The Gender of Violence in War and Conflict

Very few scholars or policy-makers deny that gendered violence happens during war and conflict. The evidence that war rape is prevalent across all sorts of wars and conflicts is significant enough that it has come to be recognized not only by scholars, but by myriad international organizations.
At the same time, the very same institutions that have come to recognize gender-based violence in war often define it narrowly: gender-based violence in conflict is sexual in nature, victimizes women, and happens in the context of fighting perpetrated by armed combatants. Advocacy and jurisprudence around gender-based violence in conflict often excludes by definition those outside of traditional war zones, those whose gender-based abuse is not sexual in nature, or those men who experience sexual violence. I argue that understanding all of these types of experiences as gendered violence in conflict is essential to understanding any of them – as well as the relationship between gender and violence more generally.