scholarly journals Turning the Tide on Violence against Women in Politics: How Are We Measuring Up?

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 695-701 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Ballington

Violence against women in politics (VAWP) is a human rights violation, as it prevents the realization of political rights. Violence against women in political and public life can be understood as “any act or threat of gender-based violence, resulting in physical, sexual, psychological harm or suffering to women, that prevents them from exercising and realizing their political rights, whether in public or private spaces, including the right to vote and hold public office, to vote in secret and to freely campaign, to associate and assemble, and to enjoy freedom of opinion and expression” (UN Women/UNDP 2017, 20).

10.5130/aag.h ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 93-106
Author(s):  
Astrid Escrig-Pinol

This chapter discusses the emergence of gender-based violence (GBV) as a grassroots women’s organizations’ concern, and how it later became a human rights issue and a priority in the mainstream development agenda. The anti-GBV movement is deeply rooted in a human rights approach and on defending the right of women to a life free of violence. However, mainstream development and governmental initiatives have increasingly framed the fight against GBV in instrumental terms, situating GBV as an obstacle to development. The chapter uses a feminist lens to critically analyse mainstream discourses and their implications for policy and development programs aimed at reducing GBV rates.


2021 ◽  
pp. 27-53
Author(s):  
Johanna Bond

This chapter delves into examples of global intersectionality to illustrate the need for a thorough and consistent intersectional approach to human rights violations around the world. Although it is impossible to provide an exhaustive analysis of the many and varied types of intersectional human rights violations, this chapter offers multiple examples of intersectional human rights violations, including (1) gender-based violence, including both non-state actors who commit intimate partner violence and sexual violence in armed conflict; (2) maternal mortality and inadequate prenatal care in Brazil; (3) coerced sterilization among the Roma in Europe; (4) disproportionate discipline and punishment of Black girls in the United States; and (5) inconsistent LGBTQI rights. These case studies implicate different human rights, including the right to be free from violence, the right to education, and the right to the highest attainable standard of health. Each example demonstrates how a more nuanced, intersectional lens is necessary to capture the rights at stake and to contemplate appropriate remedies for victims of human rights violations in full.


Author(s):  
Mona Lena Krook

Chapter 19 considers the political and social consequences of violence against women in politics. The implications of these acts reach far beyond their effects on individual victims, harming political institutions as well as society at large. First, attempting to exclude women as women from participating in political life undermines democracy, negating political rights and disturbing the political process. Second, tolerating mistreatment due to a person’s ascriptive characteristics infringes on their human rights, damaging their personal integrity as well as the perceived social value of their group. Third, normalizing women’s exclusion from political participation relegates women to second class citizenship, threatening principles of gender equality. The chapter concludes that naming the problem of violence against women in politics thus has important repercussions along multiple dimensions, making the defense of women’s rights integral to the protection of political and human rights for all.


Author(s):  
Urmitapa Dutta

This chapter makes a case for reconceptualizing human rights “from below” by grounding human rights discourses in women’s particularities and their voices rather than prescriptive policy standards. It does so by bringing together feminist perspectives grounded in decoloniality and liberation psychology. It presents findings from activist scholarship in Northeast India to offer a critical feminist analysis of civil society’s (non)response to gender-based violence and counternarratives of Garo women protagonists who explain these (non)responses. Following Garo women protagonists in their understanding of violence illuminates the fundamental heterogeneity of violence against women as well as underlying cultural institutional and structural processes. By moving between situated narrative and wider analysis, this chapter explicates the connections between “exceptional” violence and pervasive violations of women’s human rights. The research, action, and policy implications for feminist psychologists engaged in human rights scholarship are discussed.


Author(s):  
Olena Uliutina ◽  
Olena Artemenko ◽  
Yuliia Vyshnevska

The article examines the problem of domestic violence against women in marriage and family relations, and also identifies ways for the legal regulation of this issue. It turns out that at present, violence against women is one of the main social mechanisms through which women are forced to occupy a subordinate position in comparison with men. Violence directed at women reflects the structure of subordination and power, the depth of the differences between the sexes. «Violence against women» according to UN documents means any act of violence committed on the basis of gender, which causes or may cause physical, sexual, psychological harm or suffering to a woman, as well as threats to commit such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether in public or private life. It is concluded that in order to minimize the spread of such a negative phenomenon among the population, it is worth: to ensure the conduct of educational trainings and seminars for specialists of services for women and family affairs, social work, medical and pedagogical workers, volunteers to identify and prevent this type of crime; to strengthen public participation in the development of mechanisms and information on crimes related to domestic violence against women; improve the improvement of the collection of information of actors implementing measures to prevent and counter domestic violence and gender-based violence and establish better communication and cooperation between different bodies; ensure that the public is adequately informed about preventive measures and the ability to respond to crimes of domestic violence against women.


Global Jurist ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Pividori ◽  
Paola Degani

Abstract Violence against women is an established issue of concern under international law as well as in the international security domain. More in general, it is contended that issues related to gender-based violence need to be countered with strategies aimed at fighting sexual hierarchies and structural discrimination affecting women at different levels and in different contexts. Despite this, international legal and policy responses to male violence against women are increasingly turning to criminal law enforcement with a strict focus on perpetrators’ individual accountability. The article critically analyzes this trend within the two international legal and policy frameworks that in the past decades have most consistently integrated the issue of violence against women, that is, human security and human rights. The article contends that the increasing focus on criminalization that has emerged in both these frameworks risks obfuscating and downsizing the collective and “public” dimension of States’ responsibility with regards the social phenomenon of violence. Indeed, criminalization strategies allow States to circumvent their duty to work on the social, political and economic structural dimensions at the root of this severe form of violation women’s human rights.


Author(s):  
Mona Lena Krook

Inductive development of the concept of violence against women in politics largely proceeded from an activist and practitioner space focused on the global South. Chapter 3 identifies incidents of political sexism and misogyny in other regions that helped propel recognition of violence against women in politics as a global phenomenon. It summarizes debates involving politically active women in other regions—including the global North—showing that this problem affects women across a range of different countries. One of these was the #MeToo movement that swept around the world in late 2017, which drew attention to sexual harassment within political institutions and highlighted that gender-based violence was not restricted to election-related events. The chapter goes on to show that these episodes have largely been folded into the work done by practitioners in the violence against women in politics field, helping to strengthen its recognition as a universal phenomenon.


2014 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 169-180
Author(s):  
Esperanza Mojica

Resumen: Las diferencias culturales y lingüísticas son algunos de los principales obstáculos a los que tienen que enfrentarse los/as inmigrantes en el marco de la realidad multicultural y plurilingüe en la que vivimos. En este punto aparece la figura del/la intérprete o mediador intercultural que interviene para que pueda darse una comunicación efectiva. Este trabajo de investigación se centra en los recursos de asistencia lingüística que se ofrecen a las mujeres extranjeras víctimas de violencia de género que han decidido iniciar un proceso judicial.El objetivo principal de esta investigación es analizar el estado de la cuestión de la comunicación con usuarias extranjeras víctimas de violencia de género en el ámbito judicial a través de intérpretes y la evaluación de la protección del derecho al acceso igualitario a la justicia y a la red de asistencia integral. Finalmente, se pretende dar pautas de mejora o creación de un servicio de interpretación de calidad en los juzgados y tribunales españoles, con intérpretes especializados en género para los casos de violencia contra las mujeres. Abstract: Cultural and linguistic differences are some of the main barriers foreigners have to face within the multicultural and multilingual environment we live in. At this point the role of the interpreter or intercultural mediator appears, as he/she acts to facilitate communication. This research focuses on the language assistance resources that are provided to women who suffer from gender-based violence and have decided to start legal proceedings.The aim of this research is to analyse the current situation of communication in legal settings with foreign women who are victims of gender-based violence. I will also assess the protection of the right to equal access to justice and to the complete network of assistance at their disposal.  The final goal is to establish recommendations for the improvement and/or creation of a high-quality interpreting service in Spanish Courts that provides trained interpreters specialised in gender for cases of violence against women. 


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
David Ikpo

Homosexuality is still generally considered un-African, unacceptable and criminal in most African states. In Nigeria, this translates into incidents of criminalisation, violence and other forms of human rights violation targeted at sexual minorities. The agitation towards sexual minorities in Nigeria is as much an attitudinal as it is a legal problem, and the factors that feed negative attitudes towards homosexuals equally enable practices such as gender-based violence. This article engages with the advocacy being done to address the human rights of sexual minorities in Nigeria, seeking to make a case for indigenisation and for engaging with the use of narratives and storytelling as a tool to complement the ongoing work. This article also seeks to make a case for engaging with the principle of the inseparability of the struggle to advance the rights of sexual minorities in Nigeria.


Author(s):  
Mona Lena Krook

Chapter 2 traces the global emergence of the concept of violence against women in politics. It outlines how the first efforts to name the problem of violence against women in politics emerged in parallel across different parts of the global South: Working inductively, locally elected women in Bolivia theorized their experiences as “political harassment and violence against women” in the late 1990s; networks of elected women across South Asia, with support from global organizations, mapped and condemned manifestations of “violence against women in politics” in the mid-2000s; and state and non-state actors in Kenya recognized and sought to tackle “electoral gender-based violence” in the late 2000s. The chapter then goes on to show how inductive theorizing planted important seeds subsequently taken up by a wide range of international practitioners, who in the late 2000s and early 2010s actively worked to craft a global concept of “violence against women in politics.”


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