focuses on the education project and
its gender-analytical component. The chapter ends with a discussion of the
impact this had on the communities concerned before concluding that this
kind of gender analysis was in fact a crucial factor in violence reduction
through the changes participants decided to make in gender relations that
greatly improved the local environment.
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
Gendered Power Structures and Violence
As suggested above, my use of the term gender concerns the effects of

pressures to conform to culture-specific behavior patterns embedded in
local systems in which each gendered position is viewed as holding a parti-
cular level of power. This is less applicable, however, to precolonial Africa
where it has been suggested that gender was less important than age as
regards power relations so that, while men occupied somewhat higher
positions in public life, there seems to have been a considerable degree
of equality between the sexes (Amadiume, 1997; Bakare-Yusuf, 2002;
Nzegwu, 1998).
In precolonial Acholiland, senior men oversaw the management of the
family resources, while their in-marrying wives carried out their everyday
administration, thus enhancing the power position of both. Sons accessed
resources via their fathers but could boost their reputation through inde-
pendent action, while daughters gained status through marriage into
another clan, evidenced by the size of the bride price paid for them and the
opportunity to cement useful alliances (Harris, 2012a).
After the introduction of capitalist economic relationships under

colonialism, access to money became a further important symbol of power,
mainly bestowed on men via the institution of the male breadwinner
emanating from the patriarchal culture of Europe. Coupled with a clear
belief in male superiority on the part of Christian missionaries, this encour-
aged a significant increase in masculine power among the Acholi (Harris,
2014b) as, indeed, elsewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa (Amadiume, 1997). As
a result, gender power has grown to rival age power in these settings,
producing what I have termed a gender-age system (Harris, 2012a).
This is a more complex set of power relations than the simpler binary
system of western gender theory. Here senior men are the most powerful
and junior women the least, and senior women wield considerable power
over younger family members of both sexes. Junior men, meanwhile, find
themselves in an ambivalent position. As men they are supposed to be
powerful but as youths they are subservient to their elders; it is in an
attempt to overcome this that they strive for independent ways to demon-
strate their masculinity.
The power that such positioning within the gender hierarchy bestows
has been termed dispositional that is, power inherent not in the personal
qualities of those concerned but in the “system of power” in which they are
entrenched. It is from this that those in higher positions derive their author-
ity (Haugaard, 2010, p. 425; Sennett, 1980). People also have access to
episodic power that is, agency, or the capacity to act (Haugaard, 2010).
Their ability to exercise this power, however, is constrained by their level of
dispositional power so those in the lowest positions may have to restrict
themselves to what James Scott has termed weapons of the weak hidden
or indirect action that does not openly challenge the authority of the
(dispositionally) powerful (Scott, 1985). Both dispositional and episodic
power may be positive the former allowing people to feel respected and
comfortable within themselves and the latter facilitating positive action.3
However, all too often they function in a negative manner, through people
seeking entitlements above their capacity to command them and/or using
agency to the detriment of others.
This last tends to occur when people find themselves unable to command
the authority they believe their dispositional positioning entitles them to.
Hannah Arendt suggests lost authority is almost impossible to recuperate.
However, people frequently try to do so through applying negative episodic
power in such a way that it amounts to violence (Arendt, 1969).4 I suggest
this is not limited to the physical, but may encompass other kinds of vio-
lence too, and that it is likely to be proportional to the level of dispositional
150 COLETTE HARRIS
power those concerned believe themselves entitled to. Meanwhile, anyone

no longer acknowledging the authority emanating from other people’s
dispositional power position may feel justified in using direct rather than
indirect action to defy them.
All this has important consequences for societies in turmoil. In post-war
Acholiland the dispositional power senior men believe themselves entitled
to hold was traditionally derived from the gender-age system outlined
above, and grounded in their command of family resources. Today, how-
ever, their power is threatened by a lack of material means. Despite no
longer being able to provide adequately for their families, these men still
insist on their authority being acknowledged. Junior males may also be
unable to demonstrate masculinity either in the historically privileged ways
discussed below or through capitalist-related breadwinning.
Women too expect to hold a certain level of power, albeit less than their
male peers. The fact that historically, senior women’s power derived in part
from administering their husbands’ resources, allowed them to expect to
hold authority over younger people of both sexes. Problems arise today
when parents’ resources no longer permit them fully to provide for their
children while they continue to demand the same levels of respect and
obedience as before. This is exacerbated when the younger generation is
better educated than their elders.
The result is a situation in which everyone feels thwarted. Desperate to
regain the authority they believe their dispositional positioning entitles
them to but with little idea of how to go about it, they may try to do so
through violence. Thus, a mother may slap children who refuse to obey
her, older siblings hit younger ones and so on. Senior men generally have
the greatest power to exercise agency and the highest level of sociocultural
acceptability that facilitates their use of physical, sexual, emotional, and/or
psychological violence against family members.
Again, junior men lacking high-status ways of demonstrating their mas-
culinity, the most important of which today is likely to be through compe-
tence in breadwinning, may well use violence as a substitute, including by
bullying younger family members or (sexually) molesting girls. Where
circumstances permit, involvement in riots, rebel armies, or gangs is another
potential outlet, youths often pressuring each other into participating
through appeals to local standards of manhood (Harris, 2014a). In other
words, young men unable to demonstrate appropriate masculinity by other
means may find themselves vulnerable to being coerced into participating in
various forms of violence.
For all these groups, therefore, individuals associate certain entitlements

with gendered positionality. The more people feel their expectations
thwarted, the more likely they are to resort to violence (Harris, 2014a;
Moore, 1994). It is this that explains the association of gendered power and
violence.
Participatory Gender Analysis
Gender analysis as advocated by gender and development experts is often

complex, and carried out by specialists (see, e.g., Moser, 1993; Smyth,
1999) so the term is seldom associated with grass-roots work. However,
experience has shown that community-based analysis forms an extremely
powerful basis for the production of positive social change. An excellent
example of this is the project developed by Nikki Kandirikirira in Namibia,
in which participatory action research focusing on community analysis
ended by significantly transforming gender relations in a setting damaged
by years of apartheid (Kandirikirira, 2002). Alice Welbourn’s Stepping
Stones, an HIV-prevention program that has been implemented in Uganda
and other African settings, also works through community-based analyses
aimed at changing gender norms. In both these programs high improve-
ments in interpersonal relations have been reported (Jewkes et al., 2007;
Kandirikirira, 2002; Wallace, 2006).
A somewhat similar approach is taken by the REFLECT circle pro-
grams established to support literacy training by the international NGO,
ActionAid. REFLECT places no specific emphasis on gender norms but
participants are strongly encouraged to pay attention to such issues
(Friedrich, 2004), especially in those circles that have incorporated elements
of Stepping Stones. This has even been formalized into a combined pro-
gram known as STAR (Okello et al., 2008). All these programs work with
both men and women in a range of age groups.
Even when not attempting to tackle gender norms as such, women-
centered development programs frequently provide an environment in
which participants end up discussing these issues. For instance, the Dalit
women’s group with whom Sujata Khandekar worked in Mumbai (India)
was primarily involved in literacy training. However, the women formed a
discussion group through which they effectively carried out their own
gender analyses. They even tried to act on ideas emanating from this in an
attempt to improve their lives and those of their families, although they
152 COLETTE HARRIS
were unable to prevent a certain level of hijacking of their project by forces

bent on destroying their attempts at producing change (Khandekar, 2004).
In the northern Ugandan project under discussion here, the gender ana-
lysis is carried out through discovery-based pedagogies, described below,
an approach that helps participants develop their own understanding of
the issues concerned. The aim was to encourage the re-evaluation of their
practices in the light of current circumstances, with any changes emerging
organically from the Acholi sociocultural context rather than from
attempts to inculcate western notions of women’s rights (Wendoh &
Wallace, 2006). The task of the project staff, themselves Acholi, was to
provide analytical tools to support the development of critical thinking
and leave the rest up to those primarily concerned that is, to encourage
participants to make change while minimizing influencing the direction of
that change.
Of course, the very fact of promoting change raises the question of inter-
ference with local cultures and customs. In my view, the notion that we
should leave other cultures in some supposedly pristine untouched form
makes little sense. Even among indigenous communities few are unaffected
by influences emanating from the west and most of the rest have been sub-
jected to at least some of the vicissitudes occasioned by (neo)colonialism
and/or capitalism. Certainly, such exposure has been the lot of all those
communities where I have carried out participatory gender analyses in
Central and South Asia, West and East Africa, and South America leav-
ing them in dire need of help to deal with the problems thus caused.
However, I believe it is essential that such help not consist of telling people
what to do nor of suggesting what kinds of gender relations should be
created. To this end, it is essential to use facilitators from the same cultural
groupings as the communities with whom they work.
It is also vital to incorporate as many people from those communities
as possible, including members of all groups concerned, since to make
meaningful social change of the kind that creates more egalitarian societies,
a critical mass of the inhabitants must be involved, especially important
being the more powerful. For gender work this requires the participation of
significant numbers of men, especially senior men.
In this respect, something that greatly contributed to the effectiveness of
the northern Ugandan project was that it placed men and women, as well
as youths of both sexes, in a situation where the social groups regularly
communicated with one another. This not only allowed each one to put
forward their own viewpoints and thus to learn that it was acceptable to
communicate their ideas to the others but also taught them to listen to
years. The son’s wife would take care of the cooking and responsibilities
for the ritual offerings.
The Gendered Burden of the “Ritual” Economy
The use of land, the economy, and the spiritual traditions of the island are
all tightly interwoven. Also, they are all deeply dependent on women’s
maintenance of culturally defined gendered norms. In the days leading up
to the ceremony of Galungan, which celebrates the conquest of the indigen-
ous Bali Aga by the Javanese (the island adjacent to Bali), women work
from early morning until late into the night to prepare thousands of offer-
ings. While the holiday has more shared origins with the celebration of
Columbus Day in the United States, the ubiquitous tourist explanation is
that Galungan is “Bali Christmas,” and is accompanied by elaborate and
enormous ritual offerings, for which women are primarily responsible for
producing. As the tourism industry has increased, so too has the complex-
ity and size of the offerings, and the amount of hours that women spend
producing them. A friend’s CPU went kaput the night before Galungan,
and the computer technician that was attempting to resurrect it was chat-
ting to me about his family’s preparations for the holiday while he poked
and prodded the obstinate machine as I sat in her kitchen munching on
tempeh topped with sambal.
My query as to how holiday prep was going at his house prompted the
technician to tell me that he and his wife were really eager to move back to
Java, where she was originally from, because the pressure for her to help
the women in his family prepare the ritual offerings was endangering her
health. Despite being six months pregnant with their first child, his mother,
aunts, sisters, and cousins had insisted on having her assistance, and she
had been working to prepare offerings from 3 a.m. until midnight for the
preceding three days. She had started bleeding vaginally. But the holiday
was upon them, and the bleeding was not too bad, his aunts had said. And
so the pressure for her to continue to assist in making ritual objects had
not ceased. And neither had the bleeding. Even though the computer tech-
nician was worried for her health and the health of their unborn baby, the
pressure from the family for her to assist in the propagation of Balinese
culture constrained his ability to advocate on their behalf.
The morning of Galungan, I awoke to the sounds of chanting, bells,
and the smell of (very, very strong and slightly unpleasant) garlic-y spice
wafting into my window at five in the morning. Stumbling sleepily to the
154 COLETTE HARRIS
suppress any tendency to revolt. The subsistence element was further dis-
turbed when many men went to serve as laborers on southern plantations
and others were incorporated into the police service and armed forces.
Conversion to Christianity brought with it opportunities for mission
schooling, resulting in educated Acholi males entering the civil service in
large numbers. After Uganda gained independence in 1962, the Acholi con-
tinued to form a significant proportion of bureaucrats, and throughout the
following decade they occupied prominent positions in national politics
(Branch, 2011; Mamdani, 1976).
As a result, they came strongly under attack when President Idi Amin
was consolidating his power base in the 1970s. From the mid-1980s, after
the National Resistance Movement led by Yoweri Museveni conquered the
Ugandan state, they were again treated with hostility, resulting in a civil
war between the government and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) that
lasted from 1987 to 2007. During this period atrocities against the Acholi
people were committed by both sides, including the looting of the vast
majority of their cattle. In the mid-1990s, the government incarcerated the
rural population in camps, where they stayed, subjected to considerable
levels of abuse, until the signing of a provisional peace accord after which,
from 2007 they were permitted to return to their villages (Branch, 2011).
Gender and Violence among the Acholi
There are many studies of gender and violence that concentrate on the rela-
tionship between militarization and masculinities (see, e.g., Enloe, 2007;
Theidon, 2009), showing how in times of war, states may deliberately
attempt to narrow down the available characteristics of masculinity to
those coherent with war-making in order to gain support for military activ-
ities, despite most men not actually joining the armed forces (Dolan, 2002).
In Acholiland, while some men entered the state military and some 66,000
youths were abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and com-
pelled to serve with the rebels (Annan, Blattman, & Horton, 2006, p. 55),
the majority ended up in the displacement camps. By 2007, when I first
visited northern Uganda many men had been in these camps for up to a
decade, subjected to attacks by the rebels, controlled by the government
and international organizations, and even raped by government soldiers.
They thus felt they existed in a situation of forced helplessness, which the
men felt had emasculated them, a situation referred to by Chris Dolan as
social torture (Dolan, 2009). They believed the international community
had contributed to this by elevating the position of Acholi women, first by

putting resources such as food into their hands instead of giving them to
the men, and then by providing rights training to women and children that
encouraged resistance to patriarchal power (Branch, 2011, p. 142). Small
wonder senior men told me and anyone else willing to listen that among
their first tasks in the return would be to restore their masculinity, ensuring
family members respected their superior position as sanctioned by Acholi
culture.
It was in order to study the implications of this that I established my
ethnographic study. The findings made it clear that senior men were indeed
attempting to reassert their masculinity, including by keeping all decision-
making firmly in their own hands and trying to force wives and older
children to submit to their will.
What these men had not considered was the fact that they no longer
possessed the resources that had previously bolstered their power position
since all their property had disappeared during the war. Most families had
returned home with only a few tools and seeds to help restart their lives.
With the loss of the oxen formerly used for plowing, the senior men had to
rope in their wives and older children to help them prepare the land manu-
ally, thus subjecting them to long working hours and physically demanding
labor, while insisting on unilaterally controlling all decision-making regard-
ing the disposal of the resultant crops.
The senior men were not alone in trying to restore their power position.
Senior women also felt they had lost authority with the youths during
their time in the camps and were attempting to reclaim this in the return.
This often resulted in heavy-handed treatment of younger family members
by both parents, producing considerable resentment. Meanwhile, young
men set out to prove their masculinity through competition with their
peers, which at times even took the form of forced sex with young village
women.
As a consequence, the gender-age system was being applied in such a
way that almost everyone experienced distress. Those who thought they
should occupy the upper positions felt the ground shifting beneath them as
they tried, often in vain, to claim the authority they believed they were
entitled to, while this was resented and resisted by those supposedly
situated in lower power positions. The result was generalized violence.
This was exacerbated by resentment of former LRA abductees who had
also returned to their villages and were being treated not as victims but
as responsible for the wartime suffering of the rest of the community. The
reason was that the young men had been made to fight their own people,
156 COLETTE HARRIS
while many of the young women had been compelled to marry LRA com-
manders and bear their children, hereby disgracing their families. Both
groups thus felt alienated from their fellow villagers, which served to
exacerbate the emotional suffering emanating from their time with the
rebels. This was the situation at the start of the education project.
THE EDUCATION PROJECT

We started by organizing a meeting in each village at which we invited the
entire population to participate. Those interested were divided into groups
by sex and age producing senior and junior men’s and women’s groups
with whom weekly meetings, lasting 90 120 minutes, would be held over
the course of six months to a year. At the introductory gathering each group
produced a list of their most pressing problems,6 which then served as a basis
for devising their own “curricula” (Harris, 2012b). The data from the ethno-
graphic research helped the facilitation team understand the context of these
problems and so facilitated their engagement with the issues raised by the
participants.
The pedagogic approach was discovery based. This functions via a pro-
cess of guided learning that promotes students’ own analyses of the issues
concerned and helps them devise their own solutions (Bruner, 1961). While
western applications tend to favor individual learning, in northern Uganda
the aim of producing social change required a group-centered process,
whereby participants were encouraged to apply their combined knowledge
and understanding to the topics concerned in such a way as to improve
their analytical and critical thinking skills. The facilitators’ task was gently
to nudge the groups toward continuing to engage even in difficult and
sometimes painful spaces in order not to let them get away with easy
answers, particularly in relation to uncomfortable notions around gender
and power. Ideally this was done by asking awkward questions rather than
through statements or suggestions. The intention was to encourage partici-
pants to elaborate their own solutions and subsequently take ownership of
them, making it more likely they would apply them, in the hope they would
continue building on the skills learned after the project’s end, thus support-
ing future independent development.
For each topic we considered the best approach. For some, we used
focus group discussions, for others, semi-structured exercises. The point
was to help the population look beneath their surface notions of cause and
effect to the deeper ones that could help them make real change.
Childhood diarrhea, for example, was studied through a kind of game
focusing on hygiene whereby participants were presented with pictures of
common village practices and encouraged collaboratively to choose which
contributed to illness and which could help prevent it. They were further
encouraged to consider the dangers of dehydration and learned how to
make and apply their own rehydration drinks. This seemed to help people
think through at an experiential level both the consequences of ignoring
hygiene and feasible ways of improving the situation; as a consequence,
the incidence of diarrhea was significantly lessened, rehydration became a
common practice, and the populations reported a considerable reduction in
child morbidity and mortality.
Problems of interpersonal relations were addressed through a gender-
analytical framework, including issues of marriage, divorce, the upbringing
of children, the gender division of labor and of property ownership, as well
as domestic violence, discrimination, and related issues. At the end of each
session the groups would report to one another the salient points of their
discussions and jointly decide how to put them into practice, which greatly
increased take-up.
Analytical Tools
The first gender exercise consisted of eliciting from participants what they
considered to be the chief elements comprising gender roles and identities
in their own communities. We did this by asking them what they under-
stood by senior and junior men and women. With literate populations,
small groups are asked to write their responses on flipchart paper (see, e.g.,
Harris, 2014a). In the present situation, where the majority was illiterate,
the facilitators noted the responses. The following table is a composite
of the answers from both villages, in which any significant differences of
opinion between men and women are given. Where appropriate I have also
included the reasoning. The answers were further used as points of discus-
sion on the specific gender-related issues raised below (Table 1).
In another exercise participants noted down the detailed daily workloads
of men and women. This was done by taking a sheet of flipchart paper for
each sex and dividing it into 24 rows to represent hours and two columns
to represent the wet and the dry seasons. Small drawings of the various
tasks common in these villages were provided to be placed against the
appropriate time slot/season. Blank pieces of paper and writing implements
158 COLETTE HARRIS
Table 1. Chief Gender Roles and Identities in the Two Villages.

Men Women
Strong Obedient
Brave Submissive
Keep women in their place. (Anyone unable to If she strays that is, is seen going out of
do this is derided as not a real man.) the house too often with no good
explanation she is considered loose.
Must retaliate to provocations with violence Never violent or angry even if provoked
(although it was said some women have
cut off or bitten men’s penises)
Must always be victorious, never losers, even in Must not be more highly educated than
minor things their husbands
May discipline wives through beating (although Supposed to submit to beating but
men say they do not respect other men who sometimes they might also attack their
use violence in this way). If they beat seriously husbands. Women agree their husbands
(batter?) they may be taken before the local have the right to chastise them but within
court and disciplined. limits. Serious beating (battery?) seen as
infringement of Acholi culture and
women suffering this may take their
husbands to the local court [and they did
do this where the court was near enough
and often won their cases].a
Should not engage in night dancing (type of Should not be witches
witchcraft)
Senior Men Senior Women
Senior men are in charge of the family and Senior women are in charge of domestic
control all its members affairs and day-to-day arrangements
Senior men must provide for the family’s needs, Supposed to be financially dependent on
being only one way of doing this breadwinning husband. Not supposed to have their
own income, although many women
today do have ways of making money.
Senior men alone own property. Women cannot Women claim they are allowed to own
own it as they marry into their husband’s clan property although the exact implications
and live in his compound (according to men). are unclear. Certainly, they believe on
Children are also men’s property although divorce they should be allowed to take
only when the men have paid bride price and property earned by their own labor away
are thus legally married; otherwise they must with them and they may go to the local
pay the woman’s clan for the children if they court if their husbands disagree. If men
wish to claim them. Men think women should did not give bride price or other
not take away property they gained during the payments to the woman’s family, her
marriage. Even if the women worked for it children belong to her clan and not to
themselves this was only possible because of their father’s clan.
their husbands. Therefore, it should all belong
to the husband. Young men inherit property
from their fathers but there may be
complications if no legal marriage was
contracted (that is, if no bride price was paid).
Table 1. (Continued )
Senior Men Senior Women
Senior men are owners and also distributors of Senior women are nurturers and nurses to
resources such as land, and other wealth, the family
such as cattle
Senior men are the chief decision-makers but Senior women make some daily decisions
they do not understand domestic matters well but they must always consult their
enough to make good decisions there husbands and not make independent
(according to the women). decisions since their minds are too shallow
and inconstant (according to men).
Pay children’s school fees Carry out and/or oversee domestic labor
Pay medical expenses Must be honest
Bring home food Cook and show hospitality
Discipline children for serious offences Generally keep own children and those of
sons/daughters-in-law in check
Explain cultural and family norms to all other Teach and explain many issues to
family members, especially sons daughters but leave fathers to do this
for sons
Demonstrate to sons how to be real men Show daughters how to be good women
Must have many wives and children a man Must stick to one man (what the men
with only one wife and few children is called “zero grazing”)
considered a loser in life (according to the men)
Ideally carry out the hardest labor using cattle Ideally carry out lighter repetitive farming
for plowing tasks such as weeding and also most
harvesting
Junior Men Junior Women
Junior men must gradually learn to be Must obey not only husband but senior
independent of parents men and women
It is their place to initiate sexual relationships Should be sexually passive
They must be married or at least living together Women not married or not at least living
with a woman at the latest by age 35 with a man before age 30 are called bad
names
The most successful junior men will have been In practice, women said, some of them had
able to pay bride price for at least one wife to earn the money their husbands used to
and so will be legally married and thus own pay their bride price but this was worth it
their wives and children since it raised the women’s status and
facilitated the marriage of their children.
They should submit to being co-wives if
husbands wish to marry more than one.
They must show their ability to produce Must prove their fertility, especially by
children, especially sons. Men considered to producing sons. Women seen as simply
play the most important and active role in the soil in which men sow their seeds.
reproduction [Nevertheless, women are blamed both
for infertility and for producing only
daughters.]
160 COLETTE HARRIS
Table 1. (Continued )
Junior Men Junior Women
May not speak directly to their fathers about May speak directly to their mothers and
important issues but rather ask their mothers later to their mothers-in-law but not to
to intercede for them where necessary. their fathers and especially not to their
fathers-in-law.
Must learn to tolerate local alcohol this is very Not supposed to drink alcohol but some do
bitter and 40o proof so it is a real test of nowadays
manhood
Must prove virility by women’s reaction to sex. Should have sex whenever husband wants it
Must be able to convince their wives to have but not initiate it. (Unmarried girls
sex with them whenever they want it and to solicited by men should always refuse
have multiple wives and/or extra-marital even if they really want sex [and this
partners. means youths think it acceptable to chase
girls fleeing to avoid being forced and
even to rape them.])
Real men are strong so they do not need to use Not supposed to use birth control without
condoms for protection from disease [since husbands’ permission. Not supposed to
“small disease [ = microbes/bacteria/viruses] demand condom use either from
cannot kill African man”]. husband or boyfriend. [If they do it will
be seen as resulting from the women’s
having strayed or from distrust of their
partner, and thus tantamount to an
accusation of infidelity likely to be
reacted to with violence.]
Despite a dearth of wild animals, hunting is still Women may forage/gather foodstuffs in the
considered highly important for masculinity hedgerows, and so on.
and only men can hunt
Young men were traditionally supposed to Women are not supposed to fight. They
exhibit prowess as warriors, although starting should allow the men to protect them
with colonialism this generally meant joining [although this was impossible during the
the army or possibly the police force (since the war, of course and some girl abductees
British kept peace between the Acholi and fought with the LRA; others even worked
their former enemies.) as soldiers with the government forces.]
a
Remarks in square brackets are my own interpellations.
were also available so participants could draw, write, or otherwise indicate

any tasks they did not see represented in the drawings. The exercise showed
that while both sexes had considerably more leisure time during the
dry than the wet season, women worked many more hours than men.
They performed more than half the labor on the family fields as well as
fetching water and firewood and carrying out most domestic tasks and
child care. They also engaged in independent income-generating activities,
intertwined as a systemic whole, the resulting gendered structure deprived

women of basic human needs and undermines their ability to leverage their
newly granted legal rights. Burton (1997) argues that the roots of structural
violence are policy and administrative decisions that deprive individuals’
rights and limit their access to basic human needs. The results stemming
from a lack of attention to the structural impact of gender in the formation
of both the World Bank’s post-conflict intervention and the 2010 reforms
clearly contributed to the propagation of social institutions that under-
mined women’s access to physical well-being, social capital, and economic
security.
Visually mapping the tenets of the 2010 reforms using a modified version
of Cheldelin and Lucas’s (2003) nestled framework for conflict analysis
highlights the ways the World Bank’s investment strengthened interrelated
cultural and economic aspects undermining women’s ability to leave abusive
marriages. The dynamics occurring within each circle are constrained by the
dynamics happening within each outer circle. Conceptualizing an abusive
marriage as existing within the sociopolitical structures mapped here clari-
fies the structural influence of gender on the formation and functioning of
social institutions. The backlash against women seeking property rights
under the new law the claim that women were “attacking the culture”
can be accounted for by the limited scope of the 2010 reforms. Data from
my fieldwork suggests that all factors mapped on this matrix contribute to a
woman’s ability to exit an abusive marriage. However, the 2010 reforms
addressed only the factors that are highlighted in bold text (Fig. 1).
Measures Reinforces Social Dynamics that Lead to Structural Violence
The fallout resulting from the World Bank measure’s and 2010 reforms’
failure to account for the ways structural gender would influence the inter-
vention’s outcomes calls attention to the interplay of structural gender
within social and juridical-political institutions and the reinforcement of
gender ideologies by individuals, both through their own compliance with
the tenets of these ideologies and their actions to pressure others to comply
as well. These interrelated processes lay the foundations for deeply
entrenched structural violence that impedes women’s abilities to escape
DV. Burton (1997) argues that the roots of structural violence are policy
and administrative decisions that deprive individuals rights and limit their
access to basic human needs; the results stemming from a lack of attention
to the structural impact of gender in the formation of both the World
162 COLETTE HARRIS
engagement in risky behavior, such as having multiple sex partners

and refusing to use condoms. They also considered how pressures around
femininity made young women feel their status was dependent on having
a boyfriend, even if this meant agreeing to (unprotected) sex in order
to keep him. The medical side of AIDS was explained through a kind
of board game that allowed people to conceptualize the way HIV
worked in the human body. Putting all this together helped men in particu-
lar to realize, often for the first time, that they could control their exposure
to the virus and thus play an active role in limiting their chances of
infection.
A further issue raised was that of the sexual abuse of girls. Individuals
from the young women’s groups were encouraged to describe to the junior
men their fears, and the mental and physical anguish and other negative
consequences of (the threat of) sexual assault. The youths had apparently
never considered the girls might experience it in this way. They were so
shocked by the revelations they ended up making a pact that not only
would none of them ever behave like that again but they would do their
best to protect the girls of their villages from assault by outsiders (compare
Kandirikirira, 2002).
Finally, came the most contentious issue of all that of senior men’s
insistence on retaining control over all other family members and of all
decision-making processes. This was dealt with during a special group dis-
cussion with the senior men alone. By this time, the custom of listening to
the other groups was well established so the men had heard their wives and
children talking about the grievances described above, which appeared
greatly to have influenced the direction of the discussion. After long argu-
ments, the men, albeit reluctantly, came to the collective decision that it
was simply not viable to insist on this level of control; they had to make
changes. They, therefore, undertook to listen to the viewpoints of other
family members, respect their right to think differently, and take their opi-
nions into consideration in family decision-making, as well as to allow
those responsible for farming each crop to share in the profits from its sale.
The men would reduce their wives’ workloads by carrying out some of the
more physically demanding tasks, such as fetching firewood and water, and
taking a larger share of agricultural labor. They further agreed to support
women’s initiatives in regard to increasing family incomes, rather than rein-
ing them in as before, by preventing their owning phones and bicycles, for
instance (see below). Finally, they would endeavor to make wills so that in
the event of their deaths their natal families could not deprive their widows
and children of their assets.
Impact
From the start, deconstructing the meaning of masculinity and femininity

encouraged the population to take a fresh look at their community’s gender
relations, or rather gender age relations, since gender for the Acholi was
clearly linked to age, as can be seen from the characteristics given for senior
and junior men and women in the table.
The discourses on women and children’s rights to which the population
had been exposed in the camps had been confusing since they clashed with
Acholi traditions. However, the analyses encouraged them to view this
from a different perspective focusing on making change from within
their own cultural norms and aiming to improve the welfare of the commu-
nity as a whole. The exercises exposed sharp contrasts between the control
senior men felt entitled to exert over the rest, the amount of property they
owned, and the extent of the work they carried out compared with the far
lower entitlements and power positions of their much harder working
wives, and even older children.
Considerable friction arose during discussions between the senior men’s
and women’s groups over issues on which the women demanded clarifica-
tion. For instance, the men maintained that women should not own
bicycles because they would be too careless with them they would
damage them, give them away, or use them to visit lovers. The men also
insisted women should not own mobile phones since this would similarly
facilitate contact with lovers. The women pointed out both of these were
important accoutrements for doing business and depriving them of the
right to use them was harmful to family finances; moreover, men were far
more likely than women to have lovers (Harris, 2012a, p. 483). The women
further claimed the men tended to use any profits they made to boost their
status by buying alcohol, cigarettes, or paying for extra-marital sex rather
than plowing the money back into the family coffers. Thus, the women saw
themselves as more responsible than their husbands but deprived by the
latter’s short-sightedness of the opportunity to improve their own as well
as the family finances and they used the education sessions to point this out
to the men.
The youths felt a lack of support from their fathers, who were too preoc-
cupied with their own status to bother overmuch with their sons’ futures.
The scarcity of resources meant there was often a contest over whether
money should be spent on raising the status of the senior men or allowing
the junior men to complete their schooling and/or gain skills, all of which
cost money. Some elders strongly supported education for children of both
164 COLETTE HARRIS
sexes but many others maintained it was of little value even for boys if their
future lay in farming. While a few youths agreed with this position, prefer-
ring not to attend school at all, many others grumbled that such people
were living in the past and insisted it was no longer going to be possible for
small farmers like them to depend on agriculture alone. Schooling was
essential for any young person wishing to get on in life and they wanted the
elders to understand this and facilitate their acquisition of a decent
education.
As a result of the sessions on HIV, junior men became more cautious in
respect of their sexual encounters, and took a different attitude toward con-
dom use. Reproductive health sessions helped them realize it was preferable
to limit their children to the number they could afford to care for, so men
who had previously been categorically opposed to birth control now asked
for help to access contraceptive services.
The weekly presentations to the other groups at the end of each session
also made a considerable contribution to project impact. It soon became
clear that not only had the men rarely listened to their wives but the women
had not heard men discussing their problems either. The latter had always
tried to present themselves as superior and capable of dealing with any
situation that might arise. This was not solely an Acholi attitude, of course.
In 2002, while working among the Teso people of eastern Uganda, I had
asked the men’s and women’s groups to explain to each other the problems
they had identified. The women seemed amazed that the men, who pre-
sented themselves to their wives as so superior, nevertheless appeared to
have very similar problems to their own. In other words, the less powerful
may find it difficult to grasp the fact that people in higher positions might
not be as powerful as they seem (Harris, 2004).
Thus, in the education project, providing opportunities for participant
groups to listen to one another helped women and girls understand that the
power differential might in reality be significantly smaller than males
wished to present it as and that men and boys might also need support to
be able to satisfy their needs, while the latter learned that many things they
did seriously damaged women and girls, and that females were just as cap-
able of serious thought as they were. Senior men and women learned that
while some young people might be lazy or thoughtless, many had quite
valid ideas of their own and often saw their futures as very different from
how their parents conceptualized them. Understanding all this greatly
changed the way family members dealt with one another.
Moreover, the result of including the LRA returnees explicitly in all
activities meant that over time this group, who at the start of the project
would always sit apart during the education sessions, had largely become
integrated into the groups and had even started to participate in village
activities outside project sessions.7 This removed a considerable source of
community discord and seemed to have greatly improved the lives of the
returnees as well.
The most significant impact and the single largest factor in reducing
overall violence, however, was the direct consequence of the work with the
senior men. Their discussion on how to retain authority in the eyes of their
wives and younger family members while reducing their level of control
and stopping their practice of unilateral decision-making resulted in the
decision that some level of change had to be made. Acknowledging the
rights of wives and older children to benefit from their contributions to
family welfare by permitting them to share in decision-making on issues
that concerned them, including on the spending of the profits from the sale
of crops they helped farm, did a great deal to improve family relationships,
especially after discussions on the issue of domestic violence helped the
men’s group as a whole concede they would do better to cooperate with
than beat their wives.
This was reinforced by the admission of the senior women’s group that
they had also abusively believed in their right to demand unquestioning
obedience from their children, irrespective of age, and had often paid little
attention to their aspirations and ideas. Listening to the young people talk
in the education sessions had brought home to the women the idea that
they too needed to change.
Thus, the project helped produce significant improvements in family
communication, resulting in closer collaboration, warmer relationships,
and improved economic situations now family members were pulling
together rather than in different directions. Ongoing peer-group discussions
encouraged inter-family co-operation and generally improved interpersonal
relationships within the villages. Senior men actually found themselves
more respected than before as a result of renouncing what they had pre-
viously regarded as crucial elements of their masculinity and thus their
authority (Harris, 2012a, 2012b).
The populations also reached out to nearby villages through organizing
football tournaments and joint traditional drumming and dancing sessions;
in this way inter-community relations were improved as well. Finally, the
changes in the project sites were significant enough to be noticed by local
officials, who started to use the villages as centers for implementing govern-
ment programs, such as vaccination campaigns. Despite serious economic
and other pressures since the project ended in 2010, the inhabitants of these
166 COLETTE HARRIS
villages continue to flourish at a noticeably higher level than those of the

surrounding ones.
CONCLUSION
While other elements of the education project were clearly important in its
overall impact (Harris, 2012b), the single most important element turned
out to be the participatory gender analyses. It was these that permitted an
unpacking of the underlying causes of violence in these communities and it
was listening to the opinions of those in the other groups that brought the
senior men and women to the realization they simply had to change.
After the return from the camps the senior men had tried hard to
reclaim the dispositional power they felt had been lost to them during their
exile; when their authority was not respected they resorted to negative
forms of episodic power in the form of wife beating, unilateral decision-
making and other forms of violence, such as refusing to take seriously their
children’s desire for education. This reduced the respect of other family
members who then secretly defied their husband/father in ways pejorative
for both family relations and finances. By deliberately renouncing those ele-
ments the other family members most complained about, the senior men
regained respect, resulting in their no longer feeling their dispositional posi-
tioning to be under threat, and thus reducing their need to exert negative
forms of episodic power. This correspondingly increased the dispositional
power of the other family members so they too renounced the use of this
kind of episodic power, including the use of violence. In other words, this
was a purposeful reworking of local notions of dispositional power to
make them more coherent with the current situation and it was carried out
collaboratively by community members as a result of joint decision-
making, producing a positive spiral, a win win situation.
I am not trying to claim this came anywhere near to producing gender
(-age) equality, nor to transforming gender relations at a fundamental level.
It does seem, however, that life significantly improved even for those at the
bottom of the hierarchy junior women and the LRA returnees. Enough
people participated to produce a critical mass sufficient to create a general
environment of change even when not all village inhabitants actively
embraced this or changed themselves. This environment resulted in signifi-
cantly reduced tolerance of violence at both domestic and community
levels, bolstered in part by the decision to establish village-wide committees
to police violence at both levels.8 However, these committees did not

entirely embrace democratic organization and by 2013 in one of the villages
the policing included the institutionalization of rigid controls, in an attempt
to prevent a return to the chaotic situation existing before the start of the
education project.9
Nevertheless, those inhabitants who had participated in the project
reported that they had changed in very fundamental ways that were still
significant almost three years after its end. It does appear, therefore, that
carrying out this kind of participatory gender analysis at grass-roots levels
can make a meaningful impact. This has been the case in all such projects
I have implemented over the last 15 years, in which the gender work was
clearly responsible for the most significant changes among both partici-
pants and very often facilitators too. These projects produced the same
general effects of an overall increase in well-being, resulting largely from
improvements in family relationships and reductions in what in many
places had hitherto been endemic levels of violence. A similar impact can
be seen from Kandirikirira’s endeavor (2002) as also from the Stepping
Stones program (Jewkes et al., 2007; Wallace, 2006) but not, for instance,
in the project Khandekar discusses (2004) despite the gender analyses
having changed the consciousness of the women concerned. The difference
seems to lie in the incorporation of men into the analytical process. In
other words, real change requires collaboration between the different
groups of power holders and to be successful needs to be carried out by
those in the upper position and not only the less powerful.
Finally, I suggest it is important not merely to consider gender a binary
relationship but to realize that it is always intersected by multiple modal-
ities, the most significant here being the gender-age system, and that this
has implications for gender analysis. Moreover, viewing gendered power
relations through notions of dispositional versus episodic power facilitates
rethinking the work that gender norms do in encouraging violence and
fracturing family relationships and supports a better understanding of its
role in human relationships and especially in interpersonal violence.
NOTES
1. The report can be found at http://www.international-alert.org/resources/

publications/renegotiating-ideal-society
2. This is a region in which domestic violence has been reported at 78%
(Turyasingura, 2007).
168 COLETTE HARRIS
3. See Harris (2012a) for a more detailed exposition of these different forms of
power.
4. This is similar to Henrietta Moore’s notion of thwarting, and her positing
of “a link between the thwarting of investments in various subject positions based
on gender and interpersonal violence” (Moore, 1994, pp. 66 69).
5. Where not otherwise indicated the colonial history in this section is based on
Girling (1960) and the information on the contemporary situation comes from the
ethnographic data collected through the project.
6. A list of these can be found in Harris (2012b, pp. 8 9).
7. See Harris (2012b) for more details of this and other unexpected consequences
of the project.
8. See Harris (2012a, p. 484 and 2012b) for more details of how this played out.
9. See International Alert report (see Note 1).
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The author thanks the editors of this volume for their comments on an
earlier draft of this chapter.
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NOT ALL NAZIS ARE MEN:
WOMEN’S UNDERESTIMATED
POTENTIAL FOR VIOLENCE IN
GERMAN NEO-NAZISM.
CONTINUATION OF THE PAST
OR NOVEL PHENOMENON?
Andrea S. Dauber
ABSTRACT
Purpose Criminological, historical, and sociological research has con-

tinually underestimated women’s violent potential in the German Neo-
Nazism movement. Contemplating this leads to questions about female
agency in the Third Reich, a link that has not been established yet. This
chapter seeks to expose this link, arguing that regardless of social envir-
onment, changing gender roles or political situation, Neo-Nazi women
and women, in general, have a potential for violence in the public sphere.
Design/methodology/approach The chapter looks at female perpetra-
tors in both the Third Reich and the contemporary Neo-Nazi period and
examines their involvement from the overarching theoretical viewpoint
that women are not any less capable of violent crimes than men.

ISSN: 1529-2126/doi:10.1108/S1529-21262014000018B011
171
172 ANDREA S. DAUBER
Findings The scope of Neo-Nazi women’s aggression and violence is

not a modern phenomenon or an exception. Their invisibility is not a
result of their suggested passive involvement; it stems from the public’s
and institutions’ inability to perceive them as agents of violence.
Bourdieu developed the concept of symbolic violence to characterize the
violence experienced by victims who accept their societal subordination.
It is shown that because researchers, officials, and the public reified the
concept; they overlooked the reality that women can exercise their
agency beyond the limits of their roles as wife and mother and commit
violent acts.
Research limitations/implications Reliable data are not available on
the number of violent female Neo-Nazis. It is likely, however, that the
numbers given are an underestimation.
Social implications Law enforcement agencies have long overlooked
women as potential offenders. A basic change in perspective is needed to
better identify female perpetrators.
Originality/value of paper The chapter is based on the murders of ten
immigrants between 2000 and 2006, which puzzled investigators over a
decade. Nobody suspected a woman was a key member of the group
thought to be responsible for these murders.
Keywords: Neo-Nazism; gender; violence; Nazism; symbolic violence;
female perpetrators
Implications can be drawn that people had

a hard time accepting that women who were
so young and pretty could commit such heinous crimes.
Sarti, 2011, p. 121
INTRODUCTION
Beate Zschäpe is a middle-aged German woman. In her youth, she came

in contact with right-wing extremist groups in her hometown in East
Germany. She never parted with Neo-Nazism. In the summer of 2013, her
Not All Nazis Are Men 173
trial began before a higher regional court in Munich for her alleged invol-
vement in the murder of six Turks, two Germans of Turkish origin, and
one Greek small business owner between 2000 and 2006. She is also sus-
pected of involvement in the murder of a German female police officer in
2007. The case is of such magnitude and scope that the trial is projected to
last until 2015. Evidence and files must be reviewed; many witnesses and
people who are otherwise involved will testify. Meanwhile, the evidence
seems unambiguous. The murder weapon was found in Zschäpe’s, Uwe
Mundlos’s, and Uwe Böhnhardt’s apartment which Zschäpe set on fire to
purportedly destroy evidence. Police found the dead police officer’s service
weapon in a trailer in Zwickau along with the bodies of her two accom-
plices (Leyendecker, 2011). Investigators revealed that Mundlos shot
Böhnhardt before shooting himself (Die Welt, 2012).1
The court in Munich will most likely not be able to determine whether
Beate Zschäpe shot any of the victims herself or whether she participated
in other ways unless she confesses. The prosecution argues that Zschäpe’s
alleged complicity makes her as responsible for the murders as someone
who had pulled the trigger herself. According to paragraph 25, section 2 of
the German criminal code, individuals who share a common plan about a
crime such as a murder are jointly responsible for this crime. According to
this reading, Zschäpe did not even have to be at the crime scene to be
responsible for the murders. The prosecution holds that she knew of the
plans to murder the small business owners of Turkish and Greek origin,
that her role was to manage the finances of the group and to organize fake
passports and that she helped to shoot the video in which the National
Socialist Underground (NSU) publicly admitted to the murders.
Her purported involvement in these murder cases raises new questions:
Are women in the Neo-Nazi movement more than bystanders and indirect
supporters? What is the scope of their involvement? Which role do they
play in attacks? Do they have the same or a different potential for violence
and aggression as Neo-Nazi men? And most importantly, how do these
modern Nazi women differ from the women in the Third Reich? From a
meta-level perspective, another important issue is how researchers have
examined women’s roles both in the Third Reich and in contemporary
German Neo-Nazism.
In this chapter I argue that while women in the Neo-Nazi movement are
a real and dangerous threat to society, their effect has been grossly underes-
timated because of various theoretical, empirical, and practical problems.
In the context of Zschäpe’s case, it is obvious that the public, government
agencies, and researches believed that women are passive agents and do not
exercise agency in violent crimes. In line with Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of

“symbolic violence,” and despite contradicting evidence, they assumed that
women defined as subordinate by society accept that subordination. While
often useful in understanding actual willing subjugation, the concept of
symbolic violence, also referred to as symbolic power, when reified serves
to make right-wing extremist women’s use of violence invisible.
In this chapter taking as an example the Neo-Nazi case of Zschäpe
I consider how the violence of right-wing women could remain invisible in
the investigation of crimes and in social scientific research. I, also, discuss
this invisibility with respect to women’s involvement as offenders in the
Third Reich. In so doing, I will establish a link between Neo-Nazi women
offenders and women who committed crimes during Hitler’s reign, arguing
that women’s potential for violent crimes in the public sphere has been
underestimated throughout history and must be examined irrespective of
dominant social and cultural paradigms.
WOMEN’S INVOLVEMENT IN NATIONAL SOCIALISM
That researchers are individuals who are embedded in a specific historical

context with socially situated knowledge has not been adequately consid-
ered in research about women in the Nazi state. Women’s role in the Nazi
movement has been discussed at great length by historians starting in the
1970s, not only in Germany, but also the United States and elsewhere.
However, there is little sociological inquiry into this subject despite the fact
that the development of women’s roles in the societal context is a typical
research area for sociologists. In part, these shortcomings can be consid-
ered a product of the social embeddedness of social scientific or historical
inquiry (cf. Kane, 1998). While it has been pointed out that the ideology of
Nationalist Socialism implicitly contained the degradation and depersonali-
zation of women and reversed the process of women’s emancipation (Bock,
1983; Gupta, 1991; Hermand, 1984; Yuval-Davis, 1996), the fact that
women were empowered in the Third Reich is less well-acknowledged.
Only recently have researchers started to inquire beyond the typical
research areas in examining women’s roles in Nazi Germany (cf. Guba,
2010; Mushaben, 2004). The master narrative of the Hitler years has, for
the most part, been a man’s narrative (Mushaben, 2004).
The feminist scholarly debate of the 1980s and 1990s was characterized
by a schism. Researchers such as Gisela Bock, a highly acknowledged
German women’s historian, maintained that German women were more

often “instrumentalized” victims of a patriarchal society than active perpe-
trators in the system (Bock, 1989; von Saldern, 1994). As victims in the
Nazi state, women largely complied and were part of processes that they, if
given the choice, would not have participated in.2 Additionally, Stephenson
(1981) claimed that German women were particularly resistant to the Nazi
ideology. By contrast, Claudia Koonz, notably not a German national,
pointed to female agency and complicity in the Nazi system. In her perspec-
tive, women supported the regime as mothers and housewives because they
conveyed a sense of normality for their husbands and sons (Koonz, 1984,
1987/2013; Tzani, 2011). Beyond this dichotomous debate, historians began
focusing more on agency in the first decade of the 21st century than they
had in the past, “investigating and evaluating women’s and men’s various
sites of latitude in contexts of action …,” moving beyond the binary con-
ception of victims and perpetrators (von Saldern, 2009, p. 84). However,
even earlier, feminist scholars argued for another theoretical position hold-
ing that German women acted in their own interest because they profited
by adhering to the dominant national socialist ideology that highlighted
women’s duty as mothers (Tzani, 2011). Thürmer-Rohr (1989) argued that
in the context of an exaggerated form of the mother role, women could
strengthen their claim to power while complying in maintaining the institu-
tionalized power of the patriarchal Nazi society. Similarly, von Saldern
(1994) posited that German women experienced complex and ambiguous
relationships with Hitler’s regime, identifying the victim perpetrator
approach as obsolete.
From a sociological point of view, the generation of knowledge and its
evaluation are processes that are subject to societal conditions. It must be
considered that leading historians such as Bock researched and published
during a time when the separation of the spheres was fully enforced in
Germany and to a similar extent in other western countries. Even though
the feminist movement was picking up speed in the 1960s and 1970s, the
role of women continued to be constructed around motherhood and house-
wifery. Owing to this social and cultural context, it can be understood why
feminist German researchers were quick to point to the victim status of
women in the Nazi era or were, at best, contemplating the extent to which
German women were either victims or perpetrators, demarcating two
positions, and two positions only (cf. Grossmann, 1991). Moreover, much
of the public and scholarly debate about women in the Nazi movement
has focused on their contributions in the context of their socially accepted
roles (cp. Bock, 1983; Stephenson, 1975/2012), neglecting other roles, for
example, as Aufseherinnen (female overseers) who committed atrocious

crimes in the Nazi camps.
In the Third Reich, the central role of women was certainly that of
mother. Aryan mothers were encouraged to bear as many children as possi-
ble while “inferior” mothers such as Jewish, Gypsy, handicapped, or other-
wise “degenerate” women were subjected to coercive sterilization (Gupta,
1991). The Nazi ideology communicated a traditional view of sexuality
(Oosterhuis, 1997). Part of this view was that sexual intercourse was sup-
posed to serve a purpose, that is, of reproduction. This policy found its epi-
tome in Magda Goebbels, wife of propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels,
who gave birth to six children and received the so-called honor cross for
the German mother. This award was given to mothers who gave birth to at
least four children. However, women did not always voluntarily give in to
this economic use of a woman’s capacity to bear children. Yuval-Davis
(1996) pointed out that Aryan young women were coerced to copulate with
Aryan young men in special brothels to bear children for the nation.
That researchers have focused so intensely on women’s role as mothers
is in part grounded in the nature of the Nazi ideology and the social forces
that helped create it. The unprecedented dominance of this ideology in
Germany, which came into existence at a time when other societal pro-
cesses around gender roles were shaping women’s lives as well, contributed
to a distorted perception of the reality of German women’s roles in the
Third Reich. This ideology did not come into existence in a social vacuum.
It coalesced with antecedent scientific efforts to generate proof of women’s
primary biological destiny to bear and raise children (Laqueur, 1992). In
this context, Hermand’s (1984) discussion of the social and political context
before 1930 is enlightening. He argued that the temporary crisis of capital-
ism, particularly after Black Friday in 1929, caused the “return to blood
and soil in the protective womb” in the emerging Nazi state (p. 658);
threats from the emancipated American girl or the “Soviet tractor-driver”
(p. 658) further strengthened the ideology of motherhood. Another socio-
political context contributed to the pervasiveness of this ideology. The pro-
blem of declining birth rates after the First World War had to be met by
appropriate population policy measures, particularly in the context of
rapidly growing populations of eastern European countries at the time
(Stephenson, 1975/2012). Heineman (1996) described how in the collective
memory of Germans, women were largely concerned with caring for their
families. This concern was deemed to be the stereotypical female experience
of unprosecuted German women.
WOMEN NAZI OFFENDERS IN THE THIRD REICH
It is the function of an ideology to emphasize ideas that are conducive to

the ideology’s logic and to conceal others. In other words, German women
fulfilled more functions than the ideology would suggest. Many of the his-
torical artifacts that have been studied by researchers provide information
on the domestic and reproductive aspects of women’ lives. However, this
should not be taken as a representation of all the roles women played in
National Socialist Germany. Roth (2003) points out that while virtually all
modern genocides have been planned and carried out by men, a nonnegligi-
ble number of women held positions of responsibility in the concentration
camps and killing centers of Nazi Germany. There is a large gap in the
research about women as perpetrators in the Third Reich. Attempts,
especially in the German literature, to overcome this deficit are very recent
(cf. Pahlke, 2009). Beyond the dichotomous distinction between women as
victims and as perpetrators, German women in the Nazi state have been
researched with respect to other societal contexts, for example, in reference
to the men they married (Heineman, 1999), as defenders of the home as a
sacred space (Koontz, 2013), as workers in the Nazi Regime (Schönbaum,
1980/1997; Stephenson, 1975/2012), as opponents to Hitler (Koonz, 1991),
and as ardent defenders of the Nazi ideology (Harvey, 2004). However,
these scientific inquiries do not sufficiently explore the extent to which
women were capable of violent or aggressive acts, most notably in their
efforts to contribute their share to the maintenance and expansion of the
Third Reich.
It seems difficult for the public in Germany and elsewhere to accept the
notion that while women were without doubt often suppressed in the Nazi
state and instrumentalized for specific purposes, a certain share of them
also actively perpetrated crimes against discriminated groups, including
Jews, Germans, and other nationals. Though lacking in volume and qual-
ity, post-war research literature supports this view (cf. Roth, 2003). A sys-
tematic, quantitative evaluation of the scope of violent perpetrations by
women is yet to be achieved. An example of such research comes from
Johnson (1995) who by means of computational analysis of 30,000 cases
found in the city of Cologne and its surrounding areas that women who
were allegedly guilty of anti-government activities were less often and less
severely punished by a court than men. While his efforts to document trials
against women are quantitative in nature, his analyses are restricted to one
specific region in Germany and do not allow for generalizations.
Gendered visual documentation of the aftermath also points to inconsis-

tencies in scientific reflections about German women in the Nazi state. An
innovative trend in gender studies of the Nazi era is the focus on body
images (von Saldern, 2009). Zelizer (2001) has shown that photographs
taken after the liberation of concentration camps showed four categories of
women: women as victims, women as survivors, women as witnesses, and
women as perpetrators. She went on to conclude that,
Women’s representation as part of the documentation of the Nazi atrocities played off
of an ambivalence about the role of women in the barbarism at hand. The documenta-
tion of women’s experience in the camps was thereby shaped to fit dominant cultural
assumptions about women in culture and society. … Not surprisingly then, female gen-
der was strategically emphasized in the photographic record of the camps that emerged.
(p. 255)
As unrepresentative as these photographs of women in the process of

liberation are, what matters most is that in the public perception some roles
of women, such as guards or wardens, were suppressed while others, most
notably as victims and survivors were enhanced. Moreover, Zelizer (2001)
found that the representation of gender in photographs was dichotomous
and simplified. On the one hand, depictions of women supported stereoty-
pical notions of how women supposedly are achieved through domestic or
maternal markers in the pictures. On the other hand, in atrocity photos
women were depicted in a way that neutralized their gender and made it
nearly invisible. These pictures did not contain any information, similar to
the logic of domestic or maternal markers, which would allow conclusions
about women and their gender in the context of those atrocities. This wea-
kened the mental link between women as perpetrators and the atrocities
they committed in concentration camps.
It can be argued that this mechanism is representative of most contem-
porary contemplation about women’s involvement in Nazism. For exam-
ple, there is a large gap in scholarly literature about women’s roles as
guards and supervisors in concentration camps or as nurses; positions in
which they had opportunities to act aggressively or murder. Rupp (1977)
pointed early to the observation that historians had largely ignored the
complex roles of women in the Nazi era. However, it was not until the early
1990s that these women became the object of investigation. A German
woman researcher, Gudrun Schwarz (cf. Benedict & Kuhla, 1999; Berghs,
Dierckx de Casterle, & Gastmans, 2007; McFarland-Icke, 1999; Schwarz,
1992, 1994) examined the degree to which nurses followed orders or delib-
erately chose to kill patients, particularly in euthanasia programs. In 2003,
Bear and Goldenberg called for the study of “women as perpetrators

whether actively as guards, nurses, and other functionaries or as passive
bystanders and the range of behavior between these two extremes” (p. xxi).
Owings (1993) went so far as to say that German women, many of whom
had lost their fathers during the First World War, looked to Hitler as a
father figure. Moreover, she concluded from the interviews she conducted
with German women that their relationship to Nazism was ambiguous; on
the one hand, women were repelled by how Nazis treated Jews; on the other
hand, they condemned Jews, arguing they brought the misery on themselves.
Regardless of German women’s diverse experiences and evaluation of
the Nazi regime, researchers have neglected to conduct detailed research
about women as offenders in concentration camps. Literature in this realm
is scarce, but some exceptions should be noted, among them Smith (1983)
who studied Isle Koch, one of the most notorious SS3 helpers, Brown
(1996) who gave a detailed account of the crimes of Irma Grese, another
Aufseherin at various concentration camps and Tzani (2011) who traced
the life courses of female guards and categorized them into different
groups: careerists, women who wanted to climb up in rank and knew that
physical force against inmates was a reliable means to do so, women who
were obliged to serve as guards and served rather involuntarily, and women
who were recruited from other workplaces or the home.
Some camps, such as Ravensbrück, were restricted to women, but
female guards or supervisors worked in other camps that had women’s sec-
tions as well. Sarti (2011) described some of the most notorious, among
them Irma Grese, Elisabeth Volkenrath, Hildegard Lächert, Dorothea
Binz, and Maria Mandl. These names are not commonly known and these
women are not dealt with in history lessons either. Dorothea Binz worked
as one of the major supervisors in Ravensbrueck between 1943 and 1945,
and she was described as one of the most feared guards by survivors. She
was in charge of administering flagellation, which she frequently did.
Apparently she had sadistic tendencies as she engaged in heavy petting
with her latest male SS lover in front of prisoners who were being tortured.
She also allowed her German shepherd dog to randomly attack prisoners.
Even though these women could not become SS members, they still worked
for the SS. Of Elisabeth Volkenrath, Sarti (2011) stated that “her crimes
were atrocious and deliberate in nature” (p. 100). She and Irma Grese
worked at Auschwitz, and it is known of both that they forced inmates to
exercise laboriously as punishment. Prisoners named Irma Grese the
“Angel of Death” because Irma was very beautiful, with blonde hair and
blue eyes, yet a sadistic murderer.
Mushaben (2004) pointed out that German women in the Third Reich
were not a homogenous, subordinate, and uninformed mass. To assume
this would be disregarding societal and political developments prior to
1933. As Koonz (1984) has pointed out, Nazi women were active in the
political sphere before Hitler took power.
That women’s identities and social roles have been constructed around
motherhood, marriage, and the domestic sphere is nothing new and con-
tinues to be a dominant life course element for women of younger and
older generations in contemporary Germany. However, there is no logical
reason for the absence of research pertaining to women’s active perpetra-
tion against enemies in the past or the present. The lack of such research is
an ideological and methodological problem, at best. To this day, there has
not been a comprehensive attempt to gauge the scope of women’s partici-
pation in Nazi activities through verifiable social scientific measurements.
Moreover, the flaws of past research are repeated in present research. Some
female scholars such as Blee and McGee Deutsch (2012) and Ursula Birsl
(2011) examine fascist women offenders more bravely these days, but this
research has not entered the mainstream yet.
Nevertheless, the identification of Neo-Nazi Beate Zschäpe as an active
member of the NSU, though largely perceived as an exception by the
German public and seemingly at odds with the values of a democratic state,
represents a continuation of a trend that is by no means a modern one:
women’s capacity and willingness to commit violent crimes.
VIOLENT FEMALE NEO-NAZIS: THE CASE OF

BEATE ZSCHÄPE
Zschäpe was the focus of an earlier scientific inquiry. In seeking to illumi-

nate young women’s involvement in Neo-Nazism, Röbke and Speit (2011)
recounted her story and explained how she finally submitted herself to
German police in Jena on November 7, 2011, after hiding in the under-
ground for 13 years. It can be speculated that, if Zschäpe had not surren-
dered, German authorities might have struggled beyond 2011 to solve the
series of murders.4 In the public and the political debates the reason for
this failure has often been sought in the inability of German federal agen-
cies such as the Federal Ministry of the Interior to make sense of the
murders and to follow the right leads. Clearly, a woman was not at the top
of the list of suspects.
Zschäpe is charged with first degree murder, founding a terrorist associa-

tion and planning bomb attacks and arson (Bubrowski, 2013). One of her
co-defendants testified in court that she was an equal member of the NSU.
He described her as “assertive”5 and a person who would not submit to
others. The same co-defendant pointed to Zschäpe’s potential for violent
outbreaks when he related an incident in which she beat a female punk in
the face. Evidently, Zschäpe is not only capable of direct violence; she also
played a key role in the organization of the NSU. She handled the finances
of the group, booked travel plans, and rented apartments (Ramelsberger,
2013). This does not convey the image of a woman who plays along, who is
only a follower, but not a decision maker. This view is also supported by
the fact that even now that she is under arrest, she continues to reach out
to other right-wing activists (Bubrowski, 2013).
Politicians, judges, attorneys, researchers, and the public try to under-
stand Zschäpe’s motives. Her childhood and adulthood are deconstructed;
the question of the degree of her involvement is discussed; and her relation-
ship to Mundlos and Bönhardt analyzed. The actual problem is what is
behind all these critical inquiries. Zschäpe is a woman, and in Western
societies the prevalent gender ideology is absent of any content regarding
women’s potential for violence. This circumstance became highly apparent
in the newspaper reports after the eighth day of the trial. The Institute
for Gender and Right-Wing Extremism (“Fachstelle für Gender und
Rechtsextremismus”) analyzed those reports and found that journalists
offered two interpretations of a testimony that was given that day. A defen-
dant suspected of involvement with the NSU had testified that Böhnhardt
und Mundlos broke off a conversation with him when Zschäpe entered the
room. According to the defendant, Böhnhardt and Mundlos were disclos-
ing information to him about a possible bomb attack in Nuremberg.
Numerous well-established newspapers concluded that they were trying to
keep details about their plan from Zschäpe, excluding her from planning
violent attacks. For example, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung headlined
one article, “Statement by Carsten S. could exonerate Beate Zschäpe”
(Truscheit, 2013); Stern.de (2013) said “Carsten S. exonerates ‘Ms
Zschäpe,’” and a journalist in the Berliner Zeitung wrote “Psst! Beate
kommt” (“Shhh! Beate is coming”), alluding to the defendant’s statement
that Böhnhardt and Mundlos had told him to stop talking when Zschäpe
entered the room (Weber, 2013). This interpretation exonerating Zschäpe
suggests that she had no knowledge of Mundlos’ and Böhnhardt’s plan to
carry out an attack, and that she was therefore not involved in the violent
crimes committed by the NSU. Rather, it is argued, she stayed in the
background and was concerned with organizational issues. However, jour-

nalists from other newspapers concluded that Mundlos and Böhnhardt
simply did not want Zschäpe to know that they had disclosed such sensitive
information to someone else (Overdiek, 2013).
A review of articles from Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Zeit Online and Die
Welt, which deal exclusively with Zschäpe and her role in the NSU, reveals
the part that gender and more specifically the idea of symbolic power in
gender relationships have played in this 21st century case. For example, in
a Süddeutsche article of November 25, 2011, the author raised doubts as to
Zschäpe’s actual involvement in the murders:
Beate Zschäpe was fond of Nazi symbols as early as her childhood and referred to the
Zwickau killers, her two accomplices, as her family. Was she there when the immigrants
were murdered? At present it does not look like it. However, did she approve of the
horrible crimes? The investigators continue to be puzzled about the role of the woman
with six aliases. (Leyendecker, 2011)6
About a year later, another article by the same author further sketched
Zschäpe as a nice and friendly woman. Leyendecker (2012) quoted a female
pharmacist who said about the NSU members that they were “really nice,
likeable, polite people” (para. 6). The author went on to say that, “Many
witnesses felt similarly about them. Especially Mundlos and Zschäpe were
said to be very helpful” (para. 6).
These positive comments about the three were frequently mixed with
stereotypes about women. In an article published by Die Zeit Online, the
authors reduced Zschäpe to her role as a caretaker for both men. “Beate,
the brown7 widow,” as Fuchs and Goetz (2012) referred to her, “is the only
survivor of the right-wing terror cell “National Socialist Underground.”
She cooked for the men, did laundry, administered the money that came
from robberies and she was the good soul of the killers. What drove her
to do it?” (para. 1).
Extending these descriptions, an article by Die Welt goes into detail
about the relationship she supposedly had with her two accomplices.
The title characterizes Zschäpe as an ambiguous person: “Zschäpe
Affectionate cat mom and terror bride.” Bewarder (2012) elaborated that
her “attorneys describe Zschäpe as a seduced young woman” (para. 10).
Criminological research has produced and reproduced the idea that
women are usually victims of violence. As Meyer (1993) pointed out, the
scholarly and public debate about right-wing extremism has been gender
blind, until very recently. She also stated that most social scientific research,
particularly about young people’s involvement with right-wing extremism,

has been based on young men’s opinions and attitudes.
While scholars continue to shed light on women’s involvement in the
Nazi era of the 1930s and 1940s, contemporary feminist research has
started to focus on young female teenagers and women in the Neo-Nazi
movement and the paths that brought these teenagers and women to join
an organization or a group. However, these eras are treated as separate
entities with distinct social environments. Scholars have failed to look for
the overarching link that explains the phenomenon of perpetrating Neo-
Nazi women, even though the contemporary ideology of Neo-Nazism is
based on historical National Socialism.
GENDERED VIOLENCE IN NEO-NAZISM
In order to understand the phenomenon of female violence in German

Neo-Nazism, it is important to illuminate the origin of this anti-democratic
and fascist movement. Neo-Nazism, a form of right-wing extremism, has
undergone important changes since the late 1980s; including the develop-
ment of an extreme right-wing youth culture (Schedler, 2011). Zschäpe par-
ticipated in this culture from her teenage years. The influence that is
exerted on teenagers seems to play an important role in their decisions to
stay with or abandon the Neo-Nazi cause.
Right-wing extremism expert Haio Funke, who also counsels the judges
in Zschäpe’s case, calls Neo-Nazism an extremism “of a new type” (as cited
in Schedler, 2011, p. 17), thus indicating why the movement is commonly
referred to as Neo-Nazism. For the most part, Neo-Nazism has taken over
ideological elements of the “old” Nazism. At present, the most representa-
tive institutions and organizations are the National Democratic Party of
Germany (NPD) and the Free Fellowships (Freie Kameradschaften). This
organization is a forum for extremist right-wing individuals who actively
engage in propagating the Nazi ideology through public demonstrations,
music concerts, speeches, etc.
It was not until the 1990s that German researchers began to investigate
the intricate relationship between gender and right-wing extremism in con-
temporary Germany (Elverich, 2007). Much of the literature about teenage
girls or women in this scene is rooted in pedagogical research examining
girls’ motives and incentives to join or abandon the cause (Köttig, 2004;
Sigl, 2013). The need to understand the complexity of women’s involve-

ment has sparked research as well (Bitzan, 2002, 2006, 2009). However,
sociologists have largely ignored the phenomenon even though gender roles
have undergone tremendous changes in the past forty or fifty years.
Sociological inquiry should be directed to uncovering why teenage girls or
women continue to participate in right-wing groups and activities after the
initial phase of their participation and what forms their participation takes.
Most importantly, with women now living more independent lives, older
feminist explanations of women’s participation in violent crimes lose expla-
natory power. Supporting this argument is the fact that women in the
Neo-Nazi scene have been demonstrating a high level of self-organization,
independent of men (Meyer, 1993). Mushaben (1996) argued that in the
1990s Germany witnessed the rise of what she called “Femi-Nazis”8; she
characterizes these women as New Right women who developed their own
political consciousness without internalizing feminism’s general aims of
diversity and inclusion.
The majority of scholarly literature focuses on men’s involvement, their
potential for violence, and other topics. That the extremist right-wing
movement has been portrayed by the media as a homogenous movement
(Pfahl-Traughber, 2001) is symptomatic of the public’s general tendency to
simplify this social phenomenon in terms of ideological views, forms of
appearance and especially gender. The Neo-Nazism movement of the past
twenty years is more diverse and more complex than has been commonly
acknowledged.
While in the 1920s and early 1930s Nazis invested time and energy in
removing women from the political and economic arenas (Gupta, 1991),
women in the Neo-Nazi movement are integrated and active in a variety of
ways. For example, the Neo-Nazi organization German Girls (Düütsche
Deerns) is very present in the northern part of Germany. The Union of
German Women (Gemeinschaft deutscher Frauen) which is the largest asso-
ciation of Neo-Nazi women, are not any less fanatic than organizations of
Neo-Nazi men. Neo-Nazi women are also quite active in right-wing extre-
mist politics and political activities. Bitzan (2009) reported that women
represent approximately 20 percent of party members, 10 33 percent of
organizations and fellowships, and 33 percent of the electorate of right-wing
parties. Half of all people who support nonviolent right-wing extremist dog-
mas are women, with percentages varying in different parts of Germany.
Röbke and Speit (2011) found that female Neo-Nazis come from various
class backgrounds, including academics, white-collar employees, and unem-
ployed women. Köttig and Kenzo (2013) of the Research Network Women
and Right-wing Extremism cited a report according to which women repre-

sent 20 percent of the more than 100 people who have directly supported the
NSU. Clearly, Beate Zschäpe is not an exception to the rule.
A large body of research has examined men’s involvement, their life
courses, their motivations, and exit strategies (cf. Blee, 2010; Claus,
Lehnert, & Müller, 2010; Hopf, Rieker, Sanden-Marcus, & Schmidt, 1995;
Little, 2012; Rieker, 1997). Between 90 and 95 percent of reported violent
crimes are committed by Neo-Nazi men (Brandenburg State Headquarters
for Political Education, 2012, para. 1; Meyer, 1993). As reported by the
Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (FOPC), there
were 22,150 right-wing extremists, including other right-wing extremist
groups or organizations such as the Autonomous Nationalists (Autonome
Nationalisten), in Germany at the end of 2012. Of these, approximately
9,600 are thought to be prone to violence, an increase from 9,000 in 2009
(Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, 2012a).
Regarding women, it might be surprising to many that 20 percent of
German Neo-Nazi activists are female (cf. Elverich, 2007); the violent
potential hidden behind this percentage can only roughly be estimated.
Zschäpe is known to have acted violently as well (Bewarder, 2012, para.
20). According to Bitzan (2002, 2006, 2009), 5 10 percent of Neo-Nazi
women commit nonviolent crimes and 3 5 percent are involved in violent
crimes. However, separate surveys in single states showed that the share
of active female perpetrators is higher. In 2012, Brandenburg reported
that the share of right-wing extremist women has risen to 300, of which
9 percent are violence-prone (Brandenburg State Headquarters for Political
Education, 2012, para. 2). Moreover, official data are based on reported
crimes which frequently leads to an underestimation of the number of
actual violent events, and police investigations are often characterized by a
gender bias, meaning that the investigation of women as potential perpetra-
tors tends to be neglected (Elverich, 2007). In light of the question of
whether Zschäpe shot any of the victims herself attention is called to
another aspect of right-wing women’s participation in extreme groups. The
manifold ways in which women enable other Neo-Nazis to commit violent
crimes remains elusive. Elverich (2007) pointed to indirect forms of violence
such as aiding and abetting or mental instigation.
Having taken for granted that women in Neo-Nazi groups were merely
the assistants of their partners or husbands the actual drivers of Neo-
Nazi activism, with the case of Zschäpe, researchers clearly realized they
must take a closer look at other dimensions of women’s involvement in the
right-wing movement.
MAKING SENSE OF FEMALE PERPETRATORS IN

NEO-NAZISM
Thus, German women of the Third Reich as well as those involved in

Neo-Nazism have committed acts of violence in the face of their traditional
roles of wife and mother, but, for the most part, the public, officials, and
researchers have failed to recognize that women can and do commit acts of
violence. Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic violence or power steers the
researcher’s perception to the relationships among members of society and
the way they interact with each other in subtle nonphysical ways, often
unrecognized by individuals, enabling the dominant group to maintain and
exercise power over the willing dominated group. Gender domination is a
form of symbolic violence. As Lawler (2011) pointed out, symbolic violence
in matters of gender means that “both men and women agree that women
are weaker, less intelligent, more unreliable, and so forth” (p. 1423). While
Bourdieu’s concept certainly explains a great variety of power relation-
ships, it is not very useful when trying to illuminate the many exceptions to
the rule. In so far as researchers assume the reality of the concept thereby
reifying it, they are blind to any actual deviation from the dominating
men and dominated women model of gender relationships. To the extent
the general public and the state as represented by German law enforcement
agencies believe the inequality model of gender power explains all of gender
reality, they, too, are unable to see any actual deviations from it. Thus, the
public reacted with disbelief to Zschäpe’s appearance, researchers had
largely ignored women’s potential for violence in right-wing extremist
movements, and state organs failed to consider the possibility of a woman
having a part in the deaths of nine immigrants and one police officer.
For Bourdieu symbolic violence is a regular part of everyday life because
objective structures and subjective interpretation of these structures become
intertwined keeping people in subordinate positions. The questions then
are: how do individuals manage to step out of their position, both in terms
of their attitudes and their structural restrictions to act in a way that is
counterintuitive to their assigned role, and more pertinent here: how
and why do women manage to exhibit violence against other individuals?
Bourdieu’s conception of structuralist constructivism or constructivist
structuralism can help in a twofold manner: first, this position illuminates
the process by which researchers have largely failed to inquire beyond the
visible relations between men and women. As pointed out earlier, research-
ers are embedded in social structures and so the bias that has characterized
the process of researching gender relationships must be removed. Bourdieu

(1989) referred to this as the “construct of constructs” (p. 15), the social
genesis of scientific knowledge. German society has been a patriarchal
society in that men have held important positions in politics, the economy,
educational institutions and the public sphere in general. Interestingly, the
feminist movement before 1933 was rather active and could be considered a
relevant force in German society. As mentioned previously, when Hitler
came into office he stylized women into bearers and transporters of the
German ideology in the private sphere. This is not to say that women were
excluded from certain positions in the public sphere such as the collective
effort to remove Jews and other minorities from German society.
Thompson (1991) argued that in modern societies institutions have
taken over the function of symbolic violence. According to his point of
view, domination of one group of people by another is no longer enforced
through interpersonal relations, but through institutions. In line with this,
in the past two decades, questions have been raised about federal agencies’
investigations into the crimes of right-wing groups.
Several institutions failed to seriously consider the possibility of a
woman being involved in the murders; police followed false leads for years.
What researchers’ and investigators’ unquestioned acceptance and use of a
reified form of symbolic violence in the gender arena could not uncover
and validate became subsequently inscribed in society’s institutions. A chal-
lenge to a reified form of symbolic violence is the fact that women in both
the Third Reich and the Neo-Nazi movement have been in positions that
allowed and still allow them to violently perpetrate or murder other people.
Feminism has made sense of this observation by contextualizing women’s
violence. From this point of view, women have essentially integrated into
and internalized the male dominance culture and are actively involved in
reproducing it (Meyer, 1993). Before the feminist movement of the 1960s,
female perpetrators in the Nazi system remained invisible as German
women were viewed as victims of the Nazi system or as apolitical and unin-
volved contemporary witnesses (Tzani, 2011).
Bourdieu’s (1991/2003) reflections on language and symbolic power are
equally important in light of the gendered press coverage of Zschäpe’s sur-
render to police. His argument that “… it is rare in everyday life for
language to function as a pure instrument of communication” (p. 66) is
exemplified in the analysis of newspaper reports, which showed that lan-
guage is used to communicate power relations within the NSU. Beyond the
content of the actual message news reports contain information that convey
how the individuals of the NSU were positioned in the social sphere.
In this sense, a reification of symbolic power, even if it is questionable, is

being reproduced through journalism. That this affects how individuals
construct their social reality was made clear by Bourdieu (1991/2003):
There is no social agent who does not aspire, as far as his circumstances permit, to have
the power to name and to create the world through naming: gossip, slander, lies, insults,
commendations, criticisms, arguments and praises are all daily and petty manifestations
of the solemn and collective acts of naming … (p. 105).
The newspaper reports examined in this chapter can be analyzed from

this point of view. Because they are read, re-told, referred to, questioned,
and argued about by many, they serve to construct social reality on a daily
basis.
In modern society, Bourdieu’s concept has proven extremely popular
and pervasive in that people hold the notion of male domination to be an
accurate description of reality. The idea that women take on characteristics
purportedly owned by men, including aggression and violence, seems
unrealistic, at best “unnatural” to the general public. To argue for this
hypothesis does not contradict most feminist approaches. In contrast, it ele-
vates women into positions in which they do not have to accept oppression
from men.
CONCLUSION
The trial of Zschäpe is a contemporary example of the observation that the

examination of women as perpetrating actors in the public sphere has been
chronically neglected. Moreover, dominant paradigms have prevented a
shift in perception of women as offenders. At the time of this writing, the
public has no insight into the prosecution’s motive for charging Zschäpe
with supporting NSU operations rather than with shooting any of the vic-
tims. One interpretation holds that because for a conviction it does not
matter from a law perspective whether she shot any of the victims herself,
the prosecution might have deliberately restricted charges to increase the
chance to convince the court of her guilt. It is also possible that there
simply is not enough evidence, or none at all, to charge her as the shooter
of any of the victims.
While this chapter does not include an examination of women’s past and
present relationship with fascism, it is not self-evident why such an exami-
nation should be conducted at all. It is not to be contested that women are
socialized and have more ample experiences than men in societal realms
such as childcare, elderly care, and husband or partner care. At the same
time, women place more importance on maintaining and nourishing social
relationships with friends and relatives. However, identifying these “typi-
cal” female realms as less prone to violence or political extremist views and
attitudes is circular reasoning. In fact, this begs the question of how reality
in these realms differs from ideological conceptions. The modern family
has long been cherished as a haven of peace and love. Yet, violence and
aggression among family members are neither a modern phenomenon nor
an exception. Therefore, to assume that women’s relationship with fascism
is inherently different from that of men’s bears the risk of arriving at the
same conclusions that have been drawn over the past decades, namely that
there must be extraordinary reasons why women would commit to violent
fascism.
The importance of this issue is not restricted to Neo-Nazism.
Photographs of abusive female supervisors or guards circulate on the inter-
net. Lynndie England, a U.S. soldier who was stationed in Abu Ghraib,
is known to have abused and humiliated inmates (Brockes, 2009). On
September 21, 2013, a group of members of the militant Al-Shabab
stormed the Westgate mall in Kenya’s capital Nairobi and kept it under
siege for several days. Samantha Lewthwaite, mother and widow of 7/7
bomber Jermaine Lindsey who blew up a Tube train at King’s Cross in
2005, is suspected of being behind the attack. Surprise was registered
throughout the mass media that a woman was involved in the attack, but
according to various sources, she is believed to be one of the main
figures in the Al-Shabab terror group (Addley, Dodd, & Hirsch, 2013).
In conclusion, it is critical that researchers, officials, and the public be
aware of the possibility that women, irrespective of the traditional female
roles of mother and wife, are capable of committing violent acts in the
public sector of society. Future research must pave the way and be opened
to the idea that women can be just as violent, aggressive and subversive
as men.
NOTES
1. In the United States, defendants before a criminal court plead guilty or not
guilty at the beginning of a trial. In German courts, the defendant does not have to
testify about their guilt or innocence at all. While innocence is assumed until the
defendant is proven guilty in both countries, German courts have to assert whether
or not the defendant is guilty, even if that person were to publicly plead guilty. In
the United States, a jury finds the defendant guilty or not guilty after hearing the
prosecution and the defense lawyer. In Germany, this task falls to one judge or up
to five judges, sometimes including lay judges, depending on the level of jurisdiction.
Although Beate Zschäpe surrendered voluntarily to police, this is not to be under-
stood as a concession of guilt.
2. Cp. Leck (2000) for a comprehensive analysis of the conflict between Bock
and Koonz.
3. The abbreviation “SS” stands for Schutzstaffel which, according to Brown
(1996), can be roughly translated into “defense detachments.” However, it was
understood to represent more of an “elite guard.”
4. German newspapers have reported that mistakes were made during the investi-
gation both pre-discovery and post-discovery of the NSU terror cell. For example,
an officer at the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution destroyed files
vital to the NSU case after Zschäpe surrendered to police (cf. Schultz, 2012).
5. The original word used in German is “durchsetzungsstark” which describes a
person who can enforce their will.
6. It has been reported that Beate Zschäpe used several aliases since the NSU
went into hiding.
7. The color brown was associated with Nazism as early as 1925. It symbolized
the strong bond with the homeland and soil (cp. p. 8).
8. Mushaben’s use of the term “Femi-Nazi” is different from conservative radio
talk show host Rush Limbaugh’s use. He coined the term to describe feminists who
in his opinion represent extreme views. The term is usually used in a pejorative
manner.
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nationalism, it does not explicitly consider how specific markers (such as
religion) utilized in constructions of nationalism by actors such as the state
and political parties are challenged by local groups such as NGOs.
Following Clark (1991) and Silliman and Noble (1998), I use the NGO
label to refer to voluntary organizations that are relatively independent of
the state and private business sectors and therefore are a part of civil
society, and in the broader context are manifestations of social movements.
Organizational challenges to using women’s bodies in the contestation and
construction of religious nationalism have been strategic particularly as
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responses to episodes of violence. Resistances, as noted by social movement
scholars, are also shaped by local and national opportunities and con-
straints depending on how events are provided meaning (or framed) by
groups or specific agencies, and what the outcome of such an interaction
could be (Gamson & Meyer, 1996).
In an increasingly globalizing world, movements have frequently relied
on transnational opportunities to frame their cause and seek other forms of
support (Keck & Sikkink, 1998; Moghadam, 2005). These include the insti-
tutional anchoring of women’s rights in internationally ratified texts such
as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
against Women (CEDAW) and the Beijing Platform of Action as part of
the transnational gender equity agenda. In addition, the endorsement
of the Vienna Declaration of Human Rights in 1993 was a major victory
for the international women’s movement, and marked a significant change
in discursive opportunity for women’s movement organizations to mobilize
directly against many forms of violence against women. Thus, feminist con-
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tunities for women in many situations of violence.
The conventional construction of women less as individuals than as the
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partly undermined by the new discourse of women’s rights. Yet the exis-
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sive opportunity still does not explain which groups of women in what
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groups to resist dominant discourses is possible through a variety of avail-

able discursive opportunities. But the question here is how organizational
agency is instrumental in mobilizing which ideas, and why, to engage in the
reconstructions of nationalism by resisting the use of women as symbols.
Organizational agency can be central to resisting and redefining gendered
nationalism (or gendered communalism in the case of India) for articulat-
ing women’s rights. How NGOs redefine and construct religion and nation-
alism and why, is critical to understanding the temporal and spatial aspects
of the ways in which women and nationalism are intertwined.
GENDER, RELIGIOUS NATIONALISM, AND

NGOS IN INDIA
In this chapter, I examine NGO responses to the construction of a gen-

dered nationalism through a religious lens, the project of advocating
Hindutva and constructing the “Hindu Rashtra” (Hindu nation) with speci-
fic reference to the 2002 religious-based violence in Gujarat, India. The
idea of the Hindu Rashtra as advocated by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad
(VHP), the World Hindu Council/Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)
(Hindu religious groups), and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) (Indian
People’s Party) was utilized to gain political power in the state of Gujarat
and the federal level and served as their basis for policies and actions.1
“Hindutva really means, as understood by its advocates, conformity to the
idea that India has primarily been a Hindu rashtra. It is not a religious phi-
losophy or a social reform movement. … At the heart of the Hindutva
ideology is the idea that the good of a majority should also be seen as the
good for any minority, and that any assertion of minority rights is essen-
tially a threat and a challenge to the political authority of the majority”
(Devy, 2002, p. 263).
The 2002 episode of violence, based in the notion of Hindutva, involved
drawing on “communalism” (implying tension between religious commu-
nities as noted in Pandey, 2006). Communalism is rooted in India’s history
and typically used women as “tools” to highlight the differences between
communities.2 This is what I refer to as gendering nationalism. Women’s
bodies are used as tools by subjecting them to violence in the form of
assault and rape to establish power which continues as an ongoing process.
The use of women’s bodies to settle debates between national cultural
ideals and a nation’s present and future is complex because of the struggles
between state institutions, movement groups, and the media engaged in
196 ELEANOR M. NOVEK
the tense atmosphere of a prison, neither inmates nor corrections officers

express themselves fully in the presence of an outside observer.
Social implications The violent masculinities valued and practiced in
prisons replicate in communities and institutions beyond the prison walls.
Attention to the alternative masculinities practiced in correctional
institutions can help scholars challenge the destructive ideologies of
hegemonic masculinity and reduce its prevalence; it can influence policy
makers to establish more humane conditions and procedures of benefit to
individuals, families, and communities.
Originality/value The study is of value to scholars of gender, culture,
and social justice; to policy makers interested in criminal justice reform;
and to activists and people of conscience seeking to reduce violence on
both sides of the bars.
Keywords: Prison; hypermasculinity; gendered violence; performance;
communication
INTRODUCTION
Two corrections officers pass in the hallway of Millstone Prison and greet
each other enthusiastically. “Hey stupido!” says the first. The second officer
steps behind the first and swings his billy club, as if to strike the back of
the man’s thighs and knock him to the ground. The first man hops out
of the way briskly, saying, “I’ll break your neck later there’s too many
witnesses now.” Both laugh loudly and go their separate ways.
As taken-for-granted social structures and generative themes for mass-
mediated entertainment, prisons are ubiquitous in the United States. The
sensationalist atmosphere constructed by films, news reports, YouTube
videos, and computer games gives viewers the idea, titillating but inaccu-
rate, that the world behind bars is a chaotic place without rules or order.
Inside the prison’s walls, however, the penal institution carries out a highly
regimented program of containment and subjugation of those who are
deemed criminals. Corrections officers are charged with carrying out that
suppression; the incarcerated must endure it.
Both guards’ performances of domination and inmates’ acts of resistance
often involve the behaviors collectively identified by scholars as hypermas-
culinity (Connell, 1990). Hypermasculine behaviors that emphasize power,
“That Candy Bar Ain’t Free” 197
domination, and violence are familiar building blocks of identity in social

structures under duress. Expressions of violence, whether spoken, written,
threatened, or acted out, permeate the masculine performances of both pris-
oners and guards. Yet while hypermasculinity is esteemed in U.S. prisons,
other forms of gendered communication may also be observed, involving
supportive identities grounded in relationship, spirituality, or other forms of
caring. These alternative performances, which may be read as a critique
of hypermasculinity’s limited rewards, offer incarcerated men and their
communities the promise of nonviolent models of masculinity.
For these reasons, prisons are important sites of critical cultural study
that can expose provocative truths about power relations in society.
Examining the roles played by masculine communication performances in
U.S. correctional facilities helps us understand the gendering of violence in
these contexts. This essay offers a three-part discussion. After offering a
theoretical investigation of gender identity in prisons, it illustrates perfor-
mances of masculinist aggression between and among incarcerated men
and corrections officers in a variety of contexts within two correctional
facilities. The essay next describes examples of caring interactions among
the observed populations, the contradictory emergence of which challenges
the dominion of hypermasculinity as a social norm and offers alternative
models of male behavior. Finally, it explores the implications of these
behaviors and advocates for the value of social and institutional support
for the development of nonviolent masculinities in correctional settings.
PRISONS AS LOCALES OF GENDERED

PERFORMANCE
In his influential work on society, power and imprisonment, Foucault

(1979) noted that the establishment of prisons made it possible for the state
to isolate a small group of lawbreakers, keep them under surveillance, and
control them for financial and political profit. He observed that the state
could use prisons to manipulate law-abiding citizens too, noting that “the
more criminals there are, the more readily the population will accept police
controls” (Droit, 1975, p. 1). Certainly the United States has accepted an
extraordinary level of police control, and is now suffering from a profound
crisis of over-incarceration. The prison population in the United States
tripled over the last 30 years (Sabol, West, & Cooper, 2009). Today, some
2.2 million Americans are held in the nation’s state, federal, military, and
the construction of the 2002 Gujarat violence. So, how did NGOs resist
attempts by the state to construct nationalism based on religion? And,
what are the implications of such resistances and redefinitions for the
women’s movement in India and transnationally?
I address these questions using primary qualitative data from organiza-
tions in Gujarat, India. While scholars, journalists, and activists have elabo-
rated on the gender politics in the violence and violation of rights of women
in the 2002 Gujarat riots (Baldwin, 2002; Concerned Citizens Tribual-
Gujarat, 2002; Hameed, 2002; Hasan, 1998), there has been no analysis of the
strategic responses of organizations involved in relief and rehabilitation
work. Several organizations have responded to the violent impacts on
women, particularly after the 2002 violence, by assisting in rehabilitation
efforts, counseling and legal help and it is these analyses that I turn to below.
My analyses show how NGOs interrogate, resist, and reconstruct the
notion of communalism by challenging the gendered basis upon which it is
perpetrated and embedded in the broader notions of nationalism. I discern
three main frames deployed by NGOs in resisting attempts by the state to
construct nationalism: Communal Harmony (Not Communal Violence),
“Endangered” Woman, and Gender Mainstreaming.3 As the Hindutva pro-
ject has gained ground, it has marginalized minorities, particularly
Muslims, and continued to produce violence. The violence is defined as
“communal” by defining each religion as a “community.” The frame, I call
“communal harmony, not communal violence” views women as an ungen-
dered part of their communities. Although women are central to the reli-
gious violence and struggle, they are viewed as passive persons whose rights
are masked. This passive frame is what I refer to as the “endangered
woman” frame. At the same time, women’s groups and NGOs have actively
sought to emphasize the gender aspect of all formal and informal political
activities. This is the “gender mainstreaming” frame. I discuss each of these
frames in further detail below. I begin with a broad overview of national
history using the 2002 violence as context; I follow with an overview of the
data and the methods I used, and end with my analyses and conclusions.
NATIONAL HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF RELIGIOUS

VIOLENCE IN INDIA
Scholarly work on gender and nationalism in India emphasize the historical

and colonial basis for considering its shifts and understandings (Chatterjee,
Similarly, Althusser (1971) dichotomized the realities of control into two

disparate forces of structural domination: the “hard” repressive apparatus
forces compliance with the state, and the “softer” ideological apparatus,
which persuades or converts instead. In prison, manifestations of the
repressive apparatus are seen everywhere: in the walls, locks, gates, bars,
and barbed wire; in the officers who stand ready with their clubs and cuffs;
in the penalties, beatings, restraints, and isolation imposed on prisoners.
The ideological apparatus, employed far less frequently, is seen in educa-
tion classes, religious services, and limited social programs; in privileges
awarded for good behavior; and in the parole mechanism.
The divergent philosophies of power within corrections systems “soft”
versus “hard,” “maternalist” versus “paternalist” invoke binary gendered
logics. Authoritarian structures of domination in prisons assume a hyper-
masculinist character, compelling guards and prisoners to communicate by
means of aggressive performances based on constant threats of punishment
and brutality, while devaluing peacemaking or discursive strategies of inter-
action. Similarly, the “tough on crime” posture that continues to be found
in contemporary mass media and political discourse celebrates the most
punitive aspects of the repressive apparatus and largely rejects the possibi-
lity of structural change based on rehabilitative or conciliatory efforts at
justice.
Many social critics now see the tripling of the U.S. prison population
over the last three decades as an expensive policy disaster with far-reaching
human rights consequences (among others Davis & Rodriguez, 2000;
Hartnett, 2010; Larson, 2011; Mauer, 2006; PCARE, 2007). Yet pollsters
still find continuing public enthusiasm for harsh and lengthy imprisonment
as a response to crime (Cook & Lane, 2009; Maruna & King, 2009;
Roberts & Hough, 2005). If policy makers and publics are to accept more
humane alternatives to incarceration (as both conscience and fiscal respon-
sibility indicate we must), then scholars must offer discourses that can be
used to debunk the hypermasculinist approach to crime and punishment.
This study is situated in that endeavor.
GENDERED AGGRESSION AND PRISON

MASCULINITIES
Andersson (2008) notes that masculine identity is forged out of symbolic

meaning, with actors “constantly negotiating, producing and reproducing
what it entails to ‘do masculinity’ in relation to the surrounding culture

and social structures” (p. 140). A widespread style of masculinity, charac-
terized as “hegemonic” by Connell (1990, 2000) and others, involves perfor-
mances of aggressive norms that men follow in order to be respected by
other men. These norms include physical size and toughness; eagerness to
fight; the avoidance of emotional expression; domination of others; compe-
titiveness; condemnation of homosexuality; and contempt for the feminine.
The “hardness” of this form of hypermasculinity promises its practitioners
authority, respect, and protection from victimization. In elite expressions
of hegemonic masculinity, dominance or supremacy can be played out in
the exercise of economic or political influence; for the poor and the power-
less, the body is the usual site of masculine power, and performances are
often associated with aggression and assault (Jewkes, 2005). Hegemonic
masculinity is embodied through the imbedding of force and skill in the
body (Messner, 1990b, p. 214).
Idealized constructions of masculinity become hegemonic, Connell
asserts, when they become so prevalent and widely accepted in a culture
that they pass unnoticed and when their acceptance, in turn, reinforces the
dominant gender ideology (1990). Aggressive masculinity is seen as the
dominant style of masculine performance in traditional Western societies,
Evans and Wallace (2008) observe: “Hegemonic masculinity has tradition-
ally received the most social approval and offers a man great power if he is
seen by others, particularly men, to be the living embodiment of this way
of being male” (p. 485). In sites largely dominated by men, such as prisons,
they note, “the desire to be seen as a real man can manifest in an oppres-
sive, violent, and hypermasculine culture” (p. 487). Scholars have observed
that both corrections officers (Hepburn & Crepin, 1984; Tracy & Scott,
2006) and inmates (Bandyopadhyay, 2006; Evans & Wallace, 2008; Nandi,
2002) enact elements of hegemonic masculinity in their ongoing struggle for
dominance and respect, both within their own social groups and in opposi-
tion to one another.
In his analysis of gendered violence in the context of sport, Messner
(1990a, 1990b) sees sport as a significant organizing institution for the
distribution of violence in society, especially through the construction of
differences between men. He observes that men who are marginalized and
subordinated by other men “tend to overtly display exaggerated embodi-
ments and verbalizations of masculinity that can be read as a desire to
express power over others within a context of relative powerlessness”
(Messner, 1997, pp. 75 76). He notes that those who pursue athletic
careers in violent combat sports like football are disproportionately men
from lower socioeconomic and ethnic minority backgrounds, and he

observes that these subordinated yet hypermasculine performers are “in a
very real sense, contemporary gladiators who are sacrificed in order that
the elite may have a clear sense of where they stand in the pecking order of
inter-male dominance” (p. 214). Although violence makes them attractive
to other men to watch, it also marginalizes them, first demanding that they
become “intimidating, aggressive, and violent in order to survive,” and
then justifying racist stereotypes about men of color being “naturally more
violent and aggressive” (p. 215).
This same dynamic is seen in other forms of mass media, including news
and entertainment. Hall (1995) and many other scholars (cf. Dixon, 2010;
Ferber, 2007; Yousman, 2009) have described how racialized public culture
has historically linked men of color to imagined characteristics of primiti-
vism and savagery. In associating Black men with violence, television news
has been seen to trigger “chronic activation of racist stereotypes” (Dixon,
2010, p. 118). Hypermasculine gender aggression combined with sensatio-
nalized expectations of violent behavior from young men of color leads to
their marginalization in the streets of our nation (where Wideman says
young African American men are seen as “the primary agents of social
pathology and instability,” 1995, p. 505) and in prison, where the majority
of incarcerated men also come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and
from communities of color.
I have argued elsewhere (Novek, 2012) that constructions of hegemonic
masculinity create a “double bind,” especially for incarcerated African
American men, because they promise protection and status but ultimately
reinforce the men’s stigmatized outsider status and isolation from one
another. Yet men who are detained in prisons as well as those who work in
them sometimes recognize the high personal costs of the violent construc-
tions of masculinity they encounter there, and struggle to challenge or
transform them. Nuanced and paradoxical performances of masculinity
may be observed in prisons because incarcerated individuals are not “mere
bearers of structure,” Jewkes (2005) notes, and “not every inmate will con-
form to the hegemonic masculine ideal” (pp. 60 61). Bandyopadhyay
(2006) made note of the “alternate and competing masculinities and identi-
ties that male prisoners take on and demonstrate” (2006, p. 188), while
Evans and Wallace (2008) ascertained that incarcerated men experience “a
deeper, more emotional, more complex private world” (p. 488) than most
outsiders are aware of. Similarly, Tracy and Scott (2006) described how
some corrections officers seek to redefine the ideal of hypermasculinity by
emphasizing the sacrifice, toughness, and heroism of their actions on the
job while rejecting the brutality and cruelty commonly associated with the
profession.
Below the discussion explores how both incarcerated men and correc-
tions officers use communication to manage the tensions in performances
of hypermasculine aggression and caring masculinities in the prison setting.
It illuminates a variety of identity performances in prison settings, ranging
from those that emphasize the harsher aspects of hegemonic masculinity to
those that demonstrate human needs for intimacy and caring. Both groups
influence their own members and one another, and both are shaped by their
relationships with people in the world outside, as husbands, lovers, fathers,
sons, and brothers. In the willingness of some prisoners and corrections
officers to express kindness or compassion, to craft identities that are
constructive and beneficial to themselves and others, the larger society may
find alternative models of maleness that challenge or even heal some of the
damage done by hypermasculinity.
WITNESS TO THE PERFORMANCE
The study of masculine performance is well suited to ethnographic observa-

tion. Ethnographers focus on the stories people tell about things that mat-
ter to them, Denzin and Lincoln (1995) assert: “Truth and facts are socially
constructed, and people build stories around the meanings of facts.
Ethnographers collect and tell these multiple versions of the ‘truth’” (p. 4).
The thick description practiced by ethnographers helps readers comprehend
the everyday commonalities of people’s lives and cultural practices as
observed by the researcher. Ethnography can also reveal what Katz (1997)
calls the “errors of romanticization” (p. 394) associated with outsider popu-
lations like prison inmates and other pariah groups. Katz (1997) argues
that people who are deemed deviants by society are often viewed through
a middle-class “veil of mystery” that is sustained, rather than dispelled,
by the glimpses provided by journalism and entertainment media.
Ethnographers can demythologize the mystery by “document(ing) local
meaning, that is, the meaning of subjects’ actions to the subjects” (p. 395)
and thus direct a more clear-headed level of attention to the population
being studied.
However, gaining access to prisons in order to study the people and
social relationships inside them is not easy. Ethnographic research in U.S.
prisons was common prior to the 1970s, Wacquant (2002) observes, but
observational studies depicting the everyday world of inmates ebbed as the

country abandoned its previous focus on rehabilitation to embrace punitive
mass incarceration: “The ethnography of the prison thus went into eclipse
at the very moment when it was most urgently needed on both scientific
and political grounds” (Wacquant 2002, p. 385). Acknowledging that most
penal facilities now endeavor to avoid the scrutiny of journalists and inves-
tigators (Sussman, 2002), Wacquant urges field researchers to continue to
struggle for access, in order “to carry out intensive, close-up observation of
the myriad relations they contain and support” (2002, p. 387).
In recent decades, rather than trying to enter correctional institutions as
social scientists whose primary goal is research, a number of scholars have
volunteered to teach classes, create artwork, direct performances, or per-
form other service functions within prison walls (Billone, 2009; Hartnett,
1998; Novek, 2005; Valentine, 1998). These teacher-researchers make
observations from their vantage points as volunteers, sometimes augment-
ing their observations with survey, interview, or textual data (Fine et al.,
2001; Pompa, 2004) to provide a broader view of prison conditions.
The author is a middle-class White woman professor at a private univer-
sity who since 2001 has volunteered at several prisons in the mid-Atlantic
United States. The observations presented here were made at two of these
facilities: a mixed-security prison for young men where I have facilitated
periodic conflict transformation workshops since 2006 and a maximum-
security state prison for men where I have taught a weekly writing class
since 2007. Each nonviolence workshop lasts for approximately 20 hours,
spread over the course of three days. Each weekly writing class is two hours
long. Because civilians can only enter or exit the prison at specified times,
I spend additional time after each class at the prison canteen in the
company of civilian staff and corrections officers.
The ever-changing groups of incarcerated men with whom I work have
ranged in age from their teens to early old age, serving sentences ranging
from several years to life in prison. While at various times I have worked
with White, African American, Latino, and Asian men, the majority I have
known have been Black. While the corrections officers at both of these
facilities are White, African American, Latino, and Asian men and women,
those officers whom I have had the opportunity to observe most closely
have been White men between the approximate ages of 35 and 55. The
names of individual prisoners or corrections officers with whom I have
spoken and their locations are concealed to protect their privacy, so all
names appearing here are pseudonymous. In this essay I refer to the youth
facility as Greenfields, and the maximum-security prison as Millstone.
The data for this essay are derived in part from more than 250 pages of
field notes written between 2007 and 2012, and from occasional artifacts
authored by inmates in the writing class. I analyze the data through two-
step coding, both open and axial (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). Having first
identified a number of categories of masculine communication behaviors in
prisons through observation and interaction with inmates, custodial offi-
cers, and civilian staff, I then used axial coding to specify added dimensions
of the initial understandings attributed to these activities, returning repeat-
edly to the original conceptions for further development and elucidation.
My analysis involved exploration of the conditions under which these types
of masculine performance occurred or were said by participants to occur;
additional details about their diverse properties; the interactional methods
and strategies chosen by the participants to manage their performances of
masculinity; and consideration of the results of these actions and interac-
tions. Such analysis allowed me to develop grounded theory by taking the
categories of behavior developed through analysis and linking them in the-
oretical models related to their contexts, intervening conditions, actors’
strategies of action and interaction strategies, and consequences (Denzin &
Lincoln, 2000).
The overall context of the masculine performances described here must
be understood. My observations have taken place in institutions at times
and locations where prisoners, officers, and civilians were present together
or in relative proximity. They have involved performances and accounts of
violence, never actual deeds of physical brutality. Jimerson and Oware
(2003) assert that accounts are important both because “what a man says
affects how others view him” and because “what one says [also] influences
how others see themselves” (p. 19). In their research on African American
men and masculinity, Jimerson and Oware (2003) note that they never tried
to ascertain whether their participants’ narratives were true: “What is rele-
vant is not what they told us, but what they told each other” (p. 3).
Similarly, the validity of the descriptions offered here derives from their
reproduction of performances (such as officers making physical threats and
intimidating prisoners, and inmates’ verbal menacing, teasing, and humilia-
tion of other prisoners) and accounts (including guards’ personal recollec-
tions and institutional legends about violent acts, usually involving
prisoners who victimized guards, and inmates’ accounts of harassment and
brutality at the hands of corrections officers or each other). The data also
incorporated essays from my writing class in which incarcerated men con-
structed narratives about their own experiences of violence, both as victims
and victimizers. They have also included my observations of friendly, even
gentle and caring, actions among inmates and, infrequently, between cor-
rections officers and inmates.
It should be noted that the institutions discussed here do not represent
all prisons in the United States, though they embody social structures and
relationships common in other correctional facilities and observed by other
scholars. In this study I did not explore the emotional, psychological, or
sociological causes of violence. Instead, I observed how tales were told and
how roles were performed. I describe the effects of these accounts on the
people who enacted them, their audiences, and the worlds these behaviors
help to construct.
The next section of the essay illuminates a variety of identity perfor-
mances in prison settings. It first describes the harsher aspects of hegemonic
masculinity, based on my observations among incarcerated men and
corrections officers at the two correctional facilities. It then focuses on
alternative masculinities based on caring, connection with others, and the
desire for a more meaningful identity, which are derived primarily from
observations of prisoners.
VIOLENCE IN THE AIR: MANAGING THE THREAT OF

THE “OTHER”
As noted by Jewkes (2005), the fear for personal safety is “arguably the
overriding feature of life in most institutions” (p. 46). The threat of assault
is real to the people who work and live in prisons, and this section will
describe how inmates and officers relied on performances of aggressiveness
to manage the perceived threat that each group presented the other.
Parallel performances of hegemonic masculinity flavored both organiza-
tional cultures of inmates and officers in the prisons I observed.
The whiff of violence in the air was particularly noticeable at the
maximum-security prison Millstone, where the masculine identity of the
officers seemed predicated on the view that they guarded the “worst of
the worst.” Fox, a long-time veteran, said as much to me early one morning
in my first year volunteering there. He confided that he had seen “bad
things, terrible things” while working at Millstone, and stressed that most
prisoners would behave violently if given the chance. “Never forget where
you are,” he said didactically. “Most of these guys are in here for murder.
The guys you are working with are all nice to you and smiling and respect-
ful in the class, but if you ever saw them in their environment these are
the controversy of family law and personal law pertains to marriage,

divorce, property, and maintenance which is differentiated on the basis of
religion. Shah Bano, a Muslim, was divorced by her husband after roughly
a half-century of marriage. He gave her a small amount as maintenance for
about two years and then abruptly stopped. Her appeal to the local court
led to a discussion on the interpretation of the family law and protests by
feminists. These protests posed two main issues for the future. The first was
the difference in the understanding of secularism by feminists and the state.
While feminists subscribed to the classical view of separating religion and
politics, the state stance was that all religions had the “right to representa-
tion within the law and, indeed, had the right to make their own laws”
(Kumar, 1993, p. 171). The second issue was about representation or repre-
sentativeness. It was to address this issue that the Committee for the
Protection of the Rights of Muslim Women was set up. But the demands for
reform of personal law were viewed as not representing the real desires of
real Muslim women particularly in the arguments presented in the courts.
The pressure on Shah Bano led her to give up the right she had demanded
(Kumar, 1993). The state and political parties are directly implicated in the
gendering of religion.
Appropriating the rhetoric of the feminist movement of the 1980s, the
BJP has made violence against women its rallying call (for details see Basu,
1998; Sarkar, 1996; Sen, 2008). Sarkar (1996) observes that women in the
right-wing movement come into the streets and engage in violence only
when men determine their presence is useful. She also cautions against
valorizing the activism of these right-wing women. In her analysis of Hindu
nationalist paramilitary camps for women, Sehgal (2007) identifies two
intertwined discourses focusing on Hindu women’s victimization and
empowerment. She asserts that “There is a common nationalist trope in
which metaphors of the “nation-as-woman” and the “woman-as-nation”
reduce women to the “symbolic markers of the nation,” the “carriers of
tradition,” and transform women (as bodies and cultural repositories) into
the battleground of group struggles” (p. 172). This struggle is directly
related to violence in a broader scale with the “woman” at the center and is
related to India’s freedom movement and the partition that ensued.
The effects of partition find parallels in recent discourses on rise
of religious-based violence in India. All social movement activity in India
has been considerably influenced by the rise of the “Hindutva” forces in
the post-1980s among other trends such as the political restructuring and
emergence of caste-based parties (Subramaniam, 2006).
concern by avoiding certain officers or negotiating personal relationships

with them (as discussed later in this essay). But they often grumbled about
it and warned each other of the latest incidents. Jackson, one of the men in
the writing class noted, “The correction officers are enemies to you because
any slight move the wrong way, they believe it’s justifiable to allow your
head to meet the sticks they carry around all day long, waiting to be put
into action.” Ralph wrote, “Believe me, it’s not going to look good when
all five or six or whatever number of CO’s are doing the happy dance on
you, using all their boot material.” Vincent noted, “The police are sneaky
and will kick and beat you until there’s no energy left.”
When prisoners were moved from one wing of the institution to another,
they were often cuffed with their hands behind their backs. Michael
described being escorted by corrections officers on one occasion and then
tripped as he walked down a flight of stairs; other men in the class nodded,
sharing similar experiences. Strip searches, an unpleasant form of routine
domination by guards, could also be occasions for beatings. A prisoner
named Orson wrote, “It is very humiliating to strip in front of 4 or 5 offi-
cers. Then you must be aware just in case they try something, like jumping
on you if they feel your movement is a threat to them.”
These fears seemed justified by an account that circulated among staf-
fers. O’Brien, a painfully shy young man who worked as a teacher’s aide,
was a model prisoner who could be counted on to avoid trouble, they said.
But one day, in a secluded wing of the prison, two officers had pushed
O’Brien up against a wall and clubbed him across the skull, claiming later
that he had aggressively lunged at them. O’Brien was sent to the solitary
confinement wing bleeding from the head, with a concussion, the staffers
said. Later, after much effort, O’Brien’s family was able to get him
transferred to another prison, lest he meet with further brutality from the
same officers. To the staff’s knowledge, the officers responsible went
unpunished.
The dynamic between officers and prisoners was different at Greenfields,
where most prisoners were younger and had been incarcerated for a variety
of felonies, from less serious to more severe. Here, though officers could
handle the men roughly, they did not seem invested in the danger of their
jobs, and treated most inmates like out-of-control children rather than as
potential killers. When inmates at Greenfields spoke of interactions with
officers, they described them as a major source of stress, involving insults,
the humiliation of strip searches, intimidation by guards in riot gear with
dogs, and the destruction of their property when cells were searched; but
they rarely mentioned beatings or physical assault.
On one occasion I observed a female corrections officer at Greenfields in

an aggressive performance with inmates. During a conflict resolution work-
shop with several civilians and some 20 younger male inmates, the guard
strode in and began a routine count of the prisoners, calling each man’s
name and slowly checking it off her list. One man, irritated at having the
workshop disrupted, mumbled something under his breath.
“What?” the officer said. “Do you have a problem?” The room fell
silent. “I said, do you have a problem?” The officer stood in front of the
inmate who muttered, her face only inches from his face, her breath in his
nostrils, and shouted. “Because if you have a problem, I can solve it.”
His face took on the blank, expressionless stare that inmates called “jail
face.” “Do you have a problem?” she barked again. “I said, do you?”
“No ma’am,” the inmate said quietly.
The guard turned from the first man and began to approach the others,
invading their personal space with her body and breathing in their faces.
“Does anybody else here have a problem? Come on, give me a problem.”
The men dropped their gazes and stared at the floor, but this only seemed
to spur the officer on. “I can make this take all day if you assholes want.”
The young men had already learned to submit when officers displayed
dominance, but they fidgeted in anger. When the officer turned and left, the
clang of the gate behind her was met with a muffled outburst of profanity.
Though I had no opportunity to observe officers “behind the scenes” at
Greenfields, they did not appear to be anxious about their physical safety.
Whether this was due to the age difference between most officers and
inmates, the lesser severity of many prisoners’ crimes, or other factors, the
guards were less inclined to see prisoners as threats to themselves. Physical
violence, if it took place, would be among prisoners only.
NO SAFE HAVEN: NAVIGATING IN-GROUP

AGGRESSION
While each group communicated fear and distrust of the other, inmates
and officers also experienced and perpetrated hypermasculine aggression
within their own ranks. These in-group displays appeared to be as stressful
for men to experience as cross-group hostility, or more so. No matter
the reality, many a man did whatever he could to establish a reputation for
violence, and would go to great lengths to avoid any appearance of weak-
ness in front of his peers.
For most inmates, respect, status, and access to scarce resources all
depend on maintaining a reputation for aggressiveness and toughness
(Jewkes, 2005; Shabazz, 2009). In an environment where other forms of
personal power are scarce, Caputo-Levine (2012) argues, prisoners who are
known for the ability to use violence may derive social capital from it.
“The majority of people, including those who have been incarcerated, are
not good at performing physical violence… Those individuals with the
mental and physical capability to perform acts of physical violence can
transform that violence into other forms of capital. It can secure a business
or guarantee access to important social networks” (p. 169). On the other
hand, failure to maintain such a reputation invites victimization, so many
men use performance and narrative to construct as ferocious a “front” as
possible. At Millstone, prisoners granted other men status according to a
hierarchy of offenses, with murderers receiving higher status and sex offen-
ders at the bottom. Thus, some men violated the general taboo against
sharing personal information to let others know they had been convicted of
violent crimes, or at least to create the impression that they had. Calvin,
known for a string of violent crimes, often spoke of being “a natural born
killer.” Flag, a very young man, managed to let the writing class know he
had “a body,” a murder conviction.
One apparent exception to the rule was Garrison, who expressed genuine
regret over an incident that took place more than a decade ago, when he
first came to prison. At that time, he said, he carried a sharpened metal
shank with him constantly for protection. Several other inmates approached
him and ordered him to kill another prisoner in the recreation yard. Not
wanting to commit the murder and not knowing how else to avoid it,
Garrison said he walked through a metal detector while carrying the shank
and got thrown into “the hole.” He admitted doing this on purpose, because
being sent to solitary confinement for having a weapon meant that he would
no longer be expected to carry out the killing. Probably because Garrison
already possessed a reputation for extreme violence, his telling of this story
in which he intentionally avoided a brutal act did nothing to diminish it.
To cope with the threat of brutality from other prisoners, inmates at
Millstone spoke of creating weapons from common materials like pens and
glue. But they also believed that mastery of belligerent performance could
dictate whether a man would be victimized or left alone by other prisoners.
Crucial behaviors included carrying oneself in a markedly aggressive way
and standing up for oneself when tested. One day a prison teacher joked
with an inmate that she had heard a rumor about a fight last week had
he been involved in it? He answered earnestly, in a much louder voice than
usual, “If it’s an inmate or an officer, they’d have to kill me, because once
I start, I’m not going to stop. Sorry, but that’s how I am.”
Prisoners also used their bodies to claim status. A man’s standing in the
group was demonstrated by a loud and braying voice; by demeaning
“jokes” that stung and mocked; and by nudges, slaps on the back, a
pointed finger in the face, or similar gestures used to violate another’s space
and display superiority. In the close confines of the prison classroom, an
inmate with an unflinching “mean mug” could sometimes silence a talkative
peer just by staring at him. Even in a nonviolence workshop, inmates used
belittling verbal abuse about other men’s size, demeanor, intelligence, even
smell, to claim dominance. The worst insult was to be called a “punk,” a
“bitch ass,” or other homophobic slurs that attacked the target’s masculine
identity directly.
Expressing emotion, caring, or pity for the troubles of others was forbid-
den. “Don’t take my kindness for weakness” was an often-repeated truism.
“We have feelings, but we have to be hard in here,” one man wrote.
“People think you’re weak if you show any emotion.” A prisoner named
Terrence told me he was dropping out of the writing class because he hated
the occasional conversations in which men talked about their feelings. Any
prisoner expressing sympathy or kindness for another was likely to be
viewed as a target or possibly as a sexual predator.
Homophobia, a strong component of hegemonic masculinity, was com-
mon in the prisons I observed. Reviling homosexual behavior, prisoners
blamed media sensationalism for creating the perception that all incarcer-
ated people were gay, or what some called “gay for the stay,” willing to
engage in same-sex relations until they could be released to the street again.
Most minimized the incidence of homosexuality in prison and were quick
to call someone a “punk,” not only for showing interest in other men but
also for engaging in any self-expression that fell outside the hegemonic pat-
tern. Thompson, one of the men in the writing class, read an imaginary let-
ter he had written to new inmates in which he cautioned them to avoid a
certain spot in the shower room, allegedly because gay men congregated
there. “Watch your ass,” he warned, and advised extreme suspicion toward
any new cellmate who offered a treat out of what seemed to be kindness.
“If someone leaves a candy bar on your pillow, know that that candy bar
ain’t free,” he cautioned, cracking up the room.
While older prisoners remembered frequent incidents of prison rape,
younger inmates often scoffed and minimalized the topic. Yet sexual
assault is still pervasive behind bars a 2007 Bureau of Justice Statistics
survey of state and federal prisons and jails estimated that 60,500 prisoners,
or about 4.5 percent, had been sexually abused during the preceding
12 months (National Prison Rape Elimination Commission Report, 2009).
A recent assault at Greenfields involved two inmates trying to sexually
assault another whom they believed to be gay. Yet whenever the topic
came up in conversation, and it did with some frequency most inmates
called it a media-created myth.
When a story circulated at Millstone about a particular prisoner who
had just been caught having sex with another man, no one in the class was
willing to express any sympathy for him. After a fellow prisoner reported
him, the men said, his friends probably would not take violent action
against him themselves, but they would isolate him and leave him vulner-
able to other prison gangs, who would assault him. No one expressed any
concern for the man’s fate; apparently none of the men wanted to risk
the possibility that empathy for the offender would be read as weakness or
fellow feeling.
Officers also kept a close eye on their peers’ masculine identities, badger-
ing one another ceaselessly with sexist and homophobic banter and practi-
cal jokes when no inmates were in sight. Sitting in the lunchroom at
Millstone with their backs to the wall, the men (and occasionally female
officers) greeted each other with taunts and ridicule, hollering, “Man up,
ladies!” and belching loudly. Once, an officer set off a stink bomb in the
lunchroom, and as the room flooded with a sulfurous fart smell, masculine
laughter echoed as everyone had to clear out. Officers maintained a harsh
bravado, mocking each other as effeminate, accusing their peers of having
“man boobs” and wearing women’s clothing: When a guard asked a fellow
officer, “Still wearing those panties I bought you for Christmas?” he was
told, “No, but I bought a pair for your wife.” In the lobby at Greenfields
after a shift, one female officer seemed to take pains to be as profane as her
male peers, calling the others “motherfucker” and “asshole” and braying
with laughter.
Like the prisoners, officers would also watch one another for signs
of vulnerability and pressure their peers, exploiting their weaknesses. An
officer who failed to report during an emergency call would be suspected of
cowardice and reported to superiors. On one occasion, what appeared to
be a friendly gathering of officers sharing a lunchroom table proved to be
something else, an officer later commented. Having been involved in a
violent incident together, they were now sitting at the same table to make
sure that each filled out his copy of the incident report the same way.
The similarity of the groups’ performances was striking, and spoke to
the ways that aggressive masculinity so permeates a culture that it becomes
the taken-for-granted, self-reinforcing norm. Both groups struggled to pro-

ject imposing physicality and aggression. Both condemned expressions of
emotion or caring. Both used their bodies, voices, and belligerent posturing
to humiliate and assert dominance, and both disdained homosexuals and
femininity. And day after day, both groups increased their own members’
suffering by demanding aggressive performances of hypermasculinity to
stave off victimization by their peers.
JUST KIDDING: LIMINAL INTERACTIONS
Sometimes, through teasing and jokes, the two groups interacted in para-
doxical ways that both acknowledged and subverted officers’ dominance
and prisoners’ subjugated status. These nuanced dealings appeared to offer
tacit acknowledgment of the roles of the participants while also making
space for officially prohibited tolerance, even play, between the two groups.
To play at subversion is to let off steam; such forms of teasing appeared to
be strategic efforts by some members of both groups to reduce the tension
and anxiety between them.
For example, once an inmate at Millstone cut a photo of a cockroach
out of a magazine and left it on an officer’s desk as a joke. When he asked
the officer how he liked the photo, the officer answered, “Later on I’m
going to stab you in the neck.” The prisoner laughed uneasily; if he
responded as an equal, the officer could charge him with making threats
and send him to lock-up. But he had scored a point against the officer’s
control of the area, intruding into the space of his desk with a symbol of
chaos.
Some performances even mimicked physical violence. One morning
I observed two inmate workers teasing a muscular officer in the school
wing. Gregory, a small-boned prisoner, approached the officer and tried to
put his arms around the man’s neck, as if to enfold him in a big hug. When
the officer resisted, swatting at him humorously as if he were a fly, the
inmate called out to another prisoner who also worked in the area. “Come
on and hug him,” Gregory said. “I’ll get him from this side, you get him
from that side, and one of us will get him.” The second man, also of small
stature, came around to embrace him from the front, and the officer
jumped up, forcefully dislodging both of them from his body. Though all
three men laughed at this horseplay, they knew of far more dangerous
encounters between inmates and officers.
More frequently, officers took the aggressor roles in these interactions,

and inmates were on the receiving end of the joke. A staffer told the story
of Wilson, a prisoner who was searched at a checkpoint one day and
caught with an aspirin in his pocket. Inmates are forbidden to have medica-
tions in their possession, so the officers at the checkpoint yelled at him and
made him throw the pill away. But Wilson was worried that he would be
punished for the infraction later, so he appealed to another officer for help.
While he explained the situation, the officer’s telephone rang. The call was
about something else, but the officer pretended he was talking to the check-
point guards. “Yeah? He’s right here,” the officer said. “He did what?
You’re coming to get him? You’re going to throw him in the lock-up?”
Observing Wilson’s unease, the staffer said, the officer hung up the
phone in a state of pretended agitation. “They’re on their way to get you,”
he said. “Listen, when they take you to the lock-up, you’re going to have
to strip anyway, so why don’t you go on into the bathroom right now and
take off all your clothes? That way they won’t be as mad at you, ‘cause you
saved them some trouble.” Wilson went into the bathroom, which had a
glass panel so that officers could see prisoners inside. Fully expecting to be
taken to lock-up momentarily, he stripped off his prison uniform.
Meanwhile, the officer yelled so that other officers in the vicinity would
hear and come running, “Hey, take a look at that guy in there what a
pervert! He’s pulled off all his clothes.”
The staffers listening to the story appeared to find it hilarious. No one
asked what had happened to Wilson afterward. Whether the inmates were
willing participants in the “jokes” of officers or victimized by them,
resigned acceptance was the only response that could keep them relatively
safe from punishment and even enhance future opportunities for casual
communication with their tormenters.
Not every joke was an opportunity for the shared release of tension. A
staffer told a tale of a long-time prisoner named Roman who had vowed to
“get” as many guards as he could, through the strategic use of his wit
alone. Roman described himself as being able to “charm the feathers off a
duck,” and proved it on several occasions by exploiting the confidence of
gullible officers. For example, the staffer related, Roman knew that a parti-
cular guard liked to carry a large roll of cash with him, so he asked the offi-
cer to let him hold a $100 bill for a few minutes. “It’s been so long since I
even seen a bill that large. Just hold it up and let me look at it,” he begged.
When the officer did so, thinking that he was doing a kindness, Roman
memorized the serial numbers on the bill. He then wrote up a complaint to
the administration, saying he knew that inmates were forbidden to hold
cash, but that he had had a $100 bill in his possession for a long time and
this officer had stolen it from him. After he was able to identify the bill by
its serial numbers, the officer was fired.
These interactions between prisoners and guards were compelling
because they demonstrated masculine interactions based on wit and intelli-
gence, rather than simple displays of physical or verbal dominance. While
some interactions still had violence at their core, in other cases, they also
may have indicated long-standing connections across oppositional groups
that afforded, if not friendship, then at least recognition of each other’s
humanity and a kind of inverted respect a rare experience in the prison.
SEARCHING FOR OTHER SELVES: NONVIOLENT

MASCULINITIES
Although masculine norms in prison are deeply inscribed by confinement,

loss of autonomy, surveillance, rigid institutional rules, and lack of
resources (Nandi, 2002), incarcerated men still aspire to change their lives
and transform their identities for the better. Some prisoners reject the ideals
of hegemonic masculinity (Jewkes, 2005; Nandi, 2002; Sabo, Kupers, &
London, 2001), doing what they can to access the more emotionally multi-
faceted inner world observed by Evans and Wallace (2008) instead. This
cannot be easy for them men crave intimacy, but because attachment
also threatens the boundaries that protect a fragile masculine identity, they
“tend to perceive vulnerability, danger, and thus the possibility of violence
in situations of close affiliation” (Messner, 1990b, p. 209). Yet despite the
preponderance of norms of hypermasculine behavior behind bars and the
easy default to violence, a number of prisoners in this study struggled to
interact in nonaggressive, pro-social, emotionally connected ways. Their
need for human connection and their desire to see themselves as good peo-
ple, men deserving of respect and love, motivated them to explore other
forms of identity. The illustrations of gendered performance in this section
come primarily from my observations of incarcerated men rather than
officers.
As the time they spend behind bars increases, many prisoners find their
former street identities impossible to maintain. An inmate named Milton
wrote, “When I was younger, it used to seem cool to go to jail for a couple
of months. But as I got older, and as the crimes got bigger, the time got
longer. You begin to realize that every time you get locked up, you leave a
piece of yourself in these jails.” He and many others spoke of trying to

spend their prison sentences productively to avoid violence and change the
ways they interacted with the world. In the writing class, Williams once
asked Tariq, “Do you ever wonder what you might have been like if you
didn’t wind up here?” The normally noisy room fell silent as the other men
in the class asked themselves the same question, contemplating other possi-
bilities for their lives.
One of the most corrosive elements of hegemonic masculinity is its
emphasis on violence, often a losing proposition for incarcerated men. The
nonviolence workshops at Greenfields offer prisoners a way to forge more
peaceful identities. Given under the auspices of the Alternatives to Violence
Project, an international volunteer network, these workshops are structured
around nonviolent approaches for dealing with friction. Groups of about
20 prisoners and a handful of civilian volunteers come together for
weekend-long programs that involve conversation, games, and exercises
that build the communication skills needed for nonviolence. Inmate invol-
vement is entirely voluntary, and participants self-select in part because of
their interest in personal change.
In the prison’s cellblocks, ordinarily men may see each other as competi-
tors locked in desperate struggle, with violence the only possible means of
overcoming disadvantage. The workshops create temporary communities
of interest where men can see the similarity of their own struggles to those
of others, and learn that trust and cooperation are possible. They encou-
rage participants to see their own potential for good and to believe they
can make substantive changes for the better in their lives. “I am always
amazed at how people from all corners of the world can come together and
build a community based on honesty and respect for one another,” said
Cody, who had taken part in a number of workshops and had formed deep
friendships with some of the other men he encountered through AVP.
A commitment to self-transformation might seem more logical among
young prisoners, who could anticipate an approaching end to their sen-
tences and hope for successful civilian lives. But alternative masculinities
based on personal growth also held appeal for the men in maximum-
security confinement, driven in part by the men’s desires for connection to
their families on the outside. This desire may be one of the hardest for men
in prison to fulfill: According to the Sentencing Project (2012), 62 percent
of parents in state prisons and 84 percent of parents in federal prisons are
incarcerated more than 100 miles from the last place they lived (which
would greatly impact their families and children if they had lived with them
prior to going to prison).
In addition, 59 percent of parents in state prisons and 45 percent in fed-

eral prisons have not had any personal visits with their children while in
prison (Sentencing Project, 2012). Some families abandon their incarcerated
husbands, fathers, or sons; or some prisoners may institute this break
voluntarily. When a prisoner who is newly incarcerated finds it hard to deal
with pressures both inside and outside of the prison, Rosenberg (2009)
notes, “he may cut off contact with the world outside prison in order to
deal with the pressures within. This can cause resentment in families and
damage relationships with children, sometimes irrevocably” (p. 20). In
addition, some families cannot afford to travel to the institution, and some
are barred from visitation by the institutions due to various regulations
(Rosenberg, 2009).
Despite these constraints and the anguished separations they entailed,
parenthood was a favorite topic of discussion among inmates at both
institutions, and when it was raised, prisoners expressed deep feelings of
love and longing for their children and other loved ones. In this context,
they seemed to feel free to express deep emotion. Men sometimes brought
photos of their children or other family members to class or to workshops
to show the other men, with obvious tenderness. In their painful but
valued connections to their children and other loved ones, the men held
on to masculine values such as the willingness to defer their own needs for
the sake of their families, and the ability to withstand hardship and pain
for the sake of others (Levant, 1992). Such moments were important
exceptions to the hypermasculine code that dominated much prison
discourse.
Caring for other inmates was another way that men manifested peaceful
masculinity. Prisoners frequently said, “If you want to stay out of trouble,
mind your own business,” but sometimes they still tried to look out for one
another and nurture trust. During a discussion one day, an inmate named
Tanner asserted that most prisoners knew someone in whom they could
confide without being betrayed. “We all have someone we can go to, that
person you can put it all on the table with and know you won’t hear it later
from somebody else,” he said. But Wilson sighed and replied to Tanner
sadly, “In eight years, I haven’t found anybody like that.”
More commonly, caring was expressed in deeds rather than in words,
with long-time inmates sharing scarce resources and helping younger men
learn to navigate the social world of the prison and all of its pitfalls. Once
Luke, an older inmate, saw Charles reading an article about the Black
Panthers in a magazine. Luke was concerned that the essay might be
viewed by officers as a reference to gang culture and convinced Charles to
throw it away, saving him from a possible stay in lock-up. Inmates with
acquired legal knowledge spoke of helping others with their appeals and
court documents. Men with good literacy levels sought opportunities to
tutor poor readers or help other men master math. Some inmates said they
offered tactful advice on personal hygiene to those who were new to prison,
or pointed out which officers to avoid. “Old heads” said they offered new
arrivals simple possessions not provided by the institution, like toiletries or
stamps for letters home not as a lure in expectation of payback but as
simple gestures of humanity, passing on the kindnesses done to them by
others when they were new.
Supportive relationships and nonaggressive expressions between officers
may have also occurred, but I had no opportunity to observe these.
However, I did witness an ongoing friendship between a guard and an
inmate. Cary, a prisoner, mopped floors in the hall where a guard named
Beminski worked, and when I passed by, the two were often deep in philo-
sophical discussions about current events. Occasionally the stocky
Beminski would pick the slender inmate up by the waist and run around
the hall with him, ignoring his protests. Despite Beminski’s pranks, Cary
expressed good will toward the officer. “When I’m not here, he goes into a
depression,” he said. “He needs me.” Beminski laughed, but didn’t contra-
dict him.
The statement proved prophetic; one morning, Beminski learned that
Cary was critically ill and had been taken to an outside hospital a mea-
sure so rare in the prison world that it often heralded imminent death.
After visiting Cary in the locked ward of the hospital where prisoners
received critical care, the officer came back in shock, saying the inmate was
“done in.” I saw him holding the shabby uniform shirt that Cary used to
wear while mopping the hall. After the inmate died, Beminski was quiet
and glum for many weeks; he clearly missed his friend. “He was good peo-
ple. He was a pretty straight guy. Didn’t play a lot of games. I got used to
him,” the officer said. While prisoners and officers interacted in fiercely
oppositional ways much of the time, a fragile bridge of real human connec-
tion had formed between the two men.
The actions described here demonstrated a strong human desire for
meaning and connection that the harsh environment of the prison could
not eradicate entirely. The incarcerated men desired to possess identities
based on something other than intimidation and fear, and took real risks
to cultivate these. Doing and caring for others, though devalued in the
prison’s system of hegemonic masculinity, nonetheless offered the men the
promise of new meaning in their constrained lives. With few resources
besides hope and determination, they embraced the possibility of changing

into a different kind of man.
THE BROADER IMPLICATIONS OF CARCERAL

PERFORMANCES OF MASCULINITY
This chapter has described some of the ways that incarcerated men and
their sentinels use communicative performances of violence to strategically
manage perceived threats from the opposing group and to present a strong
front to their peers in order to ward off in-group aggression. While the
stresses of prison life impose stringent norms of hypermasculinity on incar-
cerated men and corrections officers alike, the high costs and limited com-
pensations of those norms, especially for inmates, also pave the way for the
emergence of alternative models of masculinity. Men with brutal pasts, liv-
ing in the most stressful environments, can still conceive of and carry out
nonviolent and caring forms of maleness, even at some risk to themselves.
My observations have led me to believe that incarcerated men would be
far more likely to embrace nonviolent models of masculinity if they were
offered even minimal institutional support. Prior to the start of the 1980s
prison boom, many prisons offered postsecondary education, vocational
training, and meaningful work; these opportunities provided skills that
enabled some inmates to support themselves and their families upon
release. The reestablishment of such opportunities would help imprisoned
men feel less impotent in fulfilling the positive masculine roles of provider
and parent stripped from them when they were locked up. Parenting skills
and similar programs would also support family maintenance. In some
states, programs like The Storybook Project and Girl Scouts Beyond Bars
work to keep children in contact with their incarcerated mothers through
regularly structured visits or recorded storytelling, but apart from some
churches with prison and family ministries, few similar programs exist for
fathers in prison. In her research in the United States, the United
Kingdom, and Europe, Rosenberg (2009) identifies only sporadic examples
of parenting classes or other support for incarcerated men; in calling for
more and better-supervised programs for fathers in prison, she argues,
“Using time in prison to work, learn new skills, including parenting skills,
and undertake personal study can help imprisoned fathers to feel more able
to provide for their family, establish regular patterns of contact and give
better care to their children” (p. 28).
Support for nonviolent masculine roles might also be found in enrich-

ment programming; in a small number of institutions scattered around the
United States, religious and secular volunteers offer programs in faith, phi-
losophy, public speaking, emotional literacy, civic affairs, and other inter-
ests at no cost to the institutions that house them. As described earlier, the
Alternatives to Violence Project is one such example; its all-volunteer week-
end workshops teach conflict transformation skills and support incarcer-
ated people in learning to avoid violence. Trained volunteer facilitators
offer about 1,000 workshops per year in federal, state, and local prisons,
with nearly 14,000 participants in some 30 states in the United States.
In addition, arts programs like the Prison Creative Arts Project in Ann
Arbor, MI, the Shakespeare Prison Project of Parkside, WI, the Prison
Performing Arts in St. Louis, and Rehabilitation through the Arts in
Katonah, NY, bring prisoners together with educators, students, and arts
professionals for development through performance, creativity, and self-
expression. The educators and activists involved in these efforts speak in
glowing terms of the impact of art in the lives of incarcerated people.
This chapter contributes to the discussion of prison masculinities by
exploring how aggressive maleness is performed in prisons under conditions
that both facilitate and limit its ascendance. As prisoners and corrections
officers seek to manage the risks of hypermasculinity, they also engage with
alternative constructions of maleness that challenge the norms of hegemo-
nic masculinity. The unconventional performances illustrated in this essay
may be may be read as critiques of hegemonic masculinity’s illusory bene-
fits. They offer us nonviolent models of masculine identity that are
grounded in relationship, caring, and helping others. It is important to
recognize that the belligerent performances common in the correctional
atmosphere do more than inform social interactions among individual
peers and antagonists in that charged atmosphere; they also shape the insti-
tutions and the society beyond. When corrections officers end their shifts
and go home, when incarcerated men are released back to their commu-
nities, they carry their gender identities with them. Macharia (2007)
observes that ideologies of hypermasculinity in one social environment
“sanction, promote, and indeed make acceptable the attitudes and practices
that lead to discord, violence and injustice” (p. 10) in others. As Americans
have become increasingly fond of a severe, “paternalist” approach to crime
and punishment (Wacquant, 2002) and ever-greater numbers of our own
citizens are incarcerated, the violent masculinities valued and practiced in
prisons continue to replicate in communities and institutions beyond the
prison walls, in other domestic structures and in foreign policy arenas.
This pattern need not continue to reproduce itself. This chapter demon-
strates that men working and living in prisons even “the worst of the
worst” can and do defy the pre-existing norms of violent masculinity
they encounter in these institutions. Under conditions of inconceivable
stress, prisoners and officers nonetheless conceive and carry out alternative
identities based on nonviolence, self-respect, caring, and the possibility of
transformation. The recommendations I make above do not address the
more profound social disruptions caused by the prison boom and the
hyperincarceration of men of color in this country. But careful attention to
the alternative masculinities practiced in correctional institutions can help
scholars and policy makers debunk the self-destructive ideologies of hege-
monic masculinity that not only shape interpersonal and group interactions
behind bars, but also dictate the nation’s harsh criminal justice policies and
dominate other social arenas as well.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author would like to thank her beloved partner in life and in service,
Chad Dell, for his commitment to nonviolence and for his scholarly review
of multiple drafts of this manuscript. She would like to express her grati-
tude for the habits of critical inquiry and compassion instilled in her by her
mentor in research at the University of Pennsylvania, Oscar H. Gandy Jr.
She offers love and respect to Sharon Brown and Charley Flint, fellow
facilitators in the Alternatives to Violence Project, for their commitment to
nonviolence and their support for healthy communities of color. And she is
thankful to the many imprisoned men and women who have shared their
experiences with her and offered her their friendship and trust.
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BEFORE PREVENTION: THE
TRAJECTORY AND TENSIONS
OF FEMINIST ANTIVIOLENCE
Max A. Greenberg and Michael A. Messner
ABSTRACT
Purpose This chapter introduces a conceptual schema with which the

authors chart the historical trajectory of four realms of feminist antivio-
lence efforts in the United States, describing strains and tensions between
and within each realm, with a particular focus on the efficacy of violence
prevention.
Design/methodology/approach We draw on feminist theory and
empirical studies of antiviolence efforts as well as our own interview and
ethnographic research into violence prevention.
Findings This chapter charts a four-part schema for understanding
the trajectory of feminist engagements with violence against women. It
theorizes that the segmentation of feminist antiviolence has given rise to
a variety of tensions within realms that could be resolved or mitigated by
reconnecting the realms.
Practical implications In the face of growing objections to their hand-
ling of sexual assault and other forms of gender-based violence, the

ISSN: 1529-2126/doi:10.1108/S1529-21262014000018B013
225
226 MAX A. GREENBERG AND MICHAEL A. MESSNER
military, colleges, and other institutions have touted their violence pre-
vention programs. While these programs serve as a testament to over
forty years of feminist efforts to institutionalized antiviolence policies
and practices, without a holistic feminist approach, violence prevention
functions as little more than public relations.
Originality/value The chapter is of use for scholars thinking about vio-
lence against women and gender-based violence, as well as institutions
that set policy around issues of violence.
Keywords: Social movements; institutions; feminism; violence; preven-
tion; organizations
When Air Force Lt. Colonel Jeffrey Kusinski was arrested for sexual bat-
tery in May of 2013, it was a lowlight of what had already been a very bad
year for the U.S. military. After all, Kusinski was then serving as the officer
in charge of overseeing the Air Force’s Sexual Assault and Prevention
Program, and his arrest occurred amidst a steady flow of damning reports
of continued failures by all branches of the military to deal with a wide-
ranging wave of sexual assault against women within its ranks. A 2012 New
York Times editorial sounded the alarm over “the Military’s dirty secret”:
record high rates of sexual harassment and assault in its three military
academies; stunning rates of sexual assault and harassment among recently
deployed service women and men; and escalating levels of family violence
perpetrated by returning soldiers, especially those suffering from PTSD
in the wake of multiple deployments to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
(New York Times, 2012; U.S. Department of Defense, 2012; U.S.
Department of Veterans Affairs, 2013).
When confronted in Congressional hearings or in the mass media on
their problem with gender-based violence, the military has frequently
claimed that it is being pro-active with sexual assault prevention programs
such as the Army’s I. A. M. STRONG program, a campaign which, accord-
ing to its website, encourages soldiers to “intervene, act and motivate” in
order to “change army culture.” In the award-winning 2011 documentary
The Invisible War about sexual assault in the military, the filmmakers ask a
cadet about these programs. Her response: they are “a joke.” The arrest of
Lt. Col. Kusinski seems to put an exclamation point on that assertion. In
this chapter, we make no claims as to whether the military’s (or any of the
many other existing) gender-based violence prevention programs are either
rehabilitation activities after religious riots until 2002. As the leader of

Development Options puts it, “we were paralyzed as we had not encountered
violence in such scale … it took us some time to think about how to
respond.” In a similar vein, the leader of Progress reminisced as follows.
Now, this communal situation that happened, we in a way clearly … something hap-
pened, in that many people suffered losses, some others died, whatever happened, then
for you to go there for relief, for rehabilitation work is a different issue. But to continue
to work on that issue is a different matter. Because that which is different; to be
approached/addressed differently has the organization thought about that, does the
organization have a sense of working on that issue? Can the people in the organization
understand the issue and are they prepared to take it forward or not, whether they have
the understanding or not, and the complete point is not like let us make a house for
them; it is not about getting them water, or getting them grains [food], or working on
natural resources; that is not the issue. In this instance, we have to work with humans
[with people] and we have to work with their sadness and pain. So, whatever program
happened and whatever the implications of that, the organization first sat down and
thought whether we are ready [prepared] for this? Up to where can we take this? And
whatever is happening has historical reasons so what are the historical reasons and
do we know about that? There are international implications too for this, and what or
how do we understand that? Because to do the work, a leader doesn’t have to go and
work in the field, yeah, it is the people we have who have to go and work. And they
have to keep this issue separate and work. So, the first bit of work we did was to look
at our own team of people: do they understand this issue; are they agreeable to work
on this or not, or what?
Constructions of gendered nationalism that define social problems as

such are both structures of opportunity that organizations seize to make
their concerns resonate with others and strategic claims that organizations
make when they attempt to create such resonance. Organizations such as
women’s groups seek to set agendas by bringing new or greater attention to
nationalist projects such as that of the BJP that have implications for
women’s rights. My analyses focus on organizations engaged in the three
main strategic constructions. I begin with a discussion of the communal
harmony frame.
Communal Harmony (not Communal Violence)
At the local level, religion remains at the center of framing of activities in

the interest of promoting communal harmony. This frame, communal har-
mony, differs from the “endangered woman” frame as it does not situate
women in a “community” and unlike the mainstreaming frame it focuses
on just the issues where women are victims rather than agents. Essentially
Clairborne’s Love is Not Abuse are just two popular examples. The allure
of prevention education programs such as these is clear: it promises to
intervene before violence happens, sparing physical and emotional trauma
as well as financial resources for police, courts, and medical care.
Prevention education is, in many ways, the culmination of a hard-
fought feminist project. In the prefeminist 1950s and early 1960s, violence
against women was barely even on the map as a social problem. Domestic
violence and spousal rape were largely invisible, and when they were visi-
ble they were viewed largely as individual, private matters. Stranger rape
was sometimes seen as an issue before the 1970s, but it was mostly viewed
through the lens of individual pathology, with the rapist imagined to be a
crazed deviant who attacks a lone woman from the bushes on a dark
night. The feminist movement ushered in a massive shift in the way vio-
lence is thought about, talked about, and contested. Foundational to this
emergent feminist paradigm was the assertion that men who rape or hit
women are not isolated individuals, deviating from some normal form of
masculinity. Rather, men’s violence against women was now understood
as over-conformity with a culturally honored definition of masculinity that
rewarded the successful use of violence to achieve domination over others.
In this chapter, we will describe the rise of violence prevention programs
as a logical historical outcome of feminist re-framings of sexual assault
and domestic violence. We will argue that prevention is clearly necessary
to end gender-based violence, but when prevention programs are severed
from their foundations in feminism they are likely to become less effective
at violence prevention, and perhaps most meaningful as organizational
public relations (in other words, “a joke”).
FEMINIST ENGAGEMENTS WITH VIOLENCE

AGAINST WOMEN: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
It is difficult to overstate the success that the antiviolence strand of the fem-
inist movement has had in bringing about legal, political, and cultural
changes in the United States. Over the last fifty years, feminism has taken
on violence as a central pillar of oppression, pushing criminal justice, work-
places, campuses, public health, city planners, and other institutions toward
new policies and practices. In Fig. 1, we introduce a framework that con-
ceptualizes feminist engagements with violence against women along two
intersecting axes: First, a vertical axis of time, from after violence on the
Before Prevention 229
Recipient of Perpetrator of
Violence Violence
Realm A Realm B
Responses to Responses to
Survivors Perpetrators
After Violence • Legal reform (law,
• Shelters police, courts)
• Support Groups • Therapy
Realm C Realm D
Safety for Prevention with
Before Violence
Potential Targets Potential Perpetrators
• Self-Defense • Prevention with
• Risk Reduction boys and men
Fig. 1. Feminist Engagements with Violence against Women.
top to before violence on the bottom; and second, an actor-axis between

recipients (or survivors) of violence on the left, and perpetrators of violence
on the right, running perpendicular to the time axis.
These two axes delineate four realms of feminist engagement with vio-
lence against women. Feminist activists built Realms A, B, and C concur-
rently, starting in the late 1960s and 1970s, with Realm D arising
contingently, as a field of (mostly) men’s activism in the mid-to-late 1970s.
For each realm, we map the historical trajectory of antiviolence feminism,
showing how antiviolence activism within each relatively autonomous
realm was connected with and often supported by action within other
realms. We will highlight strains and tensions within each realm, and we
will argue that such contradictions are exacerbated when a realm detaches
from the others, especially when it separates from a holistic feminist
approach to violence that had previously provided a logic that tethered the
four realms.
Realm A: Responding to Survivors
Since the late 1960s and early 1970s, feminists have poured tremendous
resources in to working with survivors of sexual assault and domestic
example, we have this livelihood restoration; so it is also not again only to

the Muslim community; it is for both and it is very important to have both;
because both were affected actually, it is not true to say that only the
Muslim community that was affected; both were affected,” said the leader
of Health & Nutrition: Women and Children.
Health & Nutrition: Women and Children and its NGO partners defined
“communal” harmony as rebuilding social relations among religious
groups. This specific aim was an issue that organizations had to also
address among their own volunteers and employees. As the leader of
Development Options put it, “we had to seek volunteers from our own
NGO only three people (out of over 50) offered to work for relief and
rehabilitation, that is be involved in the project.” NGO partners devised
unique means of building “harmony.” Development Options prompted an
urban slum community, predominantly Muslim, to work on basic needs
(water, roads, and other infrastructure) in an effort to build confidence
within the community to act for change. This process of building involved
input from a neighboring slum, predominantly Hindu, where such projects
had already been initiated. Working with the urban and rural poor,
Women’s Agenda followed a similar strategy but focused on workshops for
Hindu and Muslim women (initially separately and then together) to dis-
cuss the similarities in the conditions of their lives first by pointing to every-
one being “human.”
For the harmony initiative, our pattern of working was to talk to individuals; that is to
talk to individuals among the Hindus and among the Muslims separately. And then we
used to try to take them to a point a … first, on the first day, we would let them talk
and say whatever is on their mind. For instance, the Hindus would say that the
Muslims are bad and they should be beaten up and whatever happened was right. And
Muslims said they [the Hindus] are like that, they don’t let us live; meaning their inner
thoughts were being revealed. On the second day or on the evening of the first day we
steered them towards the following: what if you don’t think of yourself as a Hindu or
as a Muslim but if you think of yourself only as insaan (meaning a “human being”),
then what difference would it make?
This initial attempt at focusing on being human irrespective of religious

affiliation was further reinforced by calling attention to setting aside super-
ficial differences.
And on the second day we focused on what is the religion for someone who is humane.
She is a Hindu woman or she is a Muslim woman; what about both of their feelings, is
there a difference in their feelings? Even whether there is or there isn’t such a difference?
Merely a difference in religion is on the “outside”/“superficial,” someone who wears a
burkha (veiled and completely covered) versus someone who is in purdah (covering of
Realm D: Prevention for Potential Perpetrators
Starting in the 1970s, small grassroots groups of men, inspired by feminism,

organized to work with boys and men to stop rape and domestic violence.
By the 1990s, an ascendant public health field brought medical and disease-
based approaches to bear on gender-based violence, developing upstream
or “primary prevention” strategies, targeting potential future perpetrators
of violence. As feminist antiviolence has largely been pulled under the aus-
pices of the nonprofit grant system, prevention programs have taken on a
particular, grant driven, curriculum-based form.
Historically, feminist antiviolence activism has been grounded in a holis-
tic critique of men’s violence and domination, which draws out connections
between these four realms. However, over the last forty years, social forces
have pulled these realms apart. This segmentation, we will argue, produces
or exacerbates many of the strains and tensions that characterize contem-
porary feminist antiviolence work in the United States. Since our goal in
this chapter is primarily to focus on prevention (Realm D), we will espe-
cially emphasize the internal tensions in violence prevention, especially as
in recent years it was increasingly severed, organizationally and ideologi-
cally, from the grassroots feminist movement that inspired it. In short, we
will argue that, to be effective in helping to bring about fundamental
social changes that include stopping violence against women, prevention
strategies in Realm D must remain tethered to feminist efforts, ideas, and
organizations, especially in Realms A and B. Severed from a feminist
foundation, and in the absence of serious institutional responses in support
of victims and sanctions against perpetrators, prevention risks becoming a
shallow endeavor that serves more as institutional public relations than as
an effective organizational mode of preventing future assaults. Ultimately,
drawing on feminist scholarship and our own interviews and participant
observation, we will argue that to achieve more than shallow prevention
gestures, institutions like workplaces, the military or universities must first
establish serious and meaningful responses to perpetrators and survivors,
and then organically connect these efforts to prevention.
RESPONDING TO SURVIVORS
By the start of the 1970s, a reawakened feminist movement had begun to

assert a radical paradigm shift in views of sexual assault, domestic violence,
sexual harassment, and related forms of public and domestic terror inflicted
against women. Spurred by feminist consciousness-raising, women recog-
nized that sexual and domestic violence, rather than being a shameful indi-
vidual experience with an unusually deviant father, husband, or boss, was a
shared experience, a pattern woven in to unequal power relations between
women and men (Allen, 1970). Brownmiller’s powerful 1975 book Against
our will: Men, women and rape, along with other feminist texts on violence
against women were widely read and highly influential in re-shaping public
views on sexual assault (Brownmiller, 1975). Foundational to this emergent
feminist paradigm was the assertion that men who rape or hit women are
not isolated individuals, deviating from some normal form of masculinity.
Rather, men’s violence against women was increasingly understood as over-
conformity with a culturally honored definition of masculinity that
rewarded the successful use of violence to achieve domination over others.
Women came into view as not just victims of a crime, but as subjects and
survivors of a system of male domination.
Existing institutions like police, courts, and workplaces were, at best,
slow to respond to these claims. Feminists took matters into their own
hands, pouring tremendous resources initially through informally orga-
nized groups and networks with little or no financial resources in to work-
ing with survivors of sexual assault. Volunteer-staffed rape crisis hotlines
and drop-in counseling centers, women’s self-defense workshops and shel-
ters for women and children who had been the targets of domestic violence
began to pop up in scores of communities and on college campuses
(Martin & Schmitt, 2007). Underlying this wave of feminist antiviolence
was the institutionalization of feminist spaces, practices, and funding streams
for working with women survivors of men’s violence. In these spaces, built on
lived experiences, the feminist critique of patriarchy and violence against and
objectification of women by men took on shape and strength.
In the first years of feminist antiviolence efforts, the medical field was
beginning to understand sexual assault and domestic violence as a source
of not just physical, but psychological trauma. Similarities between rape
survivors and shell-shocked returning veterans of Vietnam (eventually
labeled PTSD) led many to see them as similar phenomena, and the diag-
nosis of Rape Trauma Syndrome was created in 1972 (Bourke, 2012). This
boost of institutionalized, professional support meant that money and
medical research was finally being directed toward understanding and miti-
gating the impact of sexual assault on victims. At the same time, medicali-
zation nudged institutional responses to survivors away from feminist
consciousness-raising and toward a therapeutic model.
In the decades since, these feminist spaces and therapeutic interventions

have been crucial, even as the day-to-day activities of these organizations
have become increasingly formalized (Maier, 2011). Feminist ideas worked
their way into the mainstream; feminist organizations incorporated as non-
profits and filled the void left by a receding welfare state (Ferree & Martin,
1995; Gilmore, 2007). A steady escalation of contracted money during the
1980s and 1990s fed a massive expansion of nonprofit services and brought
with it an extension of oversight and responsibilities. In 1994, the passage of
the Violence Against Women Act funded an array of downstream antivio-
lence efforts and codified violence against women as an economic and health
priority for the state, thus helping to stabilize and professionalize existing
antiviolence organizations. As feminist community-based and antihierarchal
organizations increasingly professionalized their structure and processes,
feminist activists feared cooptation and depoliticization would ensue, what
Markowitz and Tice (2002) called the “paradoxes of professionalization.”
As organizational processes were increasingly formalized, restructured and
bent at the will of funders, they pulled away from their political and feminist
foundations, taking on the feel of service work more than feminist move-
ment consciousness-raising (Fried, 1994). Today, as work with survivors is
increasingly characterized by a marketized mentality, feminist organizations
struggle to fulfill client quotas to justify future funding, while also struggling
to sustain their feminist movement values. This market-driven mentality
has at times left the stable, effective work of the hotline and counseling open
to uncertainty as funders look for new and cutting edge programs.
In recent years violence against women especially support for survi-
vors has become a palatable issue for foundations and corporations. For
example, the telephone company Verizon now funds many crisis hotlines
and the No More campaign is supported by Macy’s Foundation, Mary
Kay Inc., Allstate Foundation, and other corporate partners. Around the
globe, violence against women has taken on increased importance, often
bolstered by human rights advocates, and the work of the United Nations
alongside other international bodies and celebrity spokespeople. However,
the establishment and financial support of feminist antiviolence organiza-
tions is not evenly nor widely distributed. Richie and others have argued
that antiviolence feminism has disproportionately benefitted white and
wealthy women, often leaving poor women and women of color fending
for limited resources (2012).
Feminist engagements with survivors of violence have struggled to main-
tain a focus on women while making space for other forms of violence.
Beginning in the early 2000s, a framework of gender-based violence has
been increasingly used to cast a larger umbrella over once disparate forms
of violence. This wider lens has made room for new organizations to follow
the path laid out by the feminist movement, making visible survivors of a
variety of gender-based violence and arguing for specific services and poli-
cies. For example, the national organization 1-in-6 has called attention to
the particular challenges faces by male survivors of sexual violence.
Bullying of LGBTQ youth in schools has fallen under the gender-based
violence paradigm as well. While this big umbrella pulls more people in
from the rain, it risks depoliticizing violence as an issue of interlocking sys-
tems of oppression. The men’s rights movement has eagerly taken up the
language of gender-based violence to argue for “gender-symmetry” in per-
petration, thus threatening to undo feminist efforts in response to violence
against women (Dragiewicz, 2011; Reed, Raj, Miller, & Silverman, 2010).
From the ground up, feminists built a robust and institutionalized system
for dealing with the issues of intimacy, families, housing, safety and more
that make violence against women a unique and often hidden problem. The
institutionalization of spaces, discrete mechanisms of support, and
consciousness-raising were central not just to women survivors; they also
helped to forge a coherent feminist theory of how men’s violence against
women fit in with a larger structure of power relations, thus helping to
bridge otherwise disparate realms of antiviolence into a holistic (if not fully
coordinated) feminist movement against violence (Martin, 2005). In provid-
ing a space for survivors to share stories, feminist antiviolence brought to
light the hidden mechanisms that sustained men’s violence against women.
As women, supported by feminist advocacy, brought their cases, the courts
struggled with what to do with the abusers, giving rise to counseling services
aimed at abusive men. In our interviews with employees and volunteers at
Peace Over Violence, a forty-one-year-old antiviolence organization, we
found that work with survivors was often enriched by connections to pre-
vention work. Survivors often felt empowered to be involved in preventing
future violence, and prevention workers were motivated by the stories of
survivors. Because this kind of bridging was not funded and supported,
employees not only had to work overtime to achieve it, they often struggled
to create these connections without clear institutional mechanisms.
RESPONDING TO PERPETRATORS
Punishments for violence against women have long been used to enforce
unequal power relations between men. Rape myths concerning the kind of
men who become rapists have tended to align with the perceived threaten-
ing group of the era (Bourke, 2012). The “myth of the Black rapist,” as
Angela Davis called it, stretched back to the post-Civil War reconstruction
era, where it performed two functions: first, the myth justified lynching and
other racist terror that impeded Black males’ ability to participate as full
citizens in public life; second, casting lynching as a “defense of white
womanhood,” deflected critical scrutiny away from acts of domination and
violence perpetrated by white males. For roughly a century, the myth of
the Black rapist linked race and gender in a way that obscured and, there-
fore, supported the continuation of vast social inequalities (Davis, 1983).
As late as the 1960s, it was widely assumed that good men, normal men,
especially white middle-class men would not rape a woman.
The feminist movement rattled that belief at the same time that it pushed
for legal accountability for men’s violence against women (Bevacqua, 2000).
In practice, fed by explicit racism and discriminatory practices, men of color
carried the brunt of this wave of criminalization. In the 1980s, as fear rose
alongside the crime rate, prominent court cases became focal points for
debates about race, class, gender, and criminal justice. In the 1989 Central
Park Jogger case, five young men of color were coerced into confessing to a
crime they didn’t commit amid swirling racial fears of predatory urban
youth (Cuklanz, 1996). In an era of identity politics, these high-profile trials
served to solidify lines of argument and organizations.
Widespread fears of crime set the stage for major reforms to laws
around violence against women in the 1990s. These legal changes reshaped
the ways that police responded to calls about violence as well as stronger
penalties for those convicted of violence. These reforms were largely split
along lines of two powerful feminist camps sexual assault and domestic
violence both of which raised particular challenges for dealing with per-
petrators and complicated notions of privacy and public spaces alike. Most
prominent among these changes was the 1994 Violence Against Women
Act, introduced by then-Senator Joe Biden, which provided support for
law enforcement and for domestic violence and sexual assault agencies,
albeit unevenly, according to legal scholar Rose Corrigan, who argues that
the act helped to legitimize and institutionalize work against domestic vio-
lence, while leaving “… sexual assault and all of its uncomfortable,
inconclusive, sexualized implications again out of the picture” (Corrigan,
2013, p. 262). Since then, there has remained a growing if tenuous connec-
tion between feminist survivor work and police and legal work. The push
for legal accountability, which peaked in the 1990s served to make clear
that violence against women, was not as widely condoned as it seemed and
sent a powerful symbolic message about the values of the society. However,
this message was largely stripped of its feminist origins, as a backlash to
feminism took hold (Faludi, 2006).
As sexual assault and domestic violence perpetration became seen as law
enforcement issues, they were increasingly documented by national statistics.
Chief among these have been the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report and the
National Crime Victimization Survey, which helped to reveal patterns in
offenders and victimization. These measures, while flawed, give a sense of
the extent of the problem. As Andrea Dworkin explained to a crowd of anti-
sexist men: “We use statistics not to try to quantify the injuries, but to con-
vince the world that those injuries even exist.” (Dworkin, 2005, p. 14). The
system of data collection and analysis has been vital for the field of public
health, which relies on these numbers to make connections and claims.
These legal changes have been widely contested from a variety of angles.
On one hand, there has been a backlash to feminism, specifically in the
form of men’s rights groups, who argue that the changes disproportionately
hurt men. In support of their argument they often point to the increases in
arrests and restraining orders against men and the custody decisions that
often side with women. Contesting patriarchy in the courts and in the sta-
tistics has opened up fraught tensions. In particular, a research agenda
focused on gender symmetry in rates of perpetration of violence has taken
up feminist arguments about equality and oppression to flip feminist princi-
ples on their head. While researchers have repeatedly debunked the founda-
tions of this line of argument, it has remained part of the mainstream
conversation on violence (Kimmel, 2002; Stark, 2009).
At the heart of feminist engagements with perpetrators is a question of
the role of the state in achieving justice. Many have argued that the legal
system’s stigmatization, re-traumatization, retaliation, or ridicule of survi-
vors of violence discourage trust in the legal system, resulting in low rates
of reported violence. In addition, a growing chorus of voices has noted that
current enforcement mechanisms disproportionately insulate class and
race-privileged men, while impacting poor men and men of color, thus rein-
forcing widespread inequality (Richie, 2012). Reformers have pushed for
further restructuring of legal policies in order to overcome these glaring
problems. Others have argued that reliance on the state to respond to vic-
tims reaffirms state power at the same time that it constructs women as
weak victims. This tension has positioned feminist antiviolence organiza-
tions at times in support of the justice system in arresting perpetrators, and
at the same time, in support of unfairly accused perpetrators in the face of
racist or otherwise unfair treatment from the criminal justice system.
this is about her; the first lane on the left. So, after 40 50 minutes, the elderly woman
said, bye, bye, and left; she was comfortable. This is how the concept of border was
conquered in a sense.
NGOs and women’s groups have relied on the social category of religion
as the salient identity for organizing considering the animosity left behind
by the riots. But these attempts could also indirectly reinforce the notion of
women as the bearers of “culture,” in this case, religion. Moreover, the
deployment of the frame of the endangered woman in the context of com-
munal violence coincides with the institutionalized ideology of the state
(“Hindutva”) about the need for protection of Hindu women in particular.
Deployment of this passive frame did not deter the NGOs from using a
frame to integrate gender into politics.
Gender Mainstreaming
The international context offers Indian women’s organizations a “gender

mainstreaming” frame which emphasizes the need for examining the gender
dimension in all political activities and policies, particularly the impacts on
women. These transnational movement ties also increase the availability of
the transnational women’s rights as human rights frame, but do not neces-
sarily make it effective in either the local or national context in which these
groups work.
We said that every issue is women’s issue. During communal riots women are most
affected persons whether they are as housewives, or as daily wagers, as tailors or
vegetable vendors, or whatever. And they are affected by all these things. And how can
we keep quiet? (TS)
As a partner in an organization working with women in the aftermath

of the communal violence in Gujarat, TS from Women’s Cause speaks to
the need for efforts by small community-based organizations to actively
work with Muslim women and young girls for change. The reference to “all
issues are women’s issues” by TS coincides with the gender mainstreaming
discourse.
The broader notion of mainstreaming was also evident in the ways
NGOs consciously worked with all groups of people without considering
what caste or tribe they belonged to. The representative of Progress noted,
“We had never thought this way that we’ll work only with Harijans or
dalits or we’ll work only with this coolie Patels, or we’ll not work with the
Darbar. That way we had not thought; and we had also not practiced
and places the onus on women to protect themselves, with others arguing
that self-defense serves as a powerful practice of empowerment (Hollander,
2009, 2010).
One alternative to individual self-defense was the collective symbolic
reclaiming of public spaces. The most prominent example is Take Back the
Night (TBTN), which was founded in the late 1970s as a march, rally, and
survivor speak out. TBTN sought to send a symbolic message that public
spaces belonged to the people, and should be kept safe. Under the banner
of safety, these were spaces for consciousness-raising and solidarity. TBTN
has become part of the institutional feminist memory of many college cam-
puses, where it is performed every year. And, relevant to the four-realm
schema we introduce in this chapter, TBTN events routinely deploy a fem-
inist analysis of violence that organically links work with survivors (Realm
A), legal action against perpetrators (Realm B), with the empowerment and
increased safety for potential targets (Realm C). In particular, TBTN orga-
nizers have consistently connected feminist concerns with violence with an
analysis of how women’s sense of danger and distrust supports gender
inequality by privileging men in public spaces.
On the heels of feminist arguments about the importance of safety in pub-
lic space, law enforcement experts began in the 1990s to promote “situational
crime prevention” a variety of policies, which sought to reshape arrange-
ments of spaces and people in order to protect against crime. This has been
the logic that has justified more lighting in public spaces, campus blue-light
phones, as well as increased video surveillance and restraining orders
(Merry, 2008). These architectural reforms, while arguably making public
spaces safer, provided few of the collective empowerment or consciousness-
raising connections made possible through events like TBTN.
While women have long used informal means to stay safe, these means
were codified and labeled as “risk reduction strategies” in the 1980s and
1990s alongside growing understanding of date rape and acquaintance
rape, especially the use of alcohol and date rape drugs. Some of these stra-
tegies seeped into women’s everyday practices, such as carrying a car key
between one’s knuckles while walking at night. Self-defense has expanded
beyond classes to a number of tools used by women such as rape whistles,
pepper spray, and tazers. These strategies are a source of tension in many
feminist organizations as they risk placing the onus on individual women
to deal with the effects of male domination. In our participant observation
research, we found this tension arising time and again during one-shot edu-
cation programs, as audience members consistently used the empowerment
discourse of “choice” to question why women made the decisions that they
made, whether it was walking alone at night or staying with an abusive

partner. In the last several years, bystander intervention, which focuses on
interrupting scenarios where potential perpetrators target victims has pro-
vided a new angle on target-focused interventions. Universities and high
schools in particular have drawn on risk reduction and bystander interven-
tion education programs.
For feminists, securing women’s safety has long been tied to the experi-
ences of survivors, which give weight and legitimacy to tackling the causes
of violence. Self-defense classes often include survivors and are strong emo-
tional and empowering experiences, not just practical exercises. Hollander
(2010) argues that women’s self-defense classes do not necessarily have a
depoliticizing outcome, especially when they are taught by feminist instruc-
tors who couple technical defense strategies with consciousness-raising edu-
cation about the sources of violence against women. Similarly, TBTN was
just as much about survivors feeling comfortable telling their stories in pub-
lic and being seen as it was about reclaiming space. Today, a new fleet of
target-focused activism, which use social media to document and share
instances of sexual harassment amplify women’s experiences as both survi-
vors of violence and targets of violence in ways that connect individual
experiences of men’s violence into a continuum of actions that work to sup-
port men’s control over women. For example, the Internet-based Everyday
Sexism Project asks women to briefly describe their daily experiences of
sexual harassment, assault, and maltreatment, thus calling public attention
to seemingly individual experiences. By aggregating these lived experiences
in one place, this project tells a much larger story about male privilege,
objectification, and patriarchy while at the same time serving as empower-
ing and instructive.
In 2011, a Department of Justice Report concurred with what feminists
have been saying for decades: there is too much public focus on what the
victim could have done differently and not enough focus on the offender.
Strategies intended only to change the potential target of violence are fun-
damentally limited because they fail to adequately address the origins of
violence and can in many ways make violence feel inevitable. This seems to
be true in particular when individual risk reduction strategies such as carry-
ing keys or learning martial arts are isolated from a holistic feminist
approach to violence. The most meaningful collective strategies undermine
a logic of victim blaming and empower women in public life by bridging
survivors and targets, creating community and revealing wider social
forces, while also simultaneously providing spaces for engaging men in
stopping violence.
PREVENTION FOR POTENTIAL PERPETRATORS
By the end of the 1970s, feminist women had created rape crisis centers,
domestic violence hotlines and shelters, women’s self-defense classes, and
had begun to challenge how police, the courts, workplaces, social work,
and other institutions viewed and responded to sexual assault, sexual
harassment, and domestic violence (Messner, 1997). Tens of thousands of
young men, especially those in college or university communities had been
confronted and even inspired by the feminist transformations of their sis-
ters, lovers, women friends, and political allies. Nearing the end of the
decade, a few men, often sparked by feminist women in their lives, began
asking how they might take responsibility, as men, to stop future violence
against women and take up the feminist call to “talk to the men.” In the
late 1970s and early 1980s, the first wave of male activist feminist allies,
riding the tide of a mass grassroots feminist movement, formed small local
organizations, often in dialogue with feminist women’s domestic violence
shelters and antirape organizations, and eventually started connecting with
regional and national networks of other men who shared the goal of doing
violence prevention work with boys and men. In our interviews, most of
these men described their pathways to the movement as running through
their personal experiences of violence at the hands of an abusive family
member or their connection to women survivors of violence. For these
men, their prevention work with boys and men was deeply connected to
survivors and perpetrators.
These pro-feminist men met with challenges to their very identities as
men. In our interviews with men who were involved at this time, they spoke
of their struggles to come to grips with what they often called “inner work”
versus “outreach” between their own therapeutic challenges with the
emotional “costs of masculinity,” and their commitments to public political
action against men’s institutionalized privileges, and the ways that violence
against women was thought to buttress this privilege. This outreach, often
organic and local, bubbled up out of ongoing reading groups and experi-
ences of men in their own communities and at the same time remained sup-
ported and challenged by feminist women. This work brought them to high
schools, colleges, communities, and prisons, where they met men who often
didn’t feel all that powerful or dominant. In these contexts, telling men
they were the problem didn’t make sense. Instead, they drew on a social
justice framework, which connected violence to oppression and inequality,
in order to build empathy and encourage action.
In sum, the organizations did not face the violence against women ques-
tion directly. Their choice of frame of “communal harmony” was, no
doubt, in opposition to “communal violence” to ensure implementing their
project without specific reference to the violation of the rights of the minor-
ity or the sexual violence against women. However, in contrast to the gov-
ernment’s mixed signals of calls for harmony versus the power for the
majority (in line with the Hindutva ideology) NGOs have actively engaged
both communities in reconciliation efforts.
CONCLUSION
This chapter illustrates three main themes. First, in terms of theory, it

draws attention to the ways in which organizations strategically contest the
constructions of gendered religious nationalism. Second, it shows that in
making strategic choices, local organizations drew on passive (endangered
woman) as well as active frames (gender mainstreaming) but failed to spon-
sor the “women’s rights’ frame” vigorously utilized at the global level by
international women’s groups/international women’s movement. Third, it
demonstrates that the actions of local organizations in Gujarat are also
connected to the ongoing concerns about tensions and fractures around
class, caste, and religion within the broader Indian women’s movement.
At the local level, organizations have retained the “endangered woman”
frame in the context of communal harmony as well as communal violence
during and after the Godhra tragedy and its aftermath. This endangered
woman frame is directly related to the cultural meanings of honor as
related to gender which is central to the considerations of communalism
particularly the use of women’s bodies to highlight differences between the
communities (religious groups). However, this deliberate and tactical choice
is a mechanism for seeking action from and accountability of state institu-
tions without resorting to aggressive politics targeting the state. The con-
straints emerging from the political context surrounding the violence and
its aftermath were a deterrent to these progressive organizations’ direct
action. The discursive opportunity at the state and national level was cer-
tainly constructed around the “anti-nationalist” as the “other” (the minor-
ity). This enables the construction of nationalism that favors the centrality
of religion or the communal; a phrase that has historical connotations and
resonates at the local and national level in India. I suggest that such defin-
ing of the “other” reinforced the larger agenda of the BJP and its affiliates
therapeutic themes” brought about by an influx of university-based human

services in the work (Lichterman, 1989).
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s the surviving men’s violence prevention
organizations, dedicated to not pulling from women’s work, scraped by on
volunteers and a trickle of funding aimed at education and crime reduction
with young men, often in marginalized communities. Pro-feminist men
struggled as did feminist women in a parallel way to situate their pre-
vention work in the context of race and class inequality. Disconnected
from the feminist movement and feeling the pressures of formalization,
many organizations took what Michael Kaufman, co-founder of the inter-
national White Ribbon Campaign, called during our interview a “big tent”
approach toward men’s violence as they linked sexual assault and domestic
violence with police violence and racism, exchanging the revolutionary
aspirations of the movement for a broad campaign against men’s violence,
often in the form of antirape and anti-domestic violence curricula. These
programs were strategically shaped and deployed to appeal to an array of
boys and men, drawing them in by telling them that feminism (or, at least
opposing violence against women, rarely overtly defined as feminist action)
is good for them, and that it’s the right thing to do. Stripped of their overt
political message these programs not only gained financial support but
were increasingly used by men working with marginalized communities
outside of the pro-feminist organizations. This new crop of social workers
and nonprofit employees, increasingly made up of men of color often
started with little connection to feminism, but were eager to respond to the
links they witnessed between domestic and sexual violence and drug abuse,
poverty, and gangs. This provided a new path into antiviolence feminism,
as these men came into contact with feminist women, who in turn became
mentors and colleagues. While many individual men were receiving an
informal feminist education, the rapidly professionalizing context of pre-
vention education left little room for building formal connections across
realms, leaving men’s work with other men increasingly disconnected from
work with survivors and perpetrators.
Many of these nascent tensions and possibilities were kicked into overd-
rive on September 13, 1994, when President Bill Clinton signed into law
the Violence Against Women Act. The act institutionalized support for
responses to violence against women, creating the Office on Violence
Against Women within the U.S. Department of Justice. Of the $1.6 billion
originally budgeted, the lion’s share was directed to improving law enforce-
ment, and a sizable chunk went to creating and sustaining services for bat-
tered women’s shelters. While only a small amount of money was
designated for sexual assault services and violence prevention work, the
Violence Against Women Act sent a symbolic and cultural message: vio-
lence against women is a national problem. Alongside bolstering the role of
law enforcement in violence against women, the legislation instituted a com-
petitive grant model for community services for survivors of violence and
for prevention work, which, in turn, helped to usher in a professionalized
model of violence prevention, further pushing feminist political forms of
organizing, such as consciousness-raising, to the margins. In our con-
versations with male allies, we found that many remained invested in
consciousness-raising style action with boys and men; however, they
struggled to find ways to accomplish their social justice goals within the
boundaries of the programming.
In addition to funding programming, the Department of Justice, the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and private foundations have
propelled a sweeping research agenda into the causes, outcomes, and
mechanisms of violence. Forty years after feminists pushed violence out of
the shadows, it is under the microscope. Throughout the 1980s, an ascen-
dant public health field brought medical and disease-based approaches to
bear on “the violence epidemic,” developing upstream or “primary preven-
tion” strategies, which take the advice of feminist activists and focus on
changing the cultural norms of potential perpetrators (Flood, 2011). Using
the large data sets compiled from police, emergency rooms, surveys, and
other sources, epidemiologists have marked precursors of violence into
everyday life and developed ways of locating potential future perpetrators.
This process has provided increased visibility and legitimacy for antivio-
lence efforts, moving the problem of violence “from badness to sickness”
and threatening to overturn the deviance model of violence that dominated
through the 1980s and 1990s (Conrad & Schneider, 1980). At the same
time, this medicalized model risks stripping antiviolence of its cultural and
structural critique, instead focusing on individual-level interventions.
Shaped by the grant-system, these programs are often short-term, one-size
fits all, and evidence-based “doses” built around a media campaign and/or
a curriculum. As these programs work through existing infrastructures,
they open the door to a huge variety of new audiences: businesses interested
in sexual harassment trainings, schools, universities, the military all
received education on gender-based violence, often for the first time.
This shift to a widening, medicalized, market-driven model of antivio-
lence is reflected in the wave of name changes that have swept long-standing
feminist organizations in the late 2000s and early 2010s. In general, these
changes reflect a move from local, women-focused interventions, to branded
nonprofits dealing with violence broadly. For example, the Los Angeles
Commission on Assaults Against women in 2006 became Peace Over
Violence. The Family Violence Prevention Fund became Futures Without
Violence in 2011. Where once there were a variety of small and scrappy col-
lectives, there is now a fleet of local and national organizations, technical
assistance providers, curricula designers, conferences, foundations, national
campaigns, and slick websites. Many nonprofits have taken advantage of
new funding to build up prevention and education alongside their crisis
and advocacy work. Beginning in the late 1990s a parallel field of violence
prevention organizations, run for and by men, began to emerge such as
Men Can Stop Rape and A Call to Men.
Our interviews with men who entered into antiviolence work after this
wave of formalization show that the broadening terrain of antiviolence
work has created new spaces for men to engage with prevention work,
while threatening to stretch that field thinner in terms of its political depth
and potential for radical social change (see also Casey et al., 2013). We
have found that the men in these organizations, like their predecessors,
struggle with questions of accountability, as they compete for grants and
keynote slots on a robust speaker circuit at colleges and conferences. These
men face dual challenges when they come into contact with feminist organi-
zations intense critical scrutiny, as well as moments of unearned praise
and privilege both resulting from the fact that they are still among the
very few men doing this work (Peretz, 2010).
Participant observation during the day-to-day work of men in preven-
tion reveals another set of tensions. In a supposedly post-feminist world
and without a group to back them or a systemic critique to point to, these
men described struggling to “meet men where they’re at.” Today’s com-
monly used antiviolence curriculum departs from the previous strategy of
viewing core definitions of masculinity as causing violence against women.
The current standard curriculum strategically sidesteps the off-putting guilt
of previous curricula so often experienced as “anti-male” instead
appealing to boys’ and men’s sense of masculine honor. In effect, today’s
antiviolence pedagogy deploys dominant forms of masculinity, rather than
arguing for masculinity’s eradication or radical transformation. Put
another way, while late 1970s and early 1980s antiviolence activists like
John Stoltenberg (1989) argued that stopping violence against women must
entail “refusing to be a man,” today’s pedagogies, such as the national My
Strength curriculum, implore their charges to step up and be a good man.
Men experience their audiences in prevention as a parade of good potential
men who have done nothing wrong. And at the same time, the mainstream
backlash against feminism puts men doing prevention work in a position to

risk losing credibility if they even mention feminism. At the same time, pre-
ventionists by and large find this work uplifting, as working with young
men holds vast potential for recognizing the humanity of men and trans-
forming (or at least reforming) the social structures out of which violence
can emerge (Dworkin, Colvin, Hatcher, & Peacock, 2012).
BRIDGEWORK AND INSTITUTIONAL ANTIVIOLENCE

Feminist activists generally see the four realms of antiviolence we have
described as connected by a comprehensive feminist theory of the origins
and outcomes of men’s violence against women, and by comprehensive and
linked strategies that tether the four realms. We have suggested here that in
the United States, with the decline of movement feminism, antiviolence
work has been re-framed by an ascendant medicalized discourse, shaped by
state-funded and privately-funded programs, and administered by profes-
sionalized nonprofits that are increasingly driven by market concerns. As a
result, the antiviolence work in each of these four realms has progressively
pulled away from the foundations of feminist theory and comprehensive
social change strategy into distinct realms, thus making less likely any com-
prehensive social change. Consequently, contradictions within realms are
amplified and supports between them weakened as each realm is formalized
and disconnected.
This disconnection is felt acutely in the lives of feminist activists and
professionals, often working in isolation, who are caught between their
social change goals and the formalized institutions they find themselves in.
On the ground, activists, many still richly steeped in movement values,
deploy feminist and broad social justice theories and strategies in order to
retain or re-forge these connections. These efforts, which we refer to as
bridgework, re-connect antiviolence realms to a larger feminist social
change project and in the process ease the tensions of formalization and
professionalization which have pulled feminist antiviolence apart. So far,
we have pointed to several forms of bridgework, facilitated by feminist acti-
vists: Survivors of violence who put words and actions to the underlying
causes of violence within institutions, developing frameworks through
which to understand violence as preventable and undermining the potential
for victim-blaming in target-focused approaches as well as providing an
avenue of empathy for men’s engagement; feminist work to hold
perpetrators accountable while critically thinking about the criminal justice

system as a perpetrator of violence, which pushes for alternative, institu-
tionally and community situated models of justice (Ptacek, 2010); feminist
self-defense education and public rallies such as TBTN that connect
women’s empowerment and survivors. Bridgework, when grounded in
stable and organic commitments to survivors and responses to perpetra-
tors, has the capacity to multiply antiviolence work in all realms, with pre-
vention in a position to benefit the most significantly.
On the other hand, when disconnected from the post-violence realms, a
discourse and policy of prevention can push actual experiences of violence
under the rug and make it seem like violence doesn’t happen, opening the
door to a logic of victim blaming as prevention programs can seem like all
the education one might need to stay safe. Or, as the authors have heard
before in prevention education: “now you can’t say you didn’t know.” And
alternatively, as was the recent case with San Diego Mayor Filner, I didn’t
know because you didn’t tell me. Cut off from any long-term consequences
and systems, prevention is often presented as a “get-it-out-of-the-way” first
week gesture on campuses and in workplaces as opposed to a long-term
institutional priority. At the University of Southern California (USC),
where a title IX lawsuit against the university for failing to punish several
male perpetrators of sexual assault is in progress, one student has stated
that a USC official told her that their goal was to “offer an ‘educative’ pro-
cess, not to ‘punish’ the assailant” (Huffington Post, 2013). This framing of
institutional response as a choice between punishment and education is one
possible byproduct of a prevention-first approach. Institutions that empha-
size education-driven prevention programs and cultural change, without
backing it up with responses for survivors and perpetrators, make the
implicit statement that culture is the root cause of violence, while obscuring
the policies and practices of the institution itself and the real-life conse-
quences of violence.
We return to the case of the Military and by extension, college cam-
puses, and sports franchises with an answer to a question we posed at
the outset: prevention is a joke when it isn’t backed up by serious and sys-
temic institutional responses to violence. Social actors within institutions
are capable of discerning true institutional priorities from lip service. When
perpetrators of violence go unpunished, and survivors of violence are
ignored, stigmatized, or punished, an organization’s claims that it is work-
ing to prevent future acts of violence are transparently self-serving window-
dressing. Conversely, when potential future perpetrators see victims of vio-
lence treated with respectful support and perpetrators of violence treated
severely, they are likely to be more open to serious institutional efforts to

engage boys and men in preventing future acts of violence.
NOTE
1. Seventy-one-year-old Filner resigned in August 2013, nine months into his first
term as mayor, in response to intense pressure after at least 17 women brought sex-
ual harassment allegations against him.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to thank Tal Peretz for his work on the research project into
men’s engagement with antiviolence feminism that we draw on in this chap-
ter. We are also grateful for the support of the New Directions fellowships
provided by the Center for Feminist Research at the University of
Southern California.
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“OUR” HONOR AND “THEIR”
HONOR: THE CASE OF HONOR
KILLINGS IN TURKEY
Julie Alev Dilmaç
ABSTRACT
Purpose To study the concept of honor in Turkish everyday life

discourses. Many surveys have focused on namus, thus referring to honor
killings, the mechanism of violence perpetrated against women. The
reason given for such killings, often seen as barbaric and the result of
criminal urges, is that some men feel compelled to restore what they see
as family honor, soiled by the actions of their female relatives. However,
these studies avoid another key aspect of honor: namely the plurality of
its meanings as honor in Turkey may also be translated both as şeref and
onur.
Design/methodology/approach To begin to understand honor in
all its forms, I conducted interviews with 100 Turkish men and women
ages 20 27, all university students or graduates, from the Istanbul
area. I also consulted the current official and Ottoman dictionaries to
understand the history of word use.

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252 JULIE ALEV DILMAÇ
Findings Among the young adults interviewed “honor-virtue” (i.e.,

namus) is a debated topic. It may be analyzed at both theoretical and geo-
graphic levels and has the connotations of otherness and non-modernity.
Namus co-exists with şeref (citizen honor) and onur (dignity).
Social implications Redefining the terms of honor could temper ten-
sions between local/global, urban/countryside, modern/traditional,
woman/man, and invisible frontier between namus and şeref worldviews.
Advocating şeref and focusing on a broader definition of namus may
encourage individuals to find their places in society. By focusing on
national moral values, any individual in the country may participate in
keeping the social order regardless of gender, age, or geographic location.
Keywords: Gender; honor; killings; otherness; youth; Turkey
The interdisciplinary subject of honor has become prominent in Humanities

research. Described as a key concept for understanding Mediterranean
cultures (Peristiany, 1966), it plays a major role in numerous anthropolo-
gical studies (Bourdieu, 1972; Jamous, 1981; Pitt-Rivers, 1983); as well as in
historical studies devoted to its evolution (Muchembled, 1991; Weber,
1996). Honor is also a core concept in many contemporary sociological
studies (Berger, 1970; Calogirou, 1997; Shils, 2000; Walzer, 1997, and
others).
Although a significant number of studies are devoted to cultural differ-
ences surrounding this principle, a sense of honor is a feature of virtually all
societies. The principle of honor confers a role and status to individuals,
granting them a place in society and allowing them to situate themselves
within the community, while, also, imposing certain codes on them accord-
ing to their age, their sex (Bourdieu, 1972, 2002), their social status
(Pitt-Rivers, 1983). Previous studies have identified a number of descrip-
tions of honor indicating that this principle is present in numerous spheres
of existence, and in such diverse forms as: a sentiment (Liepmann, 1906;
Pitt-Rivers, 1983), a right to respect (Dilmaç, 2011; Stewart, 1994), a set of
characteristics including strength, courage, integrity (Liepmann, 1906), the
moral values of an individual (Westermarck, 1912), a moral principle and
a duty (Terraillon, 1912), an ideology (Schneider, 1971), and a search for
prestige within society (Cassar, 2005).
Honor also varies according to gender (Abu-Lughod, 1986; Bourdieu,
1972; Gélard, 2003). Men have the right to participate in its exchange, to
“Our” Honor and “Their” Honor: The Case of Honor Killings in Turkey 253
respond when provoked, and to fight to save it; for them honor is even
linked to the exhibition of strength, courage and virility (Haroche, 2011).
By contrast, women are expected to stay on the sidelines, adopting discreet
and modest behavior and a passivity that would confirm their honor and
that of the men close to them (e.g., father, brother, husband).
Honor takes root within the body itself: principally in the head, which
must be bowed as a sign of deference (Haroche, 2006, 2008), or covered to
hide any sign of femininity (Campbell, 1964), and in the genitals, but also
in the face, hands, and blood (Hertz, 1909; Pitt-Rivers, 1991). Is not the
biggest gesture of disapproval referred to in many languages as the arm (or
finger) of honor? Honor maintains a privileged link with the body as well
as with self-control (Walzer, 1987) and the staging of self (Goffman, 1973).
Moreover, “public honor [would be when] from the simple affirmation of
presence, we move on to the elaboration of presentation” (Verret, 1991,
p. 68). Honor is thus gained through the art of living, the use of politeness,
formalities and manners (Haroche, 2008).
To conform to precepts dictated by honor, the body must be controlled
(Abu-Lughod, 1986; Campbell, 1964), constrained (Elias, 2003), tamed,
and trained (Bourdieu, 2002), both the body itself and the extension of it,
the outward appearance (Campbell, 1964). The body and its impulses must
be conquered, since it is through the body that the individual asserts pre-
sence in the world, situates oneself, and is recognized by others. Through
self-control, the individual proves mastery in the art of living and, through
this, virtue. One thus earns the respect of one’s peers. Honor is meaningless
without public recognition; it corresponds to the social self (Terraillon,
1912), the image which individuals seek to reflect in the eyes of other mem-
bers of society and for which they claim recognition. If honor, as a line of
conduct and a set of principles to follow, allows individuals to acquire
social recognition, it may also, if it is compromised, lead to dishonor,
shame, and disapproval. Honor is therefore, in certain circumstances and
cultures, directly linked to violence as in the death of war heroes for the
honor of their country, but also in honor crimes, which are most often
committed to regain family honor by killing the family member held
responsible for damaging or spoiling the name of the family (Dilmaç, 2010,
2012a; Mojab, 2004). Until the elimination of the individual guilty of dis-
honoring the family, all family members are equally touched by disgrace.1
In Turkey, the notion of honor appears to include all those features
noted above. Invoked in most daily interactions, honor in Turkish society
can be used as a sign of recognition when addressed to a peer as well as a
pretext leading to honor crimes when it is shaken. In certain cases, it can
IS RELIGIOSITY RELATED TO
REDUCED ABUSE IN CHILDHOOD?
A COMMUNITY STUDY OF
ULTRA-ORTHODOX AND
SECULAR JEWISH WOMEN
Marjorie C. Feinson and Adi Meir
ABSTRACT
Purpose Although childhood abuse is internationally recognized as a
major problem, there is a dearth of data concerning potentially protective
resources, including religiosity. While studies document religiosity’s posi-
tive association with general health outcomes, little is known about its
relevance to abuse in childhood. A unique opportunity to explore the
relationship is provided by a community-based study of religiously
diverse, adult women within a single religious denomination, Judaism. A
distinctive aspect of this research, which places women’s voices and
tions, the military and religious establishments.

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99
These rates were followed by those collected by KA-DER3 (Association

for the Promotion of Women), showing the increase of the crimes
(Table 1).
Table 1. Numbers of Honor Killings Perpetuated in Turkey between 2009

and 2012.
Year Total of Honor Killings Case in Which Woman Is a Victim
2009 195 108

2010 168 106
2011 147 99
2012 148 102
This chapter aims to distinguish the different representations of honor

among young Turkish adults.4 Honor, which translates either as şeref (citi-
zen honor), onur (dignity), or namus (moral values), is part of the Turkish
national identity and it also defines personal identity. Whatever its mean-
ings, honor is still at the core of people’s concerns.
However, if şeref, onur and namus may be used to talk about different
spheres (public, private, and intimate), only namus sparks off debates in
Turkey. Related both to feminine sexuality in some modern representations
and to the driving force behind honor killings, namus also connotes a non-
modern and sometimes “barbarian” or “servile” principle (Terraillon,
1912) as part of the definition of honor. Individuals distinguish between
“barbarian honor” and “civilized honor” (Dilmaç, 2012a, 2012b) or, differ-
entiate as interviewees did, honor “between legs” from honor “between
ears.” Our aim is to understand the terms of this debate and show how this
controversy opens up to distinctive visions and discourses among young
adults that may be best described as a contrast between “our honor” and
“their honor.”
METHODOLOGY
Informal interviews were conducted with 50 men and 50 women. All of our
interviewees were city-dwellers, aged 20 27, university students and gradu-
ates, born, raised, and currently living in Istanbul. Ten districts5 out of 39
were chosen 10 interviews were conducted in each, five with each gender.
These sections were chosen because of their location but also for the
diversity of their populations; these districts also represent the “center” of

Istanbul.
The choice of a convenience sample allowed us to gather various repre-
sentations of honor but also understand the prevailing variations in such a
notion. We did not want to set criteria which may have led to a biased ana-
lysis: for example, selecting a randomly drawn sample of people living in a
specific quarter of Istanbul may have seemed appropriate from a methodo-
logical standpoint but wrong from a demographic standpoint as the sample
may not have been be representative of a cross-section of Turkish popula-
tion. Defining additional criteria for this research would have been proble-
matic as honor is relevant to everybody, without any distinction of race for
example. It is not only, as many observers claim in Turkey, the principle
that the participants of honor killings hold on to. The present sample, while
not representative of the entire population, has provided us with a large
panel of “exemplary cases” allowing us to analyze honor as a personal but
also a cohesive principle.
Therefore, this chapter reflects the visions with regard to honor killings
of young adults living in Istanbul, a population defined as “Western” as
they are living in the West side of the country. This designation was chosen
in order to distinguish the population in Western Turkey from the Eastern
and Southern East ones, populations constantly shown in numerous studies
as the only perpetrators of honor killings. Indeed, until now, according to a
significant number of studies aiming to investigate the reasons for such
crimes (e.g., Kardam, 2005; Tezcan, 2003), honor killings were shown as if
they were committed in the rural South East of Turkey or only by people
coming from this part of the country. Indeed, even if the former researches
did not mention directly that honor killings were committed only in the
rural South East of Turkey, the repetitive researches conducted only in this
part of the country contributed to create the idea that honor killings could
be an “Eastern/South Eastern issue.” But as shown in the tables above,
these crimes can be seen in every part of Turkey. For us, the popular per-
ception that these killings are most often committed in rural, non-modern,
non-western areas can be considered as a consequence of such repetitive
studies. But if it is so, what about the urban understanding and practices of
honor in the West side of the country? What is the vision of western popu-
lation about honor? How do they define it?
Our aim here was to reverse (invert?) the analysis by collecting dis-
courses of western Turks in order to understand their conceptions of
honor. In doing so, and in line with the feminist methodological principle
to “study up,” we have as our subjects a population that is typically in the
privileged position of determining the parameters of a study rather than in

the position of the studied. In this chapter we attempt to:
• distinguish three categories of honor in Turkey according to the percep-
tions of young urban Turkish adults and understand the impact of these
principles in the making of an individual’s social identity;
• understand why namus, as the Turkish concept of honor most often
defined as “honor virtue,” is a controversial term used to legitimate
honor killings;
• observe the consequences of this phenomenon in order to redefine the
concept of civilization, in particular, with regard to the creation of
imaginary boundaries separating the “civilized Man” and the “Other”
(seen as the “Barbarian”);
• offer definitions of honor that sustain identity and morality and preserve
their essential meanings without perpetuating stereotypes or offering
support for unacceptable behaviors, especially gender-based violence.
DIFFERENT TYPES OF HONOR IN TURKEY:

ONUR, ŞEREF, AND NAMUS
Honor permeates many fields of everyday life in Turkey: discourses, poli-

tics, media, even schools. In Turkey the three major kinds of honor onur,
şeref, and namus occupy three different spaces and is easily distinguished
in everyday life. First of all, onur, with its French etymology, refers to dig-
nity. Although it may be an important term, it is not often used. We find it
mostly in requests of legal reparation of damages, in cases of unpaid salary
or denunciations for inhuman behavior. Onur is tied to people’s fundamen-
tal rights, rights that are shared by men and women.
Although interesting, onur is not problematic for young adults.
Therefore, this chapter focuses on the other two forms of honor, şeref and
namus. Şeref comes from Arabic and may be understood as “the personal
value felt by individual coming from the other’s respect. The good reputation
won by virtue, courage and talent” (The Foundation of Turkish Language6).
This definition of şeref seems to be closely related to the French and
English conception of honor. Such a definition does not include any sexual
connotations. Therefore, it may be argued that şeref is characterized by its
genderless dimension.
Defining şeref, interviewees said: “Şeref is the principle that people hold
on to in order to conduct their lives properly” (Serap,7 21, female intervie-
wee) “It’s the philosophy of life” (Ömer, 23, male interviewee).
We observe that this principle is essential (“şeref is more important than
life” Gülçin, 25, female interviewee) and generic as it is connected to indi-
viduals but, also, closely related to other members of society: “be honest”
and “do not lie,” “when our interior and our exterior are the same,” “be trust-
ful,” “keep our promises” … are all qualities determined by şeref that reveal
the search for social acknowledgment.
Şeref is an open invitation to social recognition: living with şeref and
being “şerefli” (“with şeref” or “şeref-full”) means that individuals impose
on themselves some moral principles in order to conduct their life.
Therefore, they gain recognition from other members with whom they share
public places.
Here, an implicit notion of self-control8 may be hinted at: if the indivi-
dual has to prove himself but also others that he has şeref, that he is honest
and moral, he has to self-constraint his body and his impulses. This self-
control, though restricting, is wanted by individuals for whom “şeref
distingues ourselves from animals.” (Ahmet, 23, male interviewee). Thus, if
people control their behavior and their drives to avoid being judged by
others (or even being the subject of gossips) this conduct contributes to the
perpetuation of social order. Being şerefli refers to people (men or women)
who do not upset the social order because they are able to dominate their
impulses. The Şerefli represents the good citizen whose good behavior helps
maintain social morals. What is at stake here is a nonviolent kind of honor,
leaning toward self-restraint (temperateness) and self-control. Living with-
out şeref or accepting life as a “şerefsiz” (“şerefless”) was considered by our
interviewees as a reprehensible and immoral way of life, chosen by the
individual.
Such a thought may explain why for our interviewees death is better
than being seen as a “şerefsiz.”
A şerefsiz cannot live, he will end up in prison anyway. (Fatma, 23, female interviewee)
If you are considered like this, you can lose your job. (Meriç, 22, female interviewee)
A person considered as a şerefless has no friend, he is alone and everybody knows he is
alone. So, in this case, maybe it is better to die. (Sertaç, 23, male interviewee)
Şeref, that is to say then “citizen honor,” is common to all citizens in

Turkey, women and men, and represents for our sample the whole of moral
values which determines the national Turkish identity.
Such an interiorized, legitimized and mostly chosen type of self-control

sets şeref apart as a third type of honor, called Namus.
Namus: The Controversial Honor
The first thing that comes to mind when people think of namus is that it
represents the kind of honor that some people rely on to legitimate in princi-
ple (or in action) honor killings. Namus is often quoted briefly in the news
but also in most debates concerning women’s rights. In social representa-
tions, this kind of honor is related to violence and refers to an obsolete and
non-modern period which may be characterized by noncompliance with
human rights and Turkish law. Surprisingly, the common reference to vio-
lence or women’s sexuality usually attached to namus is absent from the dic-
tionary. The meaning prevailing in the dictionary is a global definition of a
mere moral principle. In the Turkish official dictionary namus is defined as
“The attachment of a society to moral rules” and is synonymous with “right-
eousness” and “honesty” (The Foundation of Turkish Language). To go
further into this analysis of the definition Fig. 1 may be useful.
First, we see that the various types of honor are inter-connected.
Second, the references to crimes, and more importantly to women and inti-
macy, that we observe in individual discourses and representations are non-
existent here. But a recent research conducted by Efes Pilsen9 shows that
MORAL HONESTY
MORES
RIGHTEOUSNESS
NAMUS
RESPECT WORD OF HONOUR
¸
SEREF ONUR
Fig. 1. Definition of namus according to the Official Dictionary. Source: The

Foundation of Turkish language.
Turkish men still connect namus to virginity. For them, women keeping
their namus clean are “valuable” women (kıymetli), “lovable” (sevilebilir)
and “deserving of marriage” (evlenebilir). Our interviewees, both men and
women, have also emphasized this vision; but always critically. To the
question “What is namus for you?” most of them provided similar answers,
namely “For me, it is not between women’s legs but between ears” (Mehmet,
27, male interviewee), or “I do not think like people who claim that namus is
just for women” (Ayla, 24, female interviewee). Yet, even if these responses
oppose a restricting vision of namus, the sexual importance of this term
and the will to transcend this connotation must be highlighted.
It is not between legs. For me, it is the same for men and women. ( … ) Me, I do not
think like them. (Ayşe, 23, woman interviewee)
Despite all these different visions an important question remains: why

does namus, which is defined by the official Turkish dictionary as an asex-
ual principle common to every member of the society, tend to be repre-
sented as a restrictive type of honor, especially for women?
Between New and Old Definitions: Contradictions
Because namus may have become an obsolete notion, harking back to a

non-modern and non-civilized type of honor, we looked up the word in the
Ottoman dictionary to see how different its former definition was from its
meaning today. Fig. 2 shows the results of this original research.
It appears that the former definition of namus is totally different from
the contemporary definition given in Fig. 1: here, the term “iffet” (virtue),
which is absent from the contemporary definition, makes all the difference.
Indeed, “iffet” highlights the importance of morality and even virginity,
and it is exclusively used for female sexuality in the Turkish language.
Indeed, “iffet” cannot be used in reference to masculine intimacy. This
detail sheds light on social representations and provides useful insights for
our analysis.
In Fig. 2, some synonyms of namus are given, and they are also more clo-
sely associated with “rules,” “keeping to the straight and narrow,”
“order” … All these expressions prove that namus is in fact the whole of
conduct that does not defy social peace. Any person who claims to be “hon-
orable” (i.e., “namuslu” in Turkish), has to be “docile,” “pure” and must
“know the shame.” Even if these principles and actions may be applied to
SHAME (Utanma) SHAME (Hayâ)
MANNERS (Edep)
PURITY (Âr)
NAMUS
CHASTITY (Iffet)
LAW (Kanun) ORDER (Nizam)
WAY (Yol)
Fig. 2. Definition of namus according to the Ottoman Dictionary. Source:

Osmanlıca Türkçe Ansiklopedik Lûgat Ferit Devellioğlu-2012.
both men and women, purity seems to be tied to “iffet,” which is the
“attachment to moral rules concerning sexuality,” and feminine virtue, thus,
the prevalence of an association between the term, namus and women’s
behavior.
Here, religion, too, with its imposition of moral influence on some types
of behaviors, particularly those associated with human reproduction is
linked to namus. But, this connection is hardly ever mentioned in the inter-
viewees’ discourses. For them, religion conveys values such as loyalty,
honesty, and helping individuals to live their lives but not namus in itself.
The traditional definition of namus seems to have more impact on people
than the contemporary dictionary meaning, restricting it to women’s
intimate honor, something that women do not object to (because namus is
important for self-respect but also for gaining other people’s respect) even
though they do not fully embrace it.
For female interviewees, such a conception of intimacy is “the criter-
ion imposed on them by society.” It is imposed from an outside that
tends to put pressure on their intimacy, which should be theirs alone. If
the implicit norms dictate to a woman to keep her virginity until she
marries, for instance, it is an implicit way of saying that namus must be
transparent. Indeed, by imposing such a definition of namus society legit-
imates the impact of external opinions10 on women’s intimacy: that is,
an opinion judging a part of their body which must be hidden from
people’s eyes.
The reference to the Ottoman dictionary helps us understand the duali-

ties still existing today in the representations of namus. Our hypothesis was
based on a simple fact: a constant duality between the “modern” and the
“traditional” civilization in the use of namus in discourse. This distinction
originates from the Kemalist’s reforms which determined a temporal
“before” and “after” period based on the introduction of reforms determin-
ing Turkish modernity. As president for 15 years, until his death in 1938,
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk introduced a broad range of reforms in the social,
economic, political, legal, and cultural spheres.
These reforms, seen as the passage to a new civilization, brought a new
way of being and a new way of thinking (Göle, 1997) included the intro-
duction of Western legal codes, dress, calendar, and alphabet, replacing the
Arabic script with a Latin one. Religious laws were abolished, and a secular
system of jurisprudence introduced. To give nation a modern outlook, all
citizens took surnames; women stopped wearing the veil; European hats
replaced the fez; and the Islamic calendar gave way to the Western calen-
dar. A vast transformation took place in urban and rural life as well. With
abiding faith in the vital importance of women in society, Mustafa Kemal
Atatürk launched many reforms to give Turkish women equal rights and
opportunities. The new Civil Code, adopted in 1926, abolished polygamy
and recognized the equal rights of women in divorce, inheritance, and
custody.
In our survey, the restrictive visions of namus connecting this principle to
feminine sexuality and chastity were always considered by our interviewees
as the product of an obsolete and “outdated” mode of thinking. This
conception is opposed to another vision, considered by young adults as more
“modern” and better adapted to the democratic and liberal society they live
in. On the one hand, the interviewees mentioned the importance of being
“open minded” and democratic, especially in connection with gender rela-
tions. On the other hand, they argued that the essence of Turkish values,
that of honor, is missing and under-valued in European countries. In
fact, the interviewees reject some obsolete ways of thinking and doing
because they judge them as wrong, unequal, outdated, but they value some
traditional values, like namus, which represents for them a distinct feature of
the Turkish identity. Admittedly, they want to be westernized in their educa-
tion, in their life-style, in their way of thinking and acting, in the understand-
ing of gender relations, but without being “western” (i.e., like Europeans),
namely without compromising the value of namus and all the moral princi-
ples respect, integrity, honesty, importance of the family and its name,
respect of the distance between people, and the like encompassed by it.
Therefore, the duality based on the historical break brought about by

the social reforms establishes a “before” and “after” in the reforms creating
categories which have implications for social relations and the way people
consider the “Other.” On the one hand, there is the “We,” described by our
interviewees as “civilized” and democratic. This imaginary group is
composed of people who accept and comply with the modern rules. Our
interviewees counted themselves in this group, and using the term “They,”
criticized the other group people who are still connected to the past and
who act and think in an old way impervious to democratic principles. These
extant deterministic but existing social representations may be seen in every-
day life’s relations but also in people’s conception of honor in Turkey:
On the one hand, there is a modern mode of thinking and acting with
honor characterized by democratic, nonviolent behavior. Honor here is the
propriety of the individual, elaborated through interactions involving social
recognition. On the other hand, there is a much criticized type of honor,
denounced as despicable, violent, destructive, and legitimized by traditional
rules. This way of considering honor is seen as relying on a collective vision
of virtue and perpetuating nondemocratic and patriarchal authority on
women. That explains in part why for our interviewees honor killings are
made by “ignorant” and “barbaric” people. All these dualities are not only
associated with killings, but come with the mention of the term “namus.”
The Key Aspect of Civilization: Education or Civility?
In the collected discourses education (eğitim) is systematically aligned with

honor killings: for interviewees, crimes are always perpetuated by unedu-
cated and ignorant (cahil) people.
Why are they killing other people?

There is no reason. They kill because of namus. ( … ) It comes from the lack of edu-
cation because we never see those (killings) with educated people. (Tamer, 27, male
interviewee)
Those who do that, they do that out of habit. They have no education and they believe
in some values that are behind the times and they try to impose these rules in the 20th
century. I must not judge them because we don’t have the same social level, the same
values and the same education. But they must stop killing. (Banu, 27, female
interviewee)
Here, “school education” and “civic education” must be distinguished:

in interviews, young adults claim to never have “learned” honor (şeref or
namus) in school. But even if school does not explicitly impose the principle
of honor on them, it conveys the thought of a national, cohesive, and
citizen honor which is interiorized by individuals: the repetitious learning
of the country’s history is the main factor leading to the development of
a national honor and pride.
Therefore, the education mentioned in interviews represents both
academic and civic education.
Consequently, the term “lack of education” here applies to people who
have not been influenced by the process of civilization, who have avoided
the learning of temperance: that is, it brings to mind the person who has
not overcome his own impulses. Education here means “knowledge” and
social manners (“savoir vivre”); in short, it means being “civilized.” This
conflation is significant because it shows that individuals who do not com-
ply with these criteria have no place in a common space. They represent a
disruptive element, as they do not share the same world visions and way of
behaving. They are not able to control themselves, and their acts are con-
sidered based on an uncompromising honor based on local and parochial
rules. These rules stem from the patriarchal and feudal system and tend to
disrupt modern institutional principles.
The Case of Honor Killings
To understand this implicit but also remarkable duality established by indi-

viduals to talk about Otherness and the practice of honor killings, it may
be worth focusing on the types of crimes committed in the name of this
principle. Two terms are used to name the killing specific to honor: the first
one, “honor crime” or “honor killing” (namus cinayeti) that aims to restore
any soiled namus (dishonor caused by rape or illicit relation as well as any
offence or any insult). The person who feels “stained” because of the con-
duct of another chooses to solve the problem by killing the alleged guilty
party, thereby permitting her/him to regain or save his/her honor.
The second kind of honor killings, called “crime of mores” (töre
cinayeti) but also “customary crimes” (Sirman, 2004), are committed when
an individual who is obligated to act to rules pursuant imposed by his
family or group, infringes the familial authority causing the dishonor11 of
all the members (Ecevitoğlu, 2012; Tezcan, 2003). This act, seen as the dis-
ruption of the collective and local system of values, is the trigger to crimes
of mores. To regain its standing in the community and recover from shame,
the family collectively designates the person who will kill the disruptive
individual, namely the one who defied the common rules and mores. The
interviewees were critical of these acts. They showed their incomprehension
of these killings but also of the label used to legitimate them: for them
honor crimes are not a part of their “mores” or value system. The confu-
sion comes from the fact that “mores” associated with honor crimes
are limited to local populations accepting certain values that do not reflect
the cultural mores of the entire population as mediated by the Turkish
nation-state.
A second point is that the term “Turkish töre” was used during the era
of Turkey’s modernization with the rise of the 2nd Constitutional
Monarchy (2. Meşrutiyet) and the development of nationalist and turcicist
ideology. The political and social aim of the state was to promote the estab-
lishment of a national union and values that would prepare the ground for
democracy, women’s/men’s egalitarian rights, the modification of family’s
structures and the transformation of other major institutions. This helps us
to understand why the term “crime of mores” is open to controversy: for
our interviewees, mores cannot legitimate those acts, especially killings.
Here, global and local rules tend to be seen as opposite and generate strife.
In the absence of solutions for eradicating these killings, namus still
prevails in social representations as a problematic term, described as an
“out of time” (because of its connection with the feudal system) and “out
of space” (because mostly seen in South-Eastern communities) principle.
Thus considered, namus may be regarded as a “denial of contemporarity”
(Fabian, 1983).
The interviewees do not wish to be associated with the concept of namus,
and the honor crimes and type of social ties, particularly the sense of
“otherness” the concept promotes. On the one hand, we see how wester-
nized urban civilization is epitomized by the interviewees themselves, but,
on the other hand, how some populations are described as being “out of
civilization” and quite capable of killing for honor. The constant use of this
term can trigger a negative judgment: that it refers to an extreme attach-
ment of an individual to an inflexible type of honor. This question raises a
key issue: who controls the “right” way of thinking and acting in the name
of honor?
Geographic Naturalization to Understand Honor
The aforementioned killings were not a part of the personal life of inter-
viewees: no one claimed to have experienced or to have witnessed honor
killing. Most of them even wanted to confirm, without any comments or

question from us, that these reprehensible acts were not their own way of
considering honor. Their constant refrain was: “I heard facts like this but
there have been no such killings in my family.” The “we,” “my,” “our,”
mentioned constantly by our interviewees shows the importance of not
being confused with the other group, those who would kill for honor.
Even if these killings are not a fact of their own lives, they are
present in people’s minds and their everyday life through the media’s
identification of invisible boundaries between the assumed geographical
part of the country where honor crimes occur and the part in which
they are absent. This imaginary division of the country, based on the
perception of a place where “others” commit “honor crimes or killing”
determines the reference group with which people associate and leads to
a spatial naturalization of the differences between two types of Turks.
The comment of an interviewee confirms this: “Me, I have a motto for
this: I want authority to put some system of custom for Istanbul and
Ankara; because after Ankara they are all honor killers” (Gizem, 21,
female interviewee).
According to this vision, the inhabitants of Istanbul seem to be consid-
ered as having the “right” way of experiencing and considering namus. Our
interviewees mentioned two imaginary groups; theirs defining the “right”
attitude, and the other representing the issue against which they wanted to
struggle. Thus, the South Eastern population (and even, sometimes the
whole Anatoly) is described by such terms as “barbarian,” “ignorant,”
“uneducated,” “primitive,” possessing the countryside mentality which is
the easy way to explain their acts. “Do you want a definition of Anatolia?
This is a term [namus] which does not exist anymore. Normally, we tied it to
sexuality but I won’t tell you that namus means virginity. I’m not thinking
like them” (Gizem, 21 female interviewee).
The justification of honor crimes in terms of geographic environment is
the result of repetitive information conveyed in the media that describes
honor killings as a South Eastern plague.12 Admittedly, these representa-
tions are internalized as reality by individuals, but we must not overlook
the statistical reality that namus killings are committed in every part of
Turkey and even in every part of the world. This way of considering honor,
and especially namus, influences social relations resulting in a distinction
between the “Similar” and the “Other” (Dilmaç, 2012a). Given these social
representations, it is as if an imaginary honor crime frontier lies between
Istanbul and the rest of Turkey.
Şeref, Namus, and Gender
Our study shows a substantial difference among various conceptions of

namus in Turkey, but interviewees’ discourses regarding the other two
major concepts of honor, particularly that of şeref’ (citizen honor) also
reveal conflicting ideas as well as implications for the discourse on namus.
Indeed, for our interviewees, şeref represents an element critical to Turkish
identity; this type of honor has to be protected for national survival. But
this term also tends to be used by the perpetrators of honor killings to jus-
tify their acts (e.g., Bağli & Özensel, 2011; Önal, 2012). For them, namus
and şeref are synonymous. In this context, şeref refers not so much to
nationalism, but to a patriarchal concept of gender. Because of the chan-
ging signification of honor, this principle loses its cohesive dimension and
becomes an element of disagreement.
In fact, both genders are exposed to symbolic and physical violence
related to namus. If women have to be controlled and punished because of
their soiled honor, it is because this situation defines men’s honor. To be
considered real men, men have no choice but to accept the rules imposed
by namus (protecting their female relatives from dishonor, killing the ones
who have dishonored their family) or face exclusion from the group. Also,
men who dishonor a woman’s namus (in the case of adultery for instance)
can also be killed by her relatives. Nevertheless, to the extent that there is a
link between woman’s feminine purity and the threat of death, namus is an
issue that affects women, more than men. In people’s minds it represents
the source of a constraining type of honor, confining women to a narrow
social role with many limitations on their movement socially and physi-
cally. That is the reason why in our research, the women who I interviewed
expressed their desire to be considered by men and by all of society for
their şeref (i.e., their citizen honor) more than their namus (honor-virtue).
The reason for this preference is that namus imposes on them many strict
rules of conduct (especially regarding their intimacy) coming from outside,
that is, from society. Therefore, to cope with this issue, they prefer to be
considered for their şeref, a honor that is less imposing than namus and
that is gender-neutral.
As a matter of fact, the importance of honor-virtue cannot be denied by
anyone, indeed, the individual who refuses to be namuslu will sign his/her
exclusion from society by rejecting the principles of “righteousness” and
“honesty” imposed by namus. For women it is an essential part of their
identity, of their morality; it represents the morality they accept and that
Clearly, childhood abuse is a serious problem confronting the Jewish

community (Gardsbane, 2002), yet, to our knowledge, there are no
community-based studies concerning its frequency among all religious
observance groups including Secular Jews. Most community studies consist
of Christian denominations with Jews categorized along with various min-
ority groups as Other (e.g., Doxey et al., 1997). As George, Ellison, and
Larson (2002) point out (albeit regarding health research), a “valuable
contribution … would be to sample non-Christians in sufficient numbers to
permit both comparisons with the dominant religious affiliations … and
separate analyses of them.” (p. 197). A unique opportunity to examine
abuse issues within a single religion comes from a relatively large sample of
adult Jewish women in Israel. Respondents include more than 250 ran-
domly selected ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) women, an isolated and insular
group that often declines to be interviewed (Rier, Schwartzbaum, & Heller,
2008).
The Relevance of Religiosity
Religiosity, religious involvement, and religious observance, multidimen-

sional concepts used interchangeably, typically refer to behaviors (e.g.,
organized worship, praying), beliefs (e.g., theology), attitudes (e.g., forgive-
ness), and practices (e.g., private/public rituals) associated with organized
religions. In an effort to assess salient aspects of religiosity, researchers
have developed more than 100 instruments, although many have relied
primarily on brief (i.e., single item) and imprecise global indices, such as
frequency of church attendance, denominational affiliation, or self-rated
religiousness (Hill & Pargament, 2003). Despite generally positive connec-
tions between religiosity and health outcomes, as noted previously, there
have been numerous exceptions leading several researchers to conclude
that the type of instrument used undoubtedly influences the outcome
(Hackney & Sanders, 2003; Schnittker, 2001).
Some of these methodological issues are mitigated in the current study
with religiosity being self-assessed according to well-established observance
categories within Judaism.2 At one end of the continuum are Secular Jews,
a term that may seem contradictory, but, in fact, refers to Jews with little
or no involvement with religious institutions, laws, or rituals. Yet, there
often are strong connections to historical and cultural aspects of
Judaism, including Jewish values as the basis for social justice projects
(Werczberger & Azulay, 2011). At the opposite end of the continuum are
originates from previous studies: a significant volume of research (Abdo,

2004; Sirman, 2004; Tahincioğlu, 2011) has been pursued to explain gender-
based violence, and especially that directed against women. Honor virtue
appealed to Turkish researchers because of its close links to violence. These
researches did not take account the co-existence of other kinds of honor,
namely şeref (citizen-honor) and onur (dignity) which are important princi-
ples helping individual to fit into society and gain social recognition. These
mechanisms, namely the individual’s self-control and the surveillance of
his/her conduct by others, help to maintain the social order. Namus, repre-
senting honor-virtue, may be considered as a type of social regulation.
As is clear from the above discussion, however, namus, as a principle
seems to be related more to killings than pacific and ethical values. It repre-
sents a threat coming from the “outside” (from the countryside to the
urban space, from “different” otherness …) imposing restrictions on
women that they do not accept. We acknowledge that many sociological
and anthropological studies on namus have been focused on honor killings
as gender-based violence. Without minimizing the importance of these stu-
dies and the reprehensible acts with which they are concerned, the recurrent
analysis of namus as leading to violence and killings may result in the
following conclusion: namus is an inadequate principle, tied to brutality
and coercion, and causing disturbance. In other words, this kind of honor
is virtually always described as a deviant principle to be fought against.
Thus, when namus was evoked, the majority of interviewees provided the
following answer: “I know what it is but I do not think it is tied to crime,” or
“I know that there are some crimes associated with it, but there is no such
conception of it among my group of friends.”
The aim of our research was to demonstrate the importance of namus
in social discourse but also to show how an urban population considered
modern and representative of “civilized” honor use this principle to
create otherness and to judge as barbaric the rural population of Turkey.
We tried to clarify discussions and representations of namus that tend to
create a duality between “civilized” and “non-civilized” ways of acting
and considering honor. Instead of resolving controversy over the killings
issue by offering original solutions, we note that the recurrent and
polemical discourses trap honor in a limited definition of namus, ignoring
other dimensions of honor (i.e., şeref and onur) which may help to solve the
problem.
In reality, Turkish men but also women do not deny the importance of
namus; the point is that they offer another definition of it, one not related
to honor crimes or only sexuality but to general values. They even use
namus in their everyday relations: all the interviewees asserted not to have
any “namussuz” (namusless) as friends even if for them this term means a
“dishonest” person and not necessarily “the one who has lost her chastity.”
They claim that it represents an essential part of their identity, one estab-
lishing a difference between them and other members of society, but also
between them and people from other countries, particularly western nation-
states. According to the views of our sample, a way to counter support for
honor killings is to do away with namus, which is seen as a losing battle.
Yet, to tie namus only to killings or to the South East population of
Turkey is to deny this other dimension of namus, one shared by other mem-
bers of society. It is overlooking the fact that namus, as a moral principle
promoting values like honesty and loyalty, is an important principle
for most of the Turkish population and does not necessarily refer to honor
killings or chastity.
The young adults we interviewed see namus as an important element of
the Turkish identity, which encompasses various ethical principles (such as
honesty, loyalty, importance of respect), absent in European culture. It
must be perpetuated and intertwined with existence itself: “Namus is what
allows us to live,” “Namus is above everything else.” Living without namus or
like a “namusless” means then choosing to cast aside all ethical and moral
principles. Critical of a narrow definition of namus, one about chastity and
honor crimes they associated with the countryside, the interviewees favored
a broader more flexible and modern definition adapted to democratic
visions of gender that encompasses such “global” values as egalitarianism.
Here, the dividing line seems to be the gender-based violence, an out-of-hate
act, which does not fit in the modern world. Affirming that they needed
namus to live their life properly, to give it a meaning and guidelines, the
interviewees were resolute that this principle must not underlie killings or
the control and constraint of women’s bodies. Moreover, namus imposes
expectations to both genders; not only women.
Finally, discussions pertaining to honor and honor killings are the result
of the impact of global concerns about gender, about violence and also
about gender-based violence. The framing of the discourses discussed here
is the result of the intersection of geography, education, and age. What is
apparent from the analyses of the discourses is that while the three types of
honor or systems of morality, most particularly, namus and şeref, are not
always clearly separated from one another, the assumption of gender
inequality including the acceptance of honor killing as a way to deal with
the loss of feminine virtue is associated only with a concept of namus seen
as belonging to those outside the modern, urban (educated) world. As
discussed earlier, though the interviewees reject the idea of gender inequal-
ity and the violence associated with it, they do not reject the concept of
namus. They accept it, explaining that for them namus refers to such moral
qualities as honesty, integrity, and respect and that it is a system of moral-
ity important for one’s identity and life. In addition to a “modern” namus,
the interviewees invoke the concept of şeref as a morality underlying the
idea of citizenship, and associated with it, equality, to explain their rejec-
tion of gender inequality as well as their rejection of a traditional definition
of namus.
NOTES
1. These murderous acts, when criticized by cultures that do not have the same
understanding of honor, are perceived as the consequence of primitive impulses:
they speak of servile honor (Terraillon, 1912) or “barbarian” honor (Dilmaç, 2012a,
2012b).
2. http://www.ihb.gov.tr/RaporlarIstatistikler.aspx
3. http://www.ka-der.org.tr/
4. In this research, the term “young adults” represents the sample formed by the
20 27 years old men and women. They are too old to be considered as “young”
people and too dependent on their parents to be seen as mature and adults. The
characteristics of this group is to be in transition they go from school to their first
job, from family’ home to their first flat. This is also due to their intrinsic instability
inherent to the society they live in.
5. Districts selected: Sarıyer, Şişli, Beşiktaş, Beyoğlu, Fatih, Bakırköy, for the
European Side; Beykoz, Üsküdar, Ümraniye, Kadiköy, for the Asian Side.
6. Official dictionary established by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1932 as a
linguistic tool of “pure Turkish language” (öztürkçe) (Türk Dil kurumu- www.tdk.
gov.tr).
7. All interviewees’ names have been changed.
8. “Self-control” or “self-constraint” may be understood here as practices/
behaviors that individuals impose on themselves in order to gain social recognition.
The imposition of some behavior on themselves are determined and wished by
individual for the social recognition. By controlling themselves, their body,
their behavior until all drives disappear they get other people’s approval. Norbert
Elias’ study on civilization may be a useful resource here to understand this
phenomenon.
9. Research conducted by TNS PIAR for Efes Pilsen in 2005.
10. Being “without namus” or “namusless” (namussuz) is a negative epithet that
may lead to the exclusion of the individual from society.
11. For example, the bride who runs away before the wedding imposed upon her
by her family shows her opposition to patriarchal rule, involving all the family
members in dishonor. This flight is seen by relatives as a dishonor and an incentive
to kill in order to regain honor.
12. For more information, please consult: “Doğu, Güneydoğu’da 2009’da 21

namus cinayeti In East and South East, 2009, 21 honor killings” http://www.
sabah.com.tr/Yasam/2010/03/18/dogu_guneydoguda_2009da_21_namus_cinayeti;
but also “Güneydoğu’dan 300 namus cinayeti-300 honor killings from South
East http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/pazar/5972174.asp.
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WEBSITES
http://www.ihb.gov.tr/RaporlarIstatistikler.aspx
http://www.ka-der.org.tr/
http://www.sabah.com.tr/Yasam/2010/03/18/dogu_guneydoguda_2009da_
21_namus_cineti
http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/pazar/5972174.asp
SYMBOLIC VIOLENCE: RESHAPING
POST-PATRIARCHAL DISCOURSES
ON GENDER
Franca Bimbi
ABSTRACT
Purpose The purpose of the chapter is to overcome interpretative dual-

ism on migrant and native women’s victimization by proposing a
Bourdieusian approach to the continuities of symbolic violence within
post-patriarchal regimes of women’s freedom.
Design/methodology/approach This conceptual chapter examines the
Bourdieusian approach to some empirical research and continues with
questions for feminist thought. The author discusses sociological research
in Italy and in European contexts, and highlights the many “gazes”
which can reveal the illusio of universal gender rights and the neo-
colonial discourse on migrant women.
Findings Research finds that the participant objectivation attitude and
concern for disturbing dissonances in the habitus and body hexis
of “others” produces tools for revealing the misrecognition of domina-
tion. At the theoretical level, the chapter shows how the plurality of hege-
monic discourses on symbolic violence endorses not only social forces

ISSN: 1529-2126/doi:10.1108/S1529-21262014000018B015
275
276 FRANCA BIMBI
reproducing neo-colonial stratifications of gender, sense of belonging and

class positions, but also ambivalent experiences of domination and free-
dom for women.
Research implications The chapter aims to motivate the encounter
between Bourdieu’s view of male domination and classical feminist con-
structs as lived body experience, sexual contract, and traffic in women.
Originality/value The chapter provides an innovative analysis inter-
secting Bourdieu’s constructs and feminist thought in re-considering
“gender-women” as a privileged locus for feminist discourse. Gender
dualism under the lens of symbolic violence is viewed as both an appear-
ance and a structural field within the dynamics of domination.
Keywords: Symbolic violence; post-patriarchal regimes; migrant
women; domination and freedom; plurality of gazes
INTRODUCTION
Persisting violence against women, even in the most egalitarian European

countries (United Nations, 2006, 2009), highlights how patriarchal patterns
still exist in “gender regimes,” in which women’s self-determination is
recognized as a normative frame (Leira, Tobı́o, & Trifiletti, 2005; Lewis,
2009). The different meanings in public discourses and the plurality of per-
ceptions of gender-based violence also affect differences in the practical
recognition of violent situations and in recourse to the system of guaran-
tees. In addition, the standards of universal gender rights offered as a com-
pulsory framework to migrating men and women, already stratified by
European and Italian regulations on immigration (Morris, 2002) may even
produce effects of racialization of the sense of belonging (Bell Hook, 2009;
Yuval-Davis, 2011) and cultural diversities, differently in men and women
(Della Puppa, 2014; Vianello, 2011). The existence in migrant groups of
gender contracts which are considered culturally more violent conceals the
gender inequalities which structure societies self-defined as woman-friendly,
in which violence persists, even in the forms of “femicide.”
In this context, feminist theories suggest landscapes open to sociological
interpretation (Butler & Weed, 2011; Di Cori, 2012), but they do not
offer corresponding perspectives for empirical research, either on types of
transformations of gender contracts or on their different social meanings.
Symbolic Violence: Reshaping Post-Patriarchal Discourses on Gender 277
In European debates, documented records of violence against native-born

women are mainly interpreted as dynamics between acquired rights and
forms of anomie or residual deviance. Research on gender-based violence
tends to re-propose a dualist construction around the male offender/female
victim relationship, whereas research on gender violence and migration
reveals an European society duplicated and divisive, between the twofold
representation of post-patriarchal regimes with freedom for women, and
patriarchal-traditional regimes which seem to be incompatible with each
other. In “our” modern framework of normative reciprocity between men
and women, the “facts” concerning native men’s violence are increasingly
considered as examples of inexplicable social conduct related to individual
forms of anomie (in the Durkheimian sense of the breakdown of
mainstream social norms) and to women’s psychological dependence.
Conversely, the victimization of migrant and minority women is more often
regarded as the consequence of premodern collective cultures and their
widespread and deeper interiorization of structural gender asymmetry.
This view is also shared by groups of “modern” women and men in their
countries of origin (Kapur, 2002).
The facts about violence and the victimization of women are defined and
internationally measured through an apparently clearly defined list of stan-
dardized types (WHO, 2005), but they indicate and measure only the more
visible effects of gender asymmetries (Zizek, 2008), corresponding to nor-
mative assumptions of international Charters. The multiplication of types
relating to gender-based violence, through social indicators and statistical
measurements, does not correspond to a critical consideration of the taken-
for-granted patterns of practical and symbolic asymmetries within gender
relationships between women and men, in which various types of violence
may be rooted (D’Odorico & Holvoet, 2009; Merry, 2011). The post-
patriarchal structure of gender relations is far from being questioned. We
are especially concerned with the risk of racialization of gender-based vio-
lence through emphasis on “our” rights (Crenshaw, 1989, 1991; Hemmings,
2005; Razack, Smith, & Thobani, 2011), in the mainstream European
discourse and also in some feminist discourses on violence against migrant,
refugee and minority women.
In order to develop tools for the feminist approach especially oriented to
empirical research (Toffanin, 2012), the analytical key to this chapter aims
at overcoming interpretative dualism (Morris, 2013) by considering espe-
cially the uncritical framework of the dilemmas of consent or constraint
(Bourdieu, 2000b) related to the victimization of women and the perceived
cultural polarities of freedom or domination in the European discourse on
278 FRANCA BIMBI
gender relationships, without losing sight of the distinctions within the hier-
archies of symbolic power between men and women, migrants and native-
born, dominating, and dominated.
In facing these difficulties regarding theoretical and empirical issues on
violence, migration, and gender discourses, this chapter presents an inter-
pretation of Bourdieu’s approach to masculine domination (Bourdieu,
1977, 1979, 1994, 1998) to examine the reproduction of symbolic violence
against women (Morgan & Thapar-Björkert, 2006) within regimes of
women’s freedom and the possibilities of gender norm deconstruction in a
neo-colonial Europe of globalized migrations.
The concept of symbolic violence applied to gender relations reveals the
invisible violence which is hidden in the shared meanings of social practices
in the differentiation of women. Generally speaking, different views of
“others,” especially native and migrant stratified groups, produce different
explanations for violent facts before violent acts occur. In our discourse, let
us cancel the various types of violence against women and observe what in
several societies is considered as zero violence, that is, the rules of behavior
considered “normal” with respect to gender relations, establishing families,
and male and female access to the resources offered by time and money.
From this perspective, we can observe the emergence of an area of hier-
archically organized cultural meanings and everyday practices. In it, more
or less “modern” or “traditional” men, and women of the classes or coun-
tries deemed to be more “evolved” or more highly developed, dominate the
discourse on women’s rights and definitions of violence, and it tends to be
presented as model of nonviolence, as its normative and cultural bases are
presumed to indicate normal relations between women and women. This is
one reason why European spaces of multidiversity (Amin, 2012) often con-
front us with discourses on two divergent modern and premodern tempor-
alities, producing two simultaneous constructions of post-patriarchal and
patriarchal gender contracts, especially related to women’s body issues.
“This is a suspect formulation, … that seeks to produce distinct notions of
sexual minorities and distinct communities of new immigrants within a tem-
poral trajectory that makes Europe and its state apparatus into the avatar of
both freedom and modernity” (Butler, 2008, p. 2). The Italian-European
mainstream discourses on the presumed universally shared understanding
of women’s rights may sustain definitions and labels on the violence against
migrant women after implicit or explicit interpretation of their cultural
backwardness, whether their voices have any public hearing or not. This
may constitute a second type of victimization for migrant women.
“Assigning the category ‘oppressed’ to individuals who perceive their social
reality differently can be disempowering as well” (Thapar-Björkert, 2007,

p. 629).
We are especially aware of the invisibility of “our” gender asymmetries
and of the fallacy of the presumed evidence of the homogeneity of patriar-
chal rules in migrant groups. Evidence of the backwardness of “the other”
complements the invisible efforts of migrant and minority women to disem-
power their symbolic frames of violence, to develop their own agency and
everyday life strategies, confronting the new pluralistic context, and at the
same time redefining the shared understanding of their origins.
Reflecting on relationships and dilemmas between domination and free-
dom (Foucault, 1981), we can re-allocate their tensions in the same social
space between determinations undergone and possible “choices” made by
subjects in this case, women themselves. For women in many societies,
domination and freedom emerge as multidimensional dilemmas between
protection and care, subjection and seduction: these are the forces which
regulate, reproduce, and transform gender contracts, patriarchal and post-
patriarchal configurations of public and private relations, the modes of
accessibility to women’s bodies which are permitted or denied to men, or to
the male gaze, either explicitly or implicitly, by custom, law, the media,
will, or condescension by women.
The symbolic framework of gender-based violence becomes more or less
visible according to definitions of “normal” gender contracts, that is, to the
specific hegemonic standpoints and discourses relating to the exchange
between men’s social obligations to protect women and women’s social
obligations to make their bodies and time accessible to men (Young, 2003,
2005). We assume this framework in order to provide empirical research
with tools to interpret gendered social conflicts regarding crucial social
goods, such as caring, time, money, the body, procreation, and sexuality,
and to reveal the nodes and reconfigurations of gender relations in the
European societies of globalized migration, in which interactions between
gender, “ethnicity or race” and class and, to a certain extent, also sexual
orientation (Gutiérrez Rodrı́guez, Boatca, & Costa, 2010; Lutz, Vivar, &
Supik, 2011; Plummer, 2006), discursively organize various forms of politi-
cal and symbolic dualism: for instance, the “old” ones between identity
(cultural) and pluralism (cultural), between tradition and modernity. This
is of particular interest for Mediterranean Europe which, in the not very
distant past, was collocated by the social sciences in the space-without-time
of cultures of honor and shame (Gilmore, 1982; Peristiany, 1965;
Schneider, 1998; Siebert, 1992) and which thus continues to be scrutinized
for its lack of “modernity” (Braidotti, 2002; Saarinen & Calloni, 2012;
280 FRANCA BIMBI
Salih, 2009; Walby, 2009). The geopolitical area between Southern Europe
and North Africa over the years has received some strongly expressed
requests for a “mentality change” from the “modern” outside world. In the
EU era, when it seems impossible to maintain this explicit representation
for Southern Europe, the honor and shame paradigm is interpreted as con-
tinuity for migrants from post-colonial countries. In the EU debate, the
honor-related violence refers to migrants from North Africa and Pakistan,
Eastern Asia or Latin America (Gill, 2006; Hellgren & Hobson, 2008;
Welchman & Hossain, 2005). The image of never-changing cultures and
spaces is constructing neo-colonial ethnic interpretations of non-European
natives. The need to “modernize” mentalities may erect barriers between
the acknowledgment of highly valuable cultural pluralism for native citi-
zens and the requirement for migrants to align themselves with the pre-
sumed homogeneity of European values interpreted by the receiving
countries. The risk of an essentialist attitude in approaching the differing
cultural sensibilities of migrant women in antiviolence policies and prac-
tices originates from this ancient overlap between the supposed achieve-
ments of universal gender rights and the implicit or explicit request to
migrant people to adopt “our” modern mentality. The expectation of men-
tality changes by “others” conceals consideration of “our” moral superior-
ity. A sort of colonial and essentialist attitude may be discovered when we
work with migrant women who have been victims of gender-based violence.
Here, they very often implicitly or explicitly are requested to undergo “cul-
tural conversion” to the presumed nonviolent and correct “values.”
Consideration of the invisibility of our own gender asymmetries and the
immediate visibility of others’ risk of victimization opens the door to our
concern for symbolic violence.
The analogy, or rather homology, which Pierre Bourdieu identified in
Masculine domination, between the patriarchal model of Kabylia and con-
temporary gender relations, weakens the base of the dualist cultural
approach. Following Bourdieu (Wacquant, 2005) within the contexts of
equal opportunity or state feminism, gender contracts are still not structu-
rally modern. Thus, the European demand for a standard of women’s
human rights, almost achieved and applicable to all, would constitute both
an illusio with respect to the native-born and a form of neo-colonial dis-
course toward the newcomers.
Domination and freedom may be considered as rooted in the domain of
gender relationships shaped in the different forms of symbolic violence
embedded in the habitus of public and/or private, or vertical/horizontal
patriarchy shared by women and men. However, women’s exposure to
“other” women’s gaze may have the twofold effect of revealing the misre-
cognition which veils their domination by males or of reinforcing their ori-
ginal identity patterns. For both migrant and native women, a mestiza
consciousness (Anzaldùa, 1999), related to different challenges to self-
determination and some analogous continuities of domination, may pro-
duce a happy or unhappy feeling of “being in between.”
This chapter examines two axes: implementation of Bourdieu’s approach
during empirical research on violence against women, and some resulting
open questions for feminist thought.
SYMBOLIC VIOLENCE: MULTIPLE GAZES

AND BELONGINGS
Searching for empirical indicators of the reproduction of a gendered social

order within the normative pluralism characterizing “modern” contexts of
women’s freedom, symbolic violence provides a linear theoretical perspec-
tive, but it is one difficult to implement. The structural aspects of gender
inequality regarding the division of labor, use of time, accessibility to
women’s bodies, and influence of women’s voices in public debate, depend-
ing on a shared gender habitus, are seldom perceived as objects of wide-
spread misrecognition in everyday practice and in public and private
hegemonic discourses. Alternative or counter-hegemonic discourses are
mainly represented as dangerous, deviant, or unreasonable. Nevertheless,
symbolic violence immediately becomes visible to an outsider. Methodolo-
gically, perception of dissonant meanings can be assumed from the stand-
point of participant objectivation (Bourdieu, 1999, 2003) by examining
the reiterated experience of someone “outside within” (Collins, 1986) or
being in a state of translocal positionality (Anthias, 2009; Vianello, 2013).
At this point, a crucial research question may be proposed.
How is symbolic violence against women reproduced in the Europe of
globalized migration, in which Universalist regimes of women’s freedom
and post-patriarchal patterns seem to be confronted with forms of
“traditional” patriarchy, represented mainly by a few migrant groups? The
question arose within two research projects1 and during European action-
research coordinated by the author and conducted by an Italian team in
north-east Italy.2
Five European cities and regions were involved in this project,
comparing the discourses of migrant women of varying origins, and of
282 FRANCA BIMBI
professionals or volunteers employed in the local welfare system, including

antiviolence centers. We found that many kinds of violence are recognized
and defined, mainly as men’s behavior toward women, exercised within the
environment of the home, the family, and intimate ties. However, in the
groups of migrant and native women, in the professional bodies of the wel-
fare system of health and social care, or in antiviolence centers, the mean-
ings and interpretations applied to “violence” diverged greatly, according
to national laws, local administrative rules, normative and cultural perspec-
tives, and professional styles, particularly as regards family, marriage, and
family control over women’s bodies, and especially when gender conflicts
arise. Migrant women also appeared to be exposed to a double challenge of
loyalty: to the customs of their original communities, and to the system of
presumed universal rights, which promises them protection from violence
in their new country. The contexts of “we” and “others” are often repre-
sented as clearly distinct and internally homogeneous, although groups or
communities of migrant origin have highly differentiated patriarchal char-
acteristics. Our European research recognizes that migrant women are pre-
dominantly voiceless in the European countries in which their supposed
cultural sense of belonging is under public scrutiny, mainly in gender con-
tracts that is, in family hierarchies, marriage choices, and topics of
honor-related violence.
However, the plurality of partners’ voices was also a critical problem.
As partners, in preparing and evaluating the project at different points, we
verified how equality and antidiscrimination standards concerning gender
operate in different ways in EU countries, when we consider such questions
as penal law on gender-based violence, abortion law, recognition of families
of choice, or regulation of prostitution, and the internal fragmentation
within the southern regions of Europe on gender cultures and practices
within national and local welfare systems.
In our European Project, at the two opposites, Finland represents a case
of state feminism in a woman-friendly welfare regime and Italy a
Mediterranean familistic welfare regime (Bimbi, 2000; León & Migliavacca,
2013), with little national support for equal opportunities. The challenge to
egalitarian European citizenship with common, convergent involvement in
gender policies on redistribution of resources, recognition of differences
and representation of women’s voices within transnational and multicul-
tural European space must face various kinds of complexity (Fowler, 2009;
Fraser & Honnet, 2003; Lovell, 2007), and these did emerge during the life
of the project. Complexities ranging from civic stratification between
migrant and native women, ideal profiles for migrant men and women
suggested by political discourse, the strengths or weaknesses or extent of

institutionalization of feminist voices in different countries, the prevailing
voices of authoritative men representing migrants’ communities in dis-
courses on gender relationships, to the influence of anti-immigrant public
opinion in the debate on gender-based violence.
These differences influenced the practical management of field work,
training for implementation of migrant women’s antiviolence capabilities,
and suggestions from the project for local and European policies.
The five European teams worked within the general perspective of sym-
bolic violence, viewing gender-based violence as rooted in the field of “nor-
mal” and peaceful gender relationships (Bimbi, 2013; Bimbi & Basaglia,
2013). Nevertheless, in many cases, the construction of the English
questionnaire required discussion and negotiation to clarify meanings and
politically correct translations: the Italian and Spanish teams adopted min-
ority instead of ethnic minority, definitions of mixed marriages were not the
same for all, the acronym VAW did not completely satisfy those who pre-
ferred sexist violence, gender-based violence, or gender violence. In addition,
the differences between intimate violence, domestic violence and family vio-
lence were scrutinized and the use of the Spanish-derived word feminicide
(Fregoso & Bejarano, 2010), defined as a “confusing label” (Bimbi, 2013,
p. 214), prevented any discussion on using the more common Anglo-Saxon
femicide.
During laboratory work, the core question “What does gender violence
mean?” received different interpretations and methodological priorities
from partners, for example, “personal experience during your life,” “your
personal experience as a migrant facing local institutions,” “the prevalent
meaning in your context,” “the meaning as defined for your professional
tasks” and “the cultural differences among ‘us’ as women from different
cultures.”
The prevalence of two different narratives aimed at preventing and over-
coming gender-based violence and supporting migrant women’s agency
may explain these partially unexpected differences in the team’s work, as
well as in the project results. A first narrative regarded the centrality of gen-
der rights, interpreted as universal, European, and national. It presupposed
a frame for citizenship entitlement, for all women in European societies
searching for gender equality. A second narrative was mainly concerned
with the dynamics of citizenship enlargement or segmentation, considering
both demands for recognition of differences and processes of differentia-
tion and racialization. Not surprisingly, the convergence of both narratives
was prevalent in the Finnish team’s research. In the Italian case,
284 FRANCA BIMBI
divergences appeared, mainly in the results of the questionnaire on welfare

employees and in the “mixed” focus group.
We can also view these differences as related to diverging interpretations
of the causes and types of accountability of gender-based violence, recalling
the discussion on recognition of the practical dimensions of symbolic
violence.
Being aware of the two opposite risks, Eurocentric essentialism on gen-
der rights (the first narrative) and unconditioned relativism on cultural dif-
ferences (the second), the Italian team decided to implement the approach
to symbolic violence by trying to assume a horizontal view of migrant and
“native” women in a reciprocal looking-glass, considering all of them as
citizens of the same territory, in which they have different political rights
but sometimes convergent entitlement to welfare benefits and civil rights.
Our team translated symbolic violence concepts at an empirical level,
analyzing women’s different viewpoints of the implicit and explicit norms
of accessibility/non-accessibility assigned to women in relation to the body,
time, space, and the use of money, and considering the frameworks and
ideologies of moral gender obligations and individual freedom of choice as
equally under examination. We tried to put aside “our” rules about
national legislation on violence against women and migration. During
focus groups and meetings we did not suggest any definition of violence,
both to enable comparisons of various viewpoints on different interpreta-
tions, and also to call into question “our” ethnocentric vision of “their”
cultural habitus and their own experiences of violence.
The creation of an artificial and semi-public space for emotional citizen-
ship was the first result of this approach. “Artificial” refers to the project
and its methodology as cultural artifacts, producing an emotional surplus
value for participants (Hochschild, 1979). It may rightly be perceived as a
rhetorical device, veiling a colonial attitude. Assuming this risk, we were
looking for possible dialogue on meanings and shared understandings, and
at the same time we tried to avoid the wish to persuade each other to
change mentality. Here, in part, we recouped the practices of feminist self-
consciousness, but it was still necessary to embed in our attitude the fact
that “we” were women speaking about and for “others,” that is, this was a
challenge to our hegemonic voice.
Our empirical investigation and training laboratories focused on three
domains: (1) natives’ narratives of the evidence of “the other’s” frames of
symbolic violence; (2) the different vocabularies of migrant women of sym-
bolic violence, starting with a discussion on statistical indicators and stan-
dardized types, mainly employed in the institutional and welfare system,
and considering personal definitions of violence against women, meanings

of “violent objective facts,” and the perceptions and tolerability of violent
male behavior; (3) symbolic violence to women, represented through the
“normal” accessibility to women’s bodies in gender advertisements.
In the first domain, we mainly analyzed the stereotypes of various kinds
of violence (as representations of the risk of honor crimes, forced mar-
riages, female genital modifications, religious influences, etc.) collected
from questionnaires and referred to migrants by professionals and volun-
teers who met them in health and care services or antiviolence centers.
Honor definitions and evaluation of arranged marriages emerged as repre-
sentative of the ambivalence in the modernity discourse, in which honor as
a private-public image was clearly distinct from individual feelings of perso-
nal dignity or women’s self-referred modesty but, conversely, forced mar-
riages were considered as a “consequence of the custom of arranged
marriages” (Gusmeroli, 2013, p. 33).
Vocabularies of violence (the second domain) against migrant and
Roma women were explored within a focus group with native and migrant
women, who started from their professional experience and compared their
interpretations and personal feelings. We found a range of standpoints in
defining the “normality” of the gender relationship, different examples of
the evidence of symbolic violence against women in some gender arrange-
ments of intimate, family, or sexual life, some evidence of the naturaliza-
tion of victims’ attitudes relating to some psychological profiles (mainly for
native women) or cultural habits (mainly for migrant and Roma women).
An interpretative triangle of the cause of violence emerged, based on
administrative rules, types of victimization and demands for recognition of
identity politics. The discussion on the origins of violence highlighted the
opposing positions between professional attitudes and affirmations of the
“truth” of the accounts of these experiences, rather than on cultural diver-
gences between natives and migrants.
Discussion about gender advertisements (the third domain) occupied an
important place in the laboratories on controversial issues. Starting from
media representations, dimensions emerged regarding the prevalent but not
exclusive sexualization of women’s bodies, sexual self-determination, and
the use of seduction, and reciprocal prejudices concerning styles of display-
ing women’s bodies in private and public spaces. Men’s accessibility to
women’s bodies was connected to differing representations of decency,
dignity, and modesty, and as well as of vulnerability and injury. A contro-
versial focus appeared in approaches to the “modesty line,” which may var-
iously define the borders of personal respect, the esthetics of personal style,
286 FRANCA BIMBI
and societal honor or shame in the display of naked or veiled bodies, show-
ing the ambivalent relationship between seduction and submission within
the dynamics of forces as desire and violence. Participants first agreed that
every context has its own modesty line, but this peaceful representation was
also recognized as a form of misrecognition, because different modesty
lines seem to be connected to profound differences on the double border of
the societal hegemonic gaze and images of the self in personal communities
(and families) of choice. Does the individualization of the community and
the sense of belonging explain the importance of various forms of “moder-
nity” in different contexts, considering the relative convergence on shared
understandings for a couple’s decency and dignity with the displacement of
the “old” connection between shame and honor? (Appiah, 2010; Berger,
1983).
Ending on symbolic violence, direct discussion of definitions was diffi-
cult, because of two possible kinds of confusion with oppression, as the
emotional and cognitive internalization of meanings, and with external
ideological acceptance. However, migrant women considered that symbolic
violence implies consent as compliance, rather than acceptance or agree-
ment. The expression of “allowed violence,” used in a focus group by a
Romanian woman, reappeared in the autobiographical story-telling of two
different experiences: self-debasement used to accept low-level work as a
family care-giver, and the representation of low self-esteem to cope with
the worsening emotional relationship. More adult women especially recog-
nized the difference between the use of compliance for negotiating their
subordinate position and that of their acceptance of it. Some of them
stressed the gap and difficulties in attaining their “dignity.” Others spoke
of the ruses they used to manipulate unhappy situations considered as
unchangeable. As regards experiences in the job market, in care-receiver
families, and as clients in the local national welfare system, migrant
women distinguished between discrimination and symbolic violence, con-
sidering the latter a condition for discrimination and a move toward some
types of coercion. These experiences highlighted a sphere of meanings in
which class, migration, and “race” emerged as explanatory indicators shad-
ing the prevalence of male domination in private life and in collective
discourses.
We believe that this fragile initial attempt to throw light on a research
itinerary views the field of gender relationships as ruled by symbolic vio-
lence toward women. In our case, that of research on ongoing violence
against women, we used the construct of symbolic violence to indicate that:
(a) regimes of modernity and patriarchy have in common the reproduction
of male domination, and do not constitute completely counterposed

worlds, either geographically or culturally; (b) the partly common roots of
hidden and misrecognized violence in everyday life and ordinary cultural
arrangements may emerge, assuming a posture as participating objectiva-
tion in research, together with critical consideration of the weight of reci-
procal prejudices and adopting the attitude of an external witness in the
analysis of practices and meanings relating to gender relationships; (c) the
benevolent gaze of some men and women on all kinds of minorities,
women’s and men’s common fight against gender-based violence, and even
critical attitudes toward “our” internal gender differentiation cannot be
viewed as effective substitutes for the political necessity of women’s differ-
ent authoritative voices in public debate. This perspective, which we suggest
could be used to overcome the risk of cultural counterpositions in con-
structing European citizenship, requires more theoretical analysis to con-
nect Bourdieu’s approach and feminist thought. We follow some of these
directions in the next sections.
WHAT KIND OF FEMINIST EPISTEMOLOGY FOR

SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH?
Under the assumption that the field of gender relationships is ruled by mas-
culine domination, considering different forms of symbolic violence as roots
of interpersonal and intimate violence against women does not mean re-
proposing a dualist approach to the definition of gender differences.
Nevertheless, in feminist epistemology, women’s historical and social experi-
ence in the light of Scott’s critical concept of evidence, or Bourdieu’s
biographical illusion (Bourdieu, 2000a; Scott, 1991; Truc, 2011) is a
necessary premise to the interpretation of social dynamics. However,
proposing its internal heterogeneity implies an admission of partiality and
relative one-sidedness of the assumption which, although valid, must dis-
tance itself from any anthropology of identity or politics of truth, following
a deconstructive method.
We propose the domination-freedom relationship as a meta-narration
both of the internal dynamics of gender fields and of representation of
women’s capabilities and agency dilemmas, which does not reproduce any
biological foundationalism (Nicholson & Seidman, 1999) in the appearance
of gender-sex dualism, but which can respond to crucial challenges as
regards methodology for feminist research.
288 FRANCA BIMBI
Moi pointed out a good starting-point for linking gender and feminist
studies: “Feminist criticism … is a specific kind of political discourse: a criti-
cal and theoretical practice committed to the struggle against patriarchy and
sexism” (Moi, 1989, p. 117). That is, patriarchy and sexism indicate
research on how and what to know, but it may also suggest theories on
proper research practices. We agree that “Gender is not a synonym for
women” (Carver, 1996), and this is mainly because we place ourselves in a
discursive and social context in which: “The loss of gender norms would
have the effect of proliferating gender configurations, destabilizing substantive
identity” (Butler, 1990, p. 147). Here, Butler may persuade us to recognize
any form of domination as originating from interpersonal dependency and
vulnerability which could damage a subject. However, looking at the social
aspects of identities, destabilization does not cancel the distinctions
between instituted genders, body performances, and types of sexual orien-
tation. If the risk of violence for any person is identified in relationships,
then ethnic violence derives from the negation of “simple” facts which dis-
tinguish the degrees and forms of power, particularly on the body (Butler,
2005; Cavarero, 2008). Without detailed historical identification of the
direction of gender domination between men and women by means of the
hierarchies of “races” and classes, violence would be reduced to subjective
suffering, deprived of any political or social dimension.
Three questions mark possible itineraries (Abbatecola, Fanlo Cortés, &
Stagi, 2012), regarding gender-women or gender as domination on women.
Can this expression be considered as the historical and bodily situated locus
for a feminist discourse? Can “gender” be viewed as a set of deconstructive
effects following the outspokenness of historically situated women that are
no longer necessary? Or does “gender” correspond to a metaphor required
to indicate the fields in which the effects of normative truth (doxa) of mas-
culine domination are exerted on the bodies of women, men, and any
“others”? Without being able to offer conclusive or alternative replies
(Scott, 2011), we could recognize in the plurality of narratives on gender
the value of different tools for analysis and research. From the viewpoint
of performative loci, we find approaches mainly focused on gender or gen-
ders, or on the body. The attention to processes of social change shows two
preferred analytical paths: one tending toward the deconstruction of rules
and behavior taken for granted, that is, toward criticism of the recurring
naturalizations of gender, sex, body, and sexuality, especially as regards
daily life. The other turns toward subjects’ agency (women, LGBTs,
linguistic-cultural groups, minorities, etc.), considered within a perspective
of possible collective action (Trappolin, Gasparini, & Wintemute, 2012). In
the first case, attention to transformations lies in the relationship between
practices and meanings in daily life; in the second, it concerns actions

and questions regarding ideal reference communities or perspectives of
organized groups.
My view focuses mainly on Young’s approach to lived bodies, female
experience, and everyday life (Young, 2005), considering the pluralism of
definitions regarding gender-women. Two points must be noted. The plural-
ity of configurations of sexual identities, whether regulated or not by law,
is assumed by means of living bodies structured by gender, as expression of
personal and sociohistorical experiences, which show both the habitus
and the tensions between norms and personal wishes, as Thomas’s early
research pointed out (Thomas, 1923). The dynamics between domination
strategies and the wish for freedom cross material and symbolic societal
structures and are intimately connected with each other through the habi-
tus of daily life, incorporated in the living bodies of women, men, and
transgenders. We add that media displays highlight gender relations by
means of ritualized presentations of mainly female bodies, increasingly
represented as market-oriented and regulated by the eyes of the market
(Belknap & Leonard, 1991; Goffman, 1979).
Women objects of androcentric domination even in modern societies
regulated by transactions between definitions of the principles of human
dignity and juridical guarantees of individual freedom have historically
proposed and imposed themselves also in scientific fields as authoritative
speakers, promoters of narratives on degenderization of normative gender.
This practical and scientific aspect of feminism, or of its illusio, between
academic power and the freedom of research, has introduced various kinds
of destructuring of scientific discourses, in the sense of denaturalization of
sexual differences and diversification of paths for gender construction and
deconstruction (Ruspini, 2013). This also allows practical criticism of nor-
mative heterosexuality and a tendency to overcome the dualist discourse on
the (two) sexes and (two) genders.
In brief, feminist epistemology cannot confine its fragile legitimacy to
research “on” women, but neither can it abandon its critical terrain: we are
working in the field of masculine domination.
IS “GENDER-WOMEN” THE PLACE FOR

FEMINIST DISCOURSE?
On the problem of the effects of the reproduction of masculine domination,

I would like to mention two apparently contrasting areas of empirical
290 FRANCA BIMBI
evidence: the explicit limitations of women’s rights, and the implementation

of women’s freedoms, guaranteed within the horizon of human rights. In
both areas, the indicators of masculine hegemony, with respect to the struc-
ture of the sex markets and marriage rules, the limitation of maternity
choices (from abortion to medically assisted fertilization), homicide and
femicide, cover empirically recognizable conflicts between men for the
reproduction of domination, both between themselves and over women,
and in particular through the rules of access to women’s bodies. In addition,
the perspective of rights (equality, positive action, juridical acknowledgment
of differences, equal opportunities, antidiscrimination action) turns out
to be constructed mainly by “our” Western-Northern point of view.
Both Butler (2008), reflecting on tests regarding sexual rights used by
some European state authorities to give access to foreigners, and Fusaschi
(2011), comparing the differing juridical treatments of female genital modi-
fications and some types of esthetic-sexual surgery, highlight the violence
invisible, but de facto existing in “our” constructions of women’s bodies
and those of “others” (Thapar-Björkert, 2009). In the intermingling
between masculine domination, social stratification, and neo-colonial dis-
course, women are clearly not extraneous to the hegemonous worlds of the
reproduction of androcentric social relations. The guarantees of our free-
dom intersect the existence of violence in daily and domestic life, both ours
and that of others. The complex of freedoms, represented and denied, and
forms of habitual and unreflecting violence contribute to reproducing struc-
tural dimensions of domination in the constructions of gender-women: for
instance, in the world-wide business of surrogate mothers, and the ethnici-
zation and racialization of regions and groups.
Empirical studies reveal that a gender-women approach is analytically
useful as a locus within research: the centrality of masculine domination
does not appear to be sufficiently challenged. This is a field dense in histori-
cal and social forms of reproduction of androcentrism and redefinition of
the fictions of “human nature,” because gender dualism is both a fiction
and a locus of the effects of domination. Oscillations around gender and
genders move from biological duplication (woman man) to cultural multi-
plication (two genders, more than two sexual orientations, many models of
bodies inscribed in discursive practices) and vice versa. The conflict is collo-
cated rather in repeated attempts to re-affirm the symbolic power of a
unicum, a legitimate speaker, who remains constitutively male but who is
also consensually authorized by women and men both from hegemonic and
subaltern groups. In this sense, we can start again: women, recognized
as an instituted gender, by means of the tensions released by feminism in
bodies-in-situation, have introduced into the field of masculine domination

the possibility of speaking of a duality in the sexual difference, from which
we can begin to think about deconstructing the boundaries between the
two genders. Gender-women is the locus of feminist discourse because it is
women’s agency (Bacchi, 2005; Htun & Welson, 2012) which makes gender
plural.
RESHAPING MALE DOMINATION DISCOURSE IN

POST-PATRIARCHAL CONTEXTS
Studying the relationship between gender constructions, habitus and the

body hexis of men and women reveals the social stratifications of patriar-
chies (Bimbi & De Marchi, 2012). We think it is appropriate here to re-
insert the concept of patriarchy into the current debate. This means concep-
tualizing it through historically situated relational and symbolic aspects,
referring to hegemonic forms of masculinity, considered not according to
universalist and extra-historical abstractions, but as they are presented in
social dynamics (Von Der Lippe, 2006; Young, 2003). Patriarchy is a useful
descriptor of the field of masculine domination, stylized round the continu-
ities and discontinuities of monologic men-women dualism.
Let us hypothesize that the discourse of A structures B, defining rules
and assigning a consensual habitus for both. A does not represent a single
man or the social group “men,” but the social form of masculinity or hege-
monic masculinities, which defines not only the two genders but also other
possible arrangements of gender between the sexes (Goffman, 1977).
B does not define a single woman or the social group “women,” but is an
indicator of social forms of construction of woman (Moi, 2000): these turn
out to be defined by their differences with respect to A, through processes
and practices of specularization, differentiation and subordination of B
with respect to A. Bourdieu’s lesson does not allow us to avoid the ways in
which body differences, once designated, identify the cultural production of
the two genders, and views sexed bodies as diversified cultural constructs
for A and B and also between various As and Bs, according to bodily styles
marked by distinctions of class, ethnicity-race, and sexual orientation.
We are speaking here of a normative body, partly capable of distancing
itself from hegemonic gender constructs (Butler, 1993, 2004), but still a
starting-point for possible recognition of the context in which experience
occurs and assumes significance (Chambers, 2007).
292 FRANCA BIMBI
Bourdieu’s approach allows us to re-interpret and exploit some classic

feminist theories of the relations between gender and power, and between
gender and justice, by integrating them. The traffic in women of Gayle
Rubin (1975), the sexual contract of Carole Pateman (1988) and the politics
of difference of Iris Young (1990) may be interpreted as going into depth
on the negotiated forms of social relations in intimate life and in private
and public life, in which domination is intertwined with the experi-
ences, biographies and relational doing gender (Apitzsch, 2005; Balbo,
2004; West & Zimmerman, 2009) which occurs between constraints and
choices, constantly reproducing a symbolic power, and not easy to interpret
because it is difficult to recognize.
Young in particular shifts attention from the so-called “traditional”
family patriarchy to the modern exchange between the protection of
women (expected by women themselves) and the care which women are
socially obliged to take on, apparently in moral reciprocity of the affective
relation. Although protection of women may also allow a male partner’s
dignity and virility to be expressed, the priority “choices” of women during
their caring assign a privileged use of time to their partners. Here, interpret-
ing Young from Bourdieu’s perspective opens up research pathways on the
social constructions of women’s bodies, also in relation to European poli-
cies of citizenship to native-born and migrating women. The different
models of exchange between men’s protection and women’s caring work do
represent symbolic spaces in the various forms of accessibility of men to
women’s bodies, and imply differences in the legitimate discourses of self-
determination and women’s freedom. What is due to women, such as
masculine protection, and what women must offer, in the form of care,
gifts, or the sale of their bodies, identifies their stratification in the various
types of patriarchy in which they are collocated.
Bourdieu’s lesson proposes indicators to exemplify how the field of dom-
ination is marked by a preeminent dualism, which constructs and aims at
defining the bodily styles and social loci assigned to the two genders,
emphasizing their asymmetry. In particular, it is important to note the dis-
tribution of social time (Bimbi, 1999; Hook, 2006; Knudsen & Wærness,
2008), definition of preferred working “choices,” organization of private
and public spaces during the day and at night, transmission of surnames,
use of money, and exposure of “women’s flesh,” esthetically presented
in both domestic media and street advertisements. When we examine
these aspects, comparing them with the structures and strategies of
daily life, even by the better-off sectors of the populations of women in
countries in which welfare models are more gender-sensitive, we see the
reproduction of modern and horizontal forms of patriarchy as described by

Pateman.
Lastly, traffic in women, when applied to the extension of contemporary
phenomenology to sex markets, compares the differing collocation of the
boundary lines of modesty among women, and the types of legitimized
management of exchanges of power, money and sex among men. In the
regimes of gender equality and reciprocity, women’s use of their erotic capi-
tal seems almost culturally compulsory, rather than personal choice within
the freedom of lifestyle (Hakim, 2011). Continuities of gender differentia-
tion are represented in the displays of women’s bodies within their transfor-
mations and through erotization of the canons of beauty and, irresistibly,
women’s symbolic capital gravitates to places where there is a surplus of
money, that is, male desire.
PRELIMINARY CONCLUSIONS
Bourdieu concludes Masculine domination by adding a Postscript on domi-
nation and love, apparently out of context. In our opinion, these few pages
reveal the author’s intention, which goes well beyond the specific topic of
masculine domination and shows the possible application of his method to
the dimensions of both public power and affective and intrapsychic life
(Addi, 2001).
Some commentators have understood Bourdieu as interpreting the rela-
tion between the sexual field and sexual capital, which allows analysis of
forms of sexual stratification (Martin & George, 2006). Others hypothesize
an erotic habitus, according to a sociology of desire, developing the psycho-
analytical influences in Bourdieu’s works (Green, 2008). Toril Moi appro-
priates Bourdieu, as she herself states, convincingly emphasizing the
importance for feminist analysis carried out at both micro and macro levels
(although this distinction is not pertinent for Bourdieu): “After reading
Bourdieu I now feel confident that it is possible to link the humdrum details of
life to a more social analysis of power” (1991, p. 4).
The discourse on the construction of licensed identities which Bourdieu
proposed in Masculine domination and in the Courses Sur l’e´t al. (2012) at
the Colle`ge de France, helps feminist thought, focusing on the relations
between seduction and subjection in private and public life. The experience
of the presumed heterogeneity between love and domination discloses both
personal expectations and appearances of reciprocity. The space of love is
294 FRANCA BIMBI
not embedded in the field of domination, lying in a borderland of mestiza,

between the gratuitousness of desire and the illusio of its realization. In
spite of risks of personal vulnerability, in a similar space many types of
subversion of licensed identities may occur. Nevertheless, the ambiguity
of the symbolic and practical bonds between seduction and subjection,
entails especially around women’s bodies both commodification of the
erotic habitus and the eroticization of all types of markets.
NOTES
1. The two projects were directed by Franca Bimbi. The first, on Gender Human
Rights (2008 2010), funded by the Italian Ministry of Equal Opportunity and
coordinated by the municipality of Venice, aimed at defining an antiviolence net-
work in the Veneto Region and a Regional Observatory on violence against women.
Discussion groups on migratory and local gender policies were conducted in five
cities of the Region (Venice, Rovigo, Adria, Bassano del Grappa, Schio). A survey
with 130 questionnaires addressed within the antiviolence network was conducted
(Misiti & Farina, 2010) as joint activity with the research project quoted below.
Professionals and volunteers involved in antiviolence activities showed mainly con-
tradictory narratives between progressive and feminist ideologies of their caring
work and ethnocentric bias influencing treatments of migrant women considered as
“cultural” victims (Bimbi & Basaglia, 2010). In a second research, the University of
Padua project Violence against women, migrations, safety in the family and in urban
life (2010 2011), contents relating to symbolic violence were explicitly examined.
Twenty-five in-depth qualitative interviews, with vignettes on gender advertisements
taken by the media and relating to “normal” displays of women’s bodies, were con-
ducted by analysing several vocabularies of violence against women in the accounts
of experiences, perceptions, and representations of migrant women or women of
non-Italian origin living in the Veneto Region. The research also comprised focus
groups with native and migrant women working as professionals and volunteers in
welfare services or antiviolence centers in Palermo and Venice, and content analysis
of the presence of stereotypes of victimization and migrant women’s differentiation
in European documents and in Italian campaigns on violence against women
(Bertolo, 2011). Work-in-progress results were critically discussed on 6 13
September 2010 during the Summer School “Violence against Women” (Escuela de
Verano, Violencia contra las muieres), coordinated by Arun Kumar Acharya (2010)
and Franca Bimbi at the Univesidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon, Istituto de
Investigaciones Sociales, in Monterrey, Mexico.
2. In 2011 2012, the Project Speak Out! Empowering migrant, refugee and ethnic
minority women against gender violence in Europe was carried out, co-funded by the
European Union in the Daphne III Programme (Bimbi, 2013, Bimbi & Basaglia,
2013). The Partners were the University of Padua with the Department of Sociology
(European coordinator) and Interdepartmental Center for Research and Studies on
Gender, the Municipality of Padua, Franca and Franco Basaglia Foundation of
Venice, CEPAIM Foundation from Madrid, SURT Foundation from Barcelona,
Aleksanteri Institute and Multicultural Resource Center MONIKA from of

Helsinki, TIYE International from Netherlands. The project involved various
groups of migrant, refugee, and minority women (only a few Roma) in the five areas.
As in the two previous Italian projects, no migrant women were involved on the
basis of their victimization, although some of them presented their past or actual
experiences of intimate violence during interviews, discussion groups, focus groups
and story-telling laboratories (Pasian, 2013; Cavatorta, 2013). One of the main aims
of the whole project was the implementation of intermediate bodies from civic
grassroots, from which migrant women of different origins could activate and work
within the original contexts, with local women’s NGOs and associations and colla-
borating with local institutions to develop authoritative voices on violence against
women’s issues at practical and cultural levels. The Italian team oriented its training
to provide a profile as Community Mentor (Jackson Katz, Heisterkamp, &
Fleming, 2011). After the end of the project, a group of former participants pro-
moted their own association of Community Mentors and are currently working in
the Veneto Region. In the whole European project, common activities for research
were preliminary surveys in the local welfare system (for Padua, 206 questionnaires
collected from professionals and volunteers, 152 women and 54 men) and at least 4
focus groups (20 women attended in Padua). The research aimed at understanding:
(a) the relationship between professional styles and interpretation of migrant
women’s presence as “clients,” their demands, the meaning of violence against
women in different cultures and different professional groups; (b) whether migrant
women and professionals converged in their expectations of violence against
women’s policies and whether they shared similar meanings and interpretations on
gender-based violence. During the second part of the project, the Paduan team
oriented its training to a Community Mentor profile, mainly through a story-telling
laboratory, creating short stories about violence and making proposals on how to
escape from it. Discussion groups and laboratories on controversial issues (arranged
marriages, veiled/naked bodies, honor crimes, feelings on home, homeland, belong-
ing), the welfare system and legislation worked in parallel with the story-telling. The
chapter mainly examines examples from the Italian team’s proceedings and results,
and the selection is based on the problem of symbolic violence.
Those involved in the project are mainly women. The story-telling laboratory and
all training were reserved for migrants, refugees and Italians of foreigner origin
(32 attended regularly, of the 58 enrolled). They came from North Africa, Sub-
Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia, and Central and Latin America, We were
not able to involve any group of Roma women. The reservation was officially pro-
moted as a positive action following Italian law. In Italy, current courses for
migrant people offer low profiles as “cultural mediators” or care-givers in families
or welfare services. Only a few migrants are working as professionals in some anti-
violence centers or in public and private social and health services.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am pleased to acknowledge the stimulating collaboration with members

of the Research Group on Gender, Citizenship and Multidiversity of the
296 FRANCA BIMBI
University of Padova, who have long shared with me discussions on the

questions posed in this chapter, especially with Carla Bertolo, Francesca
Alice Vianello, Angela Toffanin, Paolo Gusmeroli, Giulia D’Odorico,
Giovanna Cavatorta, Pamela Pasian, and with Maura Misiti, of the
Institute on Population and Social Politics, Italian Research Council.
During the European Project Speak out!, consonances and the dissonances
with Aino Saarineen, of the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki,
were very useful in recognizing in practice the plurality of feminisms
involved in our common path of gender studies and women’s agency. I am
greatly indebted to Alberta Basaglia, leader of the Italian Anti-Violence
Movement. Our common involvement in many action-research projects
and in responsibility for an antiviolence center was a continuous
challenge to my attempts to separate theoretical and practical reasons.
Laura Balbo and Luca Trappolin followed the writing of the chapter,
relieving my doubts with their critical and pertinent comments. Gabriel
Walton adopted her sensitive accuracy in revising the English style of the
whole text.
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Franca Bimbi, Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Education and

Applied Psychology (FISPPA) at the University of Padua, is senior full pro-
fessor of sociology. She is research director at the Doctoral School in Social
Sciences giving Seminars on her research fields, mainly on P. Bourdieu,
Gender and Migrations, Gender-based Violence, Theory on Family, Care
and Welfare Regimes. She coordinates the Research Group on Gender,
Citizenship and Multidiversity. She is on the Board of the Research Centres
on Gender Policies and on Family Studies. She is a member of the National
Observatory on Gender-based Violence established by the Italian
Government and Director of the Italian book series on Sociology, Social
Research and Cultural Studies, Intersections and Asynchronies. In 2013 she
edited Agency of Migrant Women Against Gender Violence (Alphabeta
Verlag, Bolzano) as European Coordinator of a Project cofounded by the
European Union, Daphne III Programme.
Andrea S. Dauber received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Johannes
Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany, in 2010. Here she also acquired
her Magistra Artium in American and Russian Studies. Her main research
areas are gender, crime and delinquent behavior, social inequality and sexu-
ality. Since she relocated to the United States in 2011, she has lectured at
UC San Diego’s Department of Sociology and as of late also at the
University of San Diego. Her teaching and research are characterized by an
international perspective. She has published in German and English on
job-related spatial mobility and social inequality, gender and media repre-
sentations as well as right-wing extremist women. She also edited a confer-
ence volume with contributions from 17 international researchers.
Moreover, as managing editor at De Gruyter Open she is responsible for
the development of the sociology program. In her research she currently
explores issues surrounding gender and violence with a focus on women.
She is working on her second monograph about female serial killers in U.S.
culture.
Vasilikie Demos is a professor emerita of sociology at the University
of Minnesota-Morris. She obtained her Ph.D. in sociology from the
303
304 ABOUT THE AUTHORS
University of Notre Dame. She is coeditor of this series and of “Race,

Gender and Class for What?” a special issue (2007) of Race, Gender &
Class. With Anthony J. Lemelle, Jr. and Solomon Gashaw she coauthored
“System of Oppression: Ten Principles” in Gender, Race, and Class:
Central Issues in a Changing Landscape (2007). Her research is in the
areas of the history of sociology, race/ethnicity, and gender, which includes
her current study of ethnicity and gender in the United States, Greece,
and Australia. She is a past president of the North Central Sociological
Association and Sociologists for Women in Society, and she is the
recipient of the 2008 Harriet Martineau Sociological Society Award. Along
with Marcia Texler Segal, she is author of “Intersectionality: Beyond
Gender, Race/Ethnicity, and Class,” presented at the North Central
Sociological Association Annual Meeting in Indianapolis, Indiana, April 2,
2013.
Julie Alev Dilmaç holds a Ph.D. in Sociology (CERSES-CNRS-Paris
Descartes) from the Paris Descartes University, France. She is currently an
assistant professor of the Department of Business Administration and also
the Head of Department of Social Work at the Cyprus International
University. Her main areas of research are Gender and Cultural studies.
She published several articles on the concept of honor in comparative per-
spectives (mostly between France and Turkey) but also on respect, revenge,
and humiliation in the digital era.
Marjorie C. Feinson, Ph.D., has been a university professor at The New
School for Social Research, NYC, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and
more recently a visiting professor at Rutgers University. Currently, she is a
senior researcher at Falk Institute for Behavioral Health Studies,
Jerusalem, Israel, and a consultant for The Renfrew Center Foundation,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 2001, she was awarded a grant by The
Hadassah Foundation to conduct the first community-based study of eat-
ing problems, body image issues, and childhood abuse among women in
Israel. Recent publications from that study include “Soul Food;” Emotional
Abuse in Childhood and the Complex Role of Food (2010); Disordered
Eating & Religious Observance: A Focus on Ultra-Orthodox Jews (2012);
Disordered Eating and Complexities of Cultural Origin: A Focus on Jews
from Muslim Countries (2012); Exploring Mental Health Consequences of
Childhood Abuse and the Relevance of Religiosity (forthcoming). As a pro-
fessional development specialist for The Renfrew Center, she conducts
seminars for mental health professionals with special relevance to the
Jewish community.
About the Authors 305
Jane Freedman is a professor of sociology at the University of Paris 8, and

a member of the Centre de Recherches Sociologiques et Politiques de Paris
(CRESPPA). Her research focuses on issues of gender violence, conflict,
and migration. Previous publications include Gendering the International
Asylum and Refugee Debate (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) and Engaging Men
in the Fight against Gender-Based Violence: Case Studies from Africa
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). Her most recent book, Gender, Politics and
Violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, will be published by Ashgate
in 2014.
Max A. Greenberg is a doctoral candidate in sociology and gender studies
at the University of Southern California. His teaching and research focuses
on gender-based violence, men and masculinities, public health, and youth.
Currently, he is coauthoring a book with Michael Messner and Tal Peretz
about men’s engagement with antiviolence work across three historical
moments. His dissertation, Red Flags: Youth At-Risk and the Making of
Violence Prevention, examines how the social category of at-risk youth is
constructed at the institutional level, refigured in practice by preventionists
in schools, and ultimately navigated in the lives of marginalized youth.
Colette Harris is a reader in gender and development at SOAS, University
of London. She held previous posts at the University of East Anglia and
the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, UK. For over 15 years she
has been involved in gender-based community education projects in East
and West Africa, Central, South, and South East Asia, and South America.
She has published several books on gender relations in Tajikistan Control
and Subversion: Gender Relations in Tajikistan (Pluto Press, 2004) and
Muslim Youth: Tensions and Transitions in Tajikistan (Westview Press,
2006) and numerous articles.
Adi Meir has an MA in cognitive science from the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem. She is currently pursuing an MS in human factors in informa-
tion design at Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts, where she is
a research associate at the User Experience Center. She was previously a
research associate at the Falk Institute for Health Research where she
designed and conducted statistical analyses. She was also a researcher at
the Israel Gerontological Data Center at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem.
Michael A. Messner is professor of sociology and gender studies at the
University of Southern California, where he has worked for 27 years. His
teaching and research focuses on gender and sports, men and masculinities,
and gender-based violence. He is the author of several books, including It’s

all for the kids: Gender, families and youth sports (California, 2009) and
King of the wild suburb: A memoir of fathers, sons and guns (Plain View
Press, 2011). Messner is currently writing a book with Max Greenberg and
Tal Peretz about men who work with boys and men to stop gender-based
violence. In 2011, the California Women’s Law Center honored him with
its Pursuit of Justice Award, for his work in support of girls and women in
sport, and in 2012, the American Sociological Association gave him the
Jessie Bernard Award, in recognition of contributions to the understanding
of women’s lives.
Elizabeth A. Degi Mount is a sociologist at the Center for the Study of
Gender and Conflict (CGC) at the George Mason University School for
Conflict Analysis and Resolution (S-CAR). Elizabeth has been a Fellow at
S-CAR since 2011. She currently serves as executive director of CGC,
where she conducts research on gendered violence. Previously, she has been
a fellow at the Faculty of Sociology at the National Research University
Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Russia. Elizabeth’s research inter-
ests center on cultural constructions of masculinity and femininity used to
justify systemic violence. She holds a BA in Print Journalism from
American University in Washington, DC, and an MA in Sociology from
George Mason University, focusing on gender-based violence. She is cur-
rently finishing her Ph.D. at S-CAR. Elizabeth thanks Dr. Leslie Dwyer
and her husband, William Mount, for their support while she conducted
the research included in her chapter in AGR 18B.
Eleanor M. Novek (Ph.D. Annenberg School for Communication,
University of Pennsylvania) is an associate professor of communication at
Monmouth University where she teaches courses in journalism, ethics, and
research. As coordinator of the New Jersey chapter of the Alternatives to
Violence Project, she facilitates nonviolence workshops in prisons and com-
munity settings. Her research interests involve communication for social
justice, particularly in and about prisons, and the intersections of race, gen-
der, and inequality. She has published book chapters and research articles
in scholarly journals, including Critical Studies in Media Communication;
The Atlantic Journal of Communication; Peace Review: A Journal of Social
Justice; and the Howard Journal of Communication. With Stephen J.
Hartnett and Jennifer K. Wood, she is coeditor of Working for Justice: A
Handbook of Prison Education and Activism (University of Illinois Press,
2013). In 2014 she is guest editor of a special issue of the Atlantic Journal of
Communication on race and incarceration.
About the Authors 307
Bandana Purkayastha is professor and head of sociology, and is jointly

appointed with Asian American Studies at the University of Connecticut,
USA. She has published several books, peer-reviewed articles and chapters
on the intersections of race/gender/ethnicity/sexuality/class. Her work con-
tributes to the scholarship on human rights, intersectionality, transnation-
alism, peace, and social justice. She has won several local and national
awards for teaching and leadership; she was also recognized by the
Connecticut legislature for her work with immigrants. She is a member of
the Editorial Board, Journal of South Asian Diasporas, and served as
the Deputy Editor of Gender & Society, from 2005 to 2011. She holds
several international and national elected positions within American
and International Sociological Association/s, and was the President of
Sociologists for Women in Society (2013 2014).
Kathryn Strother Ratcliff is associate head of sociology at the University of
Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut. She received her Ph.D. in sociology
from the University of Wisconsin. Her areas of interest include health, gen-
der, inequality, human rights, and applied sociology. In 2002 she wrote
Women and Health: Power, Technology, Inequality, and Conflict in a
Gendered World. Recent publications include Globalization, Women and
Health: Threats and Empowerment (with L. Moonzwe), Food: A Human
Rights Issue Ignored in Sociology (with T. Tiamzon), and chapters on Health
Care and Inequality, and on The Power of Poverty: Individual Agency and
Structural Constraints. She is an Eastern AHEC board member.
Marcia Texler Segal is a professor of sociology and dean for research emer-
ita at Indiana University Southeast. She is coeditor of this series as well as
of Intersections of Gender, Race, and Class: Readings for a Changing
Landscape (Oxford, 2007, with Theresa A. Martinez). She has also coedited
volumes of teaching resources available from the American Sociological
Association and has served on the editorial boards of major professional
journals. Her research, teaching, and administrative consulting have taken
her to countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Central Asia. She is a past
president of the North Central Sociological Association and has held
elected and appointed offices in the American Sociological Association,
Sociologists for Women in Society, and Research Committee 32 (Women
in Society) of the International Sociological Association. In 2008 she
received the SWS Mentorship Award and in 2011 the Harriet Martineau
Sociological Society Award. She continues to teach occasionally, to advise
master’s degree students, and to work actively with community organiza-
tions focusing on the needs of youth.
Mangala Subramaniam, an associate professor in the department of sociol-

ogy at Purdue University, studies the politics of gender, caste, and class;
social movements; state power; and globalization. She has authored/
coauthored articles in journals such as International Sociology, Mobiliza-
tion, and Gender & Society. Her 2006 monograph, The Power of Women’s
Organizing, focuses on the collective experiences of rural, low caste, deeply
disadvantaged women who face violence in the private and public spheres.
In a recent (2012) article in International Sociology, she examines the effects
of women’s participation in grassroots groups on their political-cultural
empowerment using hierarchical linear modeling. Her current research pro-
ject focuses on organizational dynamics (including state agencies) in the
politics of dissemination of information about HIV/AIDS and mechanisms
for mitigating risks to HIV among female sex workers. Mangala mentors
undergraduate and graduate students. She has presented papers at several
national and international conferences.

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GENDERED PERSPECTIVES

ON CONFLICT AND VIOLENCE:

Volume 6: Gendered Sexualities Edited by Patricia Gagné and Richard Tewksbury,

Volume 7: Gender Perspectives on Health and Medicine: Key Themes Edited by

United Kingdom North America Japan

First edition 2014

Copyright r 2014 Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Reprints and permission service

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Certificate Number 1985

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS vii

INFORMATION FOR AUTHORS ix

MORE GENDERED PERSPECTIVES ON CONFLICT

ROUTINE VIOLENCE: INTERSECTIONALITY AT THE

WELL-INTENDED MEASURES: CONCEPTUALIZING

RESISTING GENDERED RELIGIOUS NATIONALISM:

IS RELIGIOSITY RELATED TO REDUCED ABUSE

TREATING SEXUAL VIOLENCE AS A “BUSINESS”:

THE USE OF PARTICIPATORY GENDER ANALYSIS

NOT ALL NAZIS ARE MEN: WOMEN’S

“THAT CANDY BAR AIN’T FREE”: MANAGING

BEFORE PREVENTION: THE TRAJECTORY AND

“OUR” HONOR AND “THEIR” HONOR: THE CASE OF

SYMBOLIC VIOLENCE: RESHAPING POST-

ABOUT THE AUTHORS 303

Franca Bimbi Department of Philosophy, Sociology,

Elizabeth A. Degi School for Conflict Analysis and

Series Co-Editors: Marcia Texler Segal and

We seek original manuscripts dealing with new developments in the study

TREATING SEXUAL VIOLENCE AS A “BUSINESS”:

THE USE OF PARTICIPATORY GENDER ANALYSIS

NOT ALL NAZIS ARE MEN: WOMEN’S

“THAT CANDY BAR AIN’T FREE”: MANAGING

BEFORE PREVENTION: THE TRAJECTORY AND

“OUR” HONOR AND “THEIR” HONOR: THE CASE OF

SYMBOLIC VIOLENCE: RESHAPING POST-

ABOUT THE AUTHORS 303

Franca Bimbi Department of Philosophy, Sociology,

OVERVIEWS OF PART B CHAPTERS

In “Well-Intended Measures: Conceptualizing Gender as a Social

NGOs, and used a grounded theory approach to identify frames used to

while it is clear that sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) is wide-

Further, as a western woman working with an African group, she is careful

the performances. An example featuring a female guard behaving in the

Vasilikie Demos and Marcia Texler Segal

Purpose This introduction sets forth the main themes of Part B of

Gendered Perspectives on Conflict and Violence: Part B

Greenberg and Messner review the trajectory of GBV prevention in the

called on to engage in combat came to define citizenship in Israel leading

difficulty of constructing survey instruments that ask about GBV in terms

CONSTRUCTING KNOWLEDGE ABOUT GBV

The chapters in this volume contribute to a feminist social scientific con-

exists on a continuum and is a product of social structures, cultures, and

1. A list of authors and titles that appear in Gendered Perspectives on Conflict

Chapter titles and authors from Gendered Perspectives on Conflict and

GENDERED PERSPECTIVES ON CONFLICT AND VIOLENCE: AN INTRODUCTION

SIGNIFICANCE OF WARTIME RAPE

OUT OF SOUTHEAST EUROPE: GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE, PUBLIC

NGOs, and used a grounded theory approach to identify frames used to

activists’ concepts of routine violence and examine routine violence in the

Given the ubiquity of violence, especially violence against women (VAW)