“The Political Economy of Violence Against Women in Asia-Pacific.”

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN: A FEMINIST INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS PERSPECTIVE Jacqui True*

1.0 INTRODUCTION What has poverty or wealth got to do with persistent and egregious violence against women globally? Violence against women includes rape and sexual abuse, forced trafficking, intimate partner violence, female genital mutilation, maternal death, femicide, dowry deaths, honour killings, female infanticide, sexual harassment and forced and early marriage. As one women’s international NGO has stated ‘when one thinks of women’s human rights issues, one usually thinks about violence against women and not about poverty, housing, unemployment, education, water, food security, trade and other related economic and social rights issues’.1 But is there a relationship between women’s poor access to productive resources such as land, property, income, employment, technology, credit, and education, and their likelihood of experiencing gender-based violence and abuse? 2 This article examines this important question. Nowhere in the world do women share equal social and economic rights with men or the same access as men to these productive resources.3 Economic globalisation and development are creating new challenges for women's rights as well as some new opportunities for advancing women’s economic independence and equality. The proliferation of armed conflicts, often caused by struggles to control power and productive resources, has also hampered efforts to protect and prevent violence against women. Furthermore, post-conflict and post humanitarian crisis and natural disaster processes have tended to deepen gender inequalities in economic and political participation, affecting women’s vulnerability to violence. Yet despite these realities, the current *

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Dr Jacqui True is a senior lecturer in International Relations at the University of Auckland. Address: Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand 1010. [email protected]. The author would like to thank the editors of this issue and two referees for their rigorous, thorough and extremely constructive comments which greatly helped in the revision of this paper. Programme on Women’s Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (PWSCR) Concept paper see www.pwescr.org at 4 March 2010. The Committee on the Elimination of Violence Against Women describes violence against women or gender-based violence as that ‘directed against a woman because she is a woman or that affects women disproportionately’ CEDAW General Recommendation No. 19, 11th session, 1992. Women are often subject to violence as a result of their gender subordination, that is the construction of women as inferior to men within and across societies and multiple intersecting vulnerabilities between gender and their membership in ethnic, nationality, class, and other marginalised groups. Apodaca Clair ‘Measuring Women’s Economic and Social Rights Achievement’ (1998) 20(1) Human Rights Quarterly 151.

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global political economic order is often neglected in analyses of violence against women. Official United Nations approaches make no linkages between the effects of financial crises, macroeconomic policies and trade liberalisation for example, and the prevalence of violence against women. UN Security Council Resolutions on women, peace and security single out sexual violence in conflict and post-conflict settings from ongoing forms of violence against women before, during and after conflict. Moreover, they do not contextualise this violence within the gendered structures of economic impoverishment and lack of opportunity that are not addressed by political settlements or by peacekeeping missions. Not dissimilarly, in emergent feminist security studies within the field of International Relations, the primary focus on sexual violence in war and armed conflict and trafficking across borders, while seemingly appropriate given the IR field’s subject matter, risks perpetuating the invisibility of violence against women in peacetime and within national borders. Lacking any thoroughgoing analysis of the gendered social, political and economic inequalities that shape women’s vulnerability to violence in whatever setting, both UN discourses and IR scholarship tend to reinforce gender essentialisms that view women as inherently victims of violence — and thus, objects of protection — and men as the power holders. This article seeks to rectify the neglect of contemporary global political-economic processes and their effect on the prevalence of various forms of violence against women in UN discourses and IR scholarship. Given the short space available, however, it cannot fully substantiate the argument that women’s physical security and freedom from violence are inextricably linked to the material basis of relationships that govern the distribution and use of resources, entitlements and authority within the home, the community and the transnational realm. This is the project of my forthcoming book.4 Here I can only outline the key elements of a feminist political economy method for analysing the causes and consequences of violence against women. The method is consistent with Ann Tickner’s feminist approach to global security, which emphasises the continuum of war/peace given women’s experiences of violence and defines security in broad, multidimensional terms which includes the elimination of all social hierarchies that lead to political and economic injustice.5 I argue that employing such a feminist political economy method could significantly improve the way both international policymakers and international relations scholars treat violence against women and respond to its global scale and its brutality. The article is divided into two main parts. The first part sets out the elements of a feminist political economy method for analysing violence against women, contrasting it with existing feminist and UN approaches. The second part sketches how this method might be employed to analyse the effect of global processes on violence against women. It explores strategic sites where structural political-economic forces can be seen to be heightening the conditions for, and increasing the extent of, violence against women. These sites could each be the subject of sustained political economy analysis in their own right. The sites include neoliberal economic 4 5

See True Jacqui The Political Economy of Violence Against Women Oxford University Press New York forthcoming 2011. See Tickner J Ann Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security Columbia University Press New York 1992.

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restructuring and men’s reaction to the loss of secure employment, the growth of a sex trade around the creation of free trade zones, transnational migration of women workers, sexual violence in armed conflict, and the gendered impact of natural disasters and post-crisis reconstruction efforts.

2.0 FROM DOMESTIC VIOLENCE TO WAR CRIMES: OUTLINE OF A FEMINIST METHOD FOR ANALYSING VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN Feminist political/legal theorists, UN agencies and treaty bodies, and feminist security studies have all sought to understand violence against women occurring in different settings; the private home/family, the public or civil society sphere, or the war/conflict or post-conflict zone. But each has overlooked one or more of the political-economic structures that underpin gender inequality and women’s vulnerability to violence. After reviewing these approaches I address their weaknesses by fleshing out three elements of a feminist political economy method that should be central in any analysis of — and proposed solution to— violence against women: 1 The gender division of labour within the family/private sphere; 2 the contemporary global, macro-economy in which capitalist competition fuels the quest for cheap sources of labour, often women’s labour, and for deregulated investment conditions; 3 the masculine protector and feminine-protected identities associated with war and militarism, and division of war front/home front associated with armed conflict and its aftermath.

2.1 Feminist Political and Legal Theory Feminist political and legal theorists have illuminated how public-private gender divisions of labour and unequal power relations in marriage and the family affect women’s autonomy and ability to claim human rights. In turn, they have shown how women’s subordination in the family/private sphere shapes labour markets in ways that disadvantage and discriminate against women in education and employment, and reinforce their subordination in the public, political sphere. But feminist political and legal theory does not typically extend to an analysis of how women’s economic and social subordination, and not merely men’s aggression in the private sphere, makes them especially vulnerable to violence at home, at work or elsewhere. For instance, in Kenya where women own less than one per cent of the land while performing 70 per cent of the agricultural labour, ‘the denial of equal property rights has the effect of putting [them] at greater risk of poverty, disease, violence, and homelessness’.6 Studies in Kerala and West Bengal India reveal that women with property are two times less likely to be beaten or abused. Women’s ownership of land serves as a deterrent against domestic violence.7

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Deller Ross Susan et al Women's Land and Property Rights in Kenya presented at the International Women's Human Rights Clinic Georgetown University Law Center and Federation of Women Lawyers, Kenya 2008 p 41. Agarwal Bina and Panda Pradeep ‘Toward Freedom from Domestic Violence’ (2007) 8 Journal of Human Development 359.

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Feminist political and legal theory provided the gender perspective for the women’s human rights movement and for making visible violence against women in the private sphere. But while this had led to some impressive successes for the women’s movement, it had also tended to detach violence against women from the broader struggle for social and economic equality within the social and human rights movements, leading to its perception a women-only problem rather than a systemic problem affecting all individuals and groups.8

2.2 Securitising Gender in the United Nations The UN Secretary-General’s 2006 in-depth study notes the lack of a comprehensive and integrated approach to violence against women,9 but this is a symptom of the UN’s own approach to eliminating violence against women as well as that of its member states. For its part the UN Security Council (UNSC) has recognised sexual and gender-based violence as an international security issue and among the worst forms of violence in current wars and civil conflicts. In Resolutions 1325, 1820 and 1889, the UNSC has linked the scourge of sexual violence to international insecurity and stressed that it needs to be addressed in all conflict situations. In the most recent Resolution 1889, the UNSC has elevated ending sexual violence in conflict above other forms of violence against women and all other issues and objectives relating to women and gender equality in peace and security, including the importance of women’s participation in conflict-resolution and peacebuilding. But as feminist critics have argued, placing women’s rights and participation on the international security agenda has had its drawbacks: The UNSC has tended to treat women as victims inherently vulnerable to violence and in need of (masculine) protectors, be they men or UN peacekeepers. Further, women’s rights have also been framed as instrumental means to the ends of security, peace and democracy and gender equality or justice are not viewed as aspirations in their own right.10 In the international security approach the political-economic dimensions of sexual violence against women are obscured. We do not ask why or for what purpose women are raped,11 and how the purpose may be related to the roots of the conflict. Moreover, most security approaches do not consider how sexual, often gender-based, violence might be prevented in the long term, although Resolution 1889 encourages member states to address the socio-economic needs of women. Most often the linkage between political economy and violence against women is made in terms of the (under-researched) impact of sexual violence on the post-conflict reconstruction since it may affect food production and supply given women’s role as agricultural producers. Or the linkage is made with reference to the importance of securing women’s economic and social rights in peacebuilding.12 But the causes of conflict, and of gender-based violence and women’s 8 9 10 11 12

PWSCR Concept Paper 2 above note 1. A/61/122/Add.1. Hudson Natalie Florea ‘Securitizing Women’s Rights and Gender Equality’ (2009) 8 Journal of Human Rights 53. For an exception to this generalisation see Baaz Maria Eriksson and Stern Maria ‘Why do Soldiers Rape: Masculinity, Violence and Sexuality in the Armed Forces in the Congo (DRC)’ (2009) 53(2) International Studies Quarterly 469. UN News Centre ‘Women Must Play Full Part in Peace-Building, Security Council Declares’ see http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=32424&Cr=Gender&Cr1 at 5 October 2009.

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insecurity, are not discussed or connected to structural inequalities in local household and global political economies that persist and may be exacerbated after conflict. In UN discourse, then, women survivors of sexual violence (but not of domestic violence or the violence of poverty) are treated as the passive victims of (bad) men’s violence requiring special protection from the international community (read; good men).

2.3 Feminist Security Studies Feminist security studies of gender insecurity and sexual violence in armed conflict and postconflict settings similarly have largely failed to analyse the structures of political economy that shape and perpetuate gender-based violence and insecurity. Indeed, recent scholarship on gender and security takes as given mainstream accounts of international security, largely evacuating the political economy dimension of conflict and of feminist analysis.13 Investigating gender relations in war allows feminist scholars to converse on the same terrain as IR scholars. However, singling out gender and military security issues may effectively silence other security issues for women, including violence against women in civilian life, in post-conflict and/or development settings.14 Such a conceptualisation runs contrary to Tickner’s feminist perspective on global security, drawn from women’s experiences of direct violence and structural violence in peacetime and war.15 This argument is not to diminish the struggle and hard won achievement of having sexual and gender-based violence considered as security issues requiring an international security response. Rather, it claims that the ‘securitisation’ of gender and sexual violence has tended to remove the systemic feminist analysis that could address its root causes. For instance, feminist international political economy (IPE) has made it possible for us to reconsider informal economic activity, feminised economies such as the sex and domestic workers trade, and unpaid work in the home as comprising major parts of the globalisation story.16 But such an IPE approach is typically a challenge to international security approaches that downplay the role of economic power and non-state actors. Feminist security studies do not integrate these insights of feminist political economy in analysing gendered conflicts and insecurities and have done little to illuminate the economic dimension of war/peace and how the struggle over control of resources in the household and among groups significantly shapes this violence and its consequences. But nor does feminist IPE usually extend its analysis to the causes and effects of international conflict and

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See eg Sjoberg Laura (ed) Gender and International Security Routledge New York 2009 and Laura Shepherd’s ‘Power and Authority in the Production of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325’ (2008) 52(2) International Studies Quarterly 383 regarding the neoliberal framing of UNSC Resolution 1325 as an exception, although the political economy analysis is deployed mainly as discursive critique. This conceptualisation of gender and security is contrary to Tickner’s earliest formulation of a feminist perspective on international security, based on women’s experiences of direct violence and structural violence in peacetime and war. See Tickner above note 5. As above. See Marchand Marianne H and Runyan Anne S Gender and Global Restructuring Routledge New York 2000; Prugl Elisabeth The Global Construction of Gender Columbia University Press New York 1999; Peterson V Spike A Critical Rewriting of Global Political Economy Routledge New York 2003.

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insecurity.17 Violence against women becomes rather, epiphenomenal, derivative of another more major social process at work such as war or capitalism, albeit one given increasing public attention and media coverage. Feminist IR is thus inadvertently implicated in the reification of the mainstream ontological divide within International Relations between (state-centric) International Security and (interdisciplinary) IPE. To the extent that it obscures the structural dimensions of gender inequality in or outside of war/conflict by failing to investigate them, feminist security studies is open to the criticism that it reifies the very gendered identities and stereotypes that it seeks to expose and overcome.

2.4 A Feminist Political Economy Method A feminist political economy method is a necessary corrective to feminist political/legal theory, UN approaches to gender-based violence and feminist security studies that do not fully comprehend the global political economic structures that both condition and heighten women’s vulnerability to violence. In general, political economy as a method analyses political and economic power as part of the same authority structure. All forms of power — including the use of violence — are understood as having a material basis, and often founded on material relations of inequality. The method directs us to investigate the interconnections between the economic, social and political realms. Such investigations reveal that power operates not only through direct coercion but also through the structured relations of production and reproduction that govern the distribution and use of resources, benefits, privileges and authority within the home and transnational society at large.18 Political economic processes interact with and re-configure the institutional and ideological formations of society where gender identities and relations are shaped. As Bina Agarwal states: Those who own and/or control wealth-generating property can directly or indirectly control the principal institutions that shape ideology, such as educational and religious establishments and the media…. These can shape views in either gender-progressive or gender-retrogressive directions.19

Feminist political economy highlights the masculine nature of the integrated political-economic authority structure. The three elements of a feminist political economy method summarised above can be employed to analyse the material situation of women and men particularly with respect to their unequal access to productive resources, toward a more comprehensive explanation of the prevalence of different forms of violence against women in wide-ranging global contexts. The first element is the gendered public-private sphere division of labour, which is supported by gender ideologies that hold women primarily responsible for unremunerated, and 17 18 19

For important exceptions see Enloe Cynthia Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives University of California Press Berkeley 2004; Peterson V Spike ‘“New Wars” And Gendered Economies’ (2008) 88(1) Feminist Review 7. See eg the feminist political economy analysis that links direct and structural violence in a globalisation context in Whyte David ‘Naked Labour: Putting Agamben to Work’ (2009) 31 Australian Feminist Law Journal 57–76. Agarwal Bina ‘Gender and Command Over Property’ (1994) 22(10) World Development 1459.

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often invisible unpaid work in the family or ‘private’ sphere. Caring professions in the ‘public’ labour market akin to the unpaid care work women traditionally do in the home are devalued as a result of this gender structure.20 The internationalisation of reproductive work has extended this division of labour to the transnational realm as women from poorer, developing countries migrate to provide care services for families in wealthier countries. In a mutually constitutive way, the strict division of roles in the domestic sphere constrains women’s public participation and their access to economic opportunities in the market, in turn creating inequalities in household bargaining power between men and women and entrapping women into potentially violent environments at home and at work. Some women, especially those in developed countries, avoid patriarchal, and potentially violent, situations in the family/private sphere by contracting out care work to poor women, including migrant women from the global South. The second element highlighted by a feminist political economy method is the contemporary global, macroeconomic environment. Capitalist competition encourages firms to seek cheap sources of labour and deregulated investment conditions that maximise profits locally and transnationally. In this context, the relocation of industries has disrupted local economies and dramatically changed labour markets, increasing a poorly regulated economy of low pay and insecure jobs, and attracting women from developed and developing societies into wage employment on a scale unseen before. While the neoliberal policy environment has led to the expansion of women’s employment, it has also led to the intensification of their work-load in the market and at home, and to the ‘feminisation of poverty’ especially among unskilled and marginalised poor women in developing countries who lack access to productive resources or public services. Such poverty, marginalisation and lack of protective mechanisms make women easy targets for abuse and undermine the prospects for their empowerment.21 These conditions also disempower many men who may react to the loss of employment and economic opportunities by reasserting their power over women through violence. The third element of a feminist political economy method relates to the gendered dimensions of war and peace, which are intimately connected to both private patriarchy and the differential gender impacts of economic globalisation. Violent conflict, which often results from struggles to control power and productive resources, normalises violence and spreads it throughout the societies involved. State and group-sanctioned violence frequently celebrate masculine aggression and perpetuate impunity with regard to men’s violence against women, viewing this violence, inter alia, as the ‘spoils of war’. A feminist political economy approach implies that stability without justice is not possible. The prioritisation of national security and electoral machinery by governments over the social and economic security of citizens in many post-conflict situations is usually destabilising in the long run. Insofar as women are unable to gain access to physical security, social services, justice and economic opportunities, their particular vulnerability to violence continues in peace time. The 20 21

Okin Susan M Justice, Gender and the Family Basic Books New York 1989. Elson Diane ‘Gender Justice, Human Rights, and Neo-liberal Economic Policies’ in Molyneux Maxine and Razavi Shara (eds) Gender, Justice, Development and Rights Oxford University Press New York p 78.

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remainder of this article illustrates broadly how such a feminist political economy method might be used to analyse violence against women in range of contexts, including those conflict and postconflict settings conventionally examined by international relations and law scholars.

3.0 THE GLOBAL POLITICAL ECONOMY: ROOTS OF GENDER VIOLENCE AND INSECURITY Structural adjustment policies imposed by governments and international institutions have disproportionately affected women and ‘have led to increased impoverishment, displacement and internal strife resulting from the political instabilities caused by devaluing national currencies, increasing debt and dependence on foreign investment’.22 Women’s labour has become part of the competitive dynamic of globalisation in part as a survival strategy in families and countries. Yet, a large number of women workers in the informal economy, care sector and in unpaid work often fall outside recognised labour or human rights standards. These women largely from the global South, are highly vulnerable to new forms of gender-based violence associated with the displacement of populations, sex trafficking, home-based production, restrictive immigration and exploitation of local and migrant workers especially around special economic zones and large developments. Conflict, war and natural disaster have further impoverished societies as they make tradeoffs between military spending and spending for social and economic development, creating conditions for severe violence against women.23 Post-conflict peacebuilding may involve privatisation of public services and infrastructure that places greater burden on women’s unpaid labour in the household,24 as well as the establishment of political and legal systems with limited or no significant participation by women. Moreover, post-conflict and disaster reconstruction processes often maintain the culture of impunity toward violence against women and introduce new forms of gender discrimination in economic and political institutions that fuel violence against women and girls. The vignettes below flesh out these dynamics further. They illustrate with specific examples rather than comprehensive analysis how global political-economic processes are linked to patterns of violence against women.

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UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women E/CN.4/2000/68 29 February 2000 para 59 on trafficking in women, women's migration and violence against women. Balakrishnan Radhika Why MES with human rights? Marymount Manhattan College Manhattan 2004 p 34. Seguino Stephanie ‘The Road to Gender Equality’ in Berik Gunseli, Rodgers Yana van der Meulen and Zammit Ann (eds) Social Justice and Gender Equality: Rethinking Development Strategies and Economic Policies Routledge New York 2008 p 44.

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3.1 Competitive Globalisation Due to the impact of global economic restructuring in South Africa some men have experienced long term unemployment and the loss of their previous breadwinner status. These men admit to feelings of powerlessness and to using violence against their women partners to regain a sense of control.

One of the ways globalisation processes perpetuate violence against women is through men’s reactions to these processes and the loss of male entitlement they often bring about. As mentioned above, firms in competitive, global markets may prefer to hire women over men where their labour is deemed ‘cheaper’ due to prevailing gender structures and ideologies. Thus, where neoliberal reforms open economies to global competition there may be increased opportunities for women to enter the labour market and gain economic independence. The obverse of women’s economic empowerment is men’s economic disempowerment. Thus, violence against women may actually rise as women assume non-traditional roles and gain greater access to these economic opportunities and resources; contradicting the association between women’s employment and empowerment in indicators like the gender development index.25 Male violence against intimate women partners may increase especially when the male partner is unemployed, and/or feels his power is undermined in the household.26 As the epigraph attests, men have been socially-constructed to be breadwinners, assuming control over income and resources as well as women, and these masculine breadwinner identities are threatened by women’s newly valued economic roles. In the context of neoliberal restructuring and economic crises, men may be unable to find alternative employment that fulfils their visions of themselves as family breadwinners. This may lead them to act out violently against women and children in the home and in public spaces compensating for the loss of economic control. Research evidence also shows that a reduction in male incomes challenges norms of masculinity and exacerbates tensions between men and women.27 In Latin America and the Caribbean, the severely inequitable distribution of wealth is considered to be one of the chief factors fuelling a rise in the rates of domestic violence, among the highest rates in the world.28 Yet, because conventional economic and legal analysis do not consider power dynamics in the household, unlike feminist political economy, ‘the relationship between high returns to business, and poverty and violence [against women] at the household level remains invisible’.29 25

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Jewkes Rachel ‘Intimate Partner Violence: Causes and Prevention’ (2002) 359 The Lancet 1423; Heise Lori and GarciaMoreno Claudia ‘Violence by Intimate Partners’ in World Report on Violence and Health World Health Organization Geneva 2002 p 99. UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre ‘Domestic Violence against Women and Girls’ (June 2000) 6 Innocenti Digest. The economic success of married women was sometimes accompanied by an increase in intra-family violence. See Chant Sylvia ‘Men in crisis? Reflections on masculinities, work and family in Northwest Costa Rica’ in Jackson Cecile (ed) Men at Work Frank Cass London 2001; Schuler Sidney Ruth, Hashemi Syed M and Badal Shamsul Huda ‘Men’s Violence against Women in Bangladesh: Undermined or Exacerbated by Microcredit Programmes?’ (1998) 8(2) Development in Practice 148. Larrain Soledad ‘Curbing Domestic Violence: Two decades of action’ in Morrison Andrew and Loreto Biehl Maria (eds) Too Close to Home: Domestic Violence in the Americas Inter American Development Bank Washington DC 1999. Sweetman Caroline ‘Feminist Economics: From Power to Poverty’ background paper, contributing to the development of Green Duncan From Poverty to Power Oxfam International Oxford 2008.

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In South Africa where there is a history of state-sponsored violence and the contemporary context is marked by poverty, unemployment, crime and deprivation, several forms of violence against women are prevalent. Rape, in particular, has been found to be pervasive. In one epidemiological study, it has been argued that rape plays a crucial role in male peer group positioning and that it must be understood within the context of the limited number of other recreational opportunities available to poor, township and rural youth. ‘Competition over women has achieved overwhelming importance because it is one of the few available and affordable opportunities for entertainment and arenas where success may be achieved and self-esteem gained’.30 Given the context of poverty, relationships and the input of resources they require may not be realistic options, whereas rape and violence may be more readily deployed to achieve the same goals. Another South African study of fifteen men and their female partners, recruited via two agencies that provide programs for victims and perpetrators of intimate violence, connected men’s economic disempowerment to domestic violence against women.31 The study found that men react to the greater economic opportunities for women and rising male unemployment by attempting to maintain their hold on dominant forms of masculinity through the perpetration of violence. Interviews with men revealed that their ideas of ‘successful masculinity’ were linked to their ability to become or remain economic providers for the family. Men facing chronic unemployment described feeling powerless and employed this feeling as a justification for violence against women.32 In a different context, Kuwait; men reacted against economic restructuring by acting out violently against women. These men draw on traditional patriarchal discourses and objectify women as symbols of liberalisation.33 Tetreault argued that ‘women are implicated…not only because they are themselves objects of value and symbols of communal identity, but also because their emancipation introduces a new class of competitors for political and economic positions’.34 In the struggle between tradition and economic liberalisation women are subject to men’s violence in their quest to maintain their dominant masculine identity and place.

3.2 Free Trade Zones of Gender Violence In the Mexican border town, Ciudad Juarez, 377 women have been murdered in just over a decade, many of them young women who migrated to work in the Maquila factories. The murders, one third of which involved sexual violence, are said to have different motives from domestic violence to drug trafficking but several analysts see femicides as the outcome

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Jewkes Rachel and Abrahams Naeema ‘The epidemiology of rape and sexual coercion in South Africa: an overview’ (2002) 55 Social Science & Medicine 1231. Boonzaier Floretta ‘Woman Abuse in South Africa: A Brief Contextual Analysis’ (2005) 15 Feminism and Psychology 99. As above at 100. Tetrault Mary Ann ‘Kuwait: Sex, Violence and the Politics of Economic Restructuring’ in Doumato Eleanor Abdella and Posusney Marsha Pripstein (eds) Women and globalization in the Arab Middle East Lynne Rienner Publishers Boulder 2003 p 234. As above at 236.

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of men’s reactions to globalization and the feminization of employment in the border region.35

Trade liberalisation has facilitated the globalisation of export-oriented, labour-intensive industries. The creation of free trade zones exacerbates gendered inequalities and creates deregulated environments in which violence against women thrives. These industries, set up in ‘free trade’ or special economic zones exempt from many government regulations, have largely employed women’s labour; often young, migrant women from rural areas hired on temporary contract at lower wages than men and with minimal benefits. Violence against women workers, including abuse of reproductive rights (e.g. through mandatory pregnancy screening), sexual harassment, rape and femicide, has been highly prevalent in many of these free trade zones in developing countries.36 The epigraph concerning the femicides in Ciudad Juarez on the US-Mexico border, where ‘Maquiladora’ factories are located, illustrates the destabilising effects of neoliberal globalisation.37 Thousands of young rural women came to Mexico’s tax-free border cities when the 1992 NAFTA agreement liberalised trade with the United States and the Mexican government created these zones to attract foreign investment. They were treated as dispensable workers and constructed as ‘cheap labour’ (relative to men), leading to high male unemployment in the border cities and towns.38 Studies show that their influx resulted in lower wages for all, which combined with male unemployment created resentment toward young women workers. Both the multinational firms and the states concerned failed to protect these women from targeted, violent abuse.39 Alicia Camacho argued that, just as women emerged as new political and economic agents, they lost their claim to the fundamental rights of personal security.40 The femicides in Ciudad Juarez were the subject of the first inquiry under the optional protocol of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) undertaken by the CEDAW Committee.41 The report of the Committee revealed the multiple vulnerabilities of women to violence in the border city: ‘they were young, come from other parts of Mexico, living in poverty, working in maquilas where protection for their personal security was poor, subject to deception and force’.42 The Committee observed that the women 35 36 37

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Camacho Alicia Schmidt ‘Ciudadana X, Gender Violence and the Denationalization of Women’s Rights in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico’ (2005) 5 The New Centennial Review 259. UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women Report on El Salvador E/CN.4/2005/72/Add.2 Report on Guatemala E/CN.4/2005/72/Add.3 and Report on Mexico E/CN.4/2006/61/Add.4. According to Amnesty International, over 370 women have been murdered in Ciudad Juarez between 1993 and 2005. See http://www.mexicosolidarity.org/specialreports/2004femicides at 4 March 2010. See also Albuquerque Pedro H and Vemala Prasad R ‘A Statistical Evaluation of Femicide Rates in Mexican Cities along the US-Mexico Border’ (October 5 2008) Canadian Law and Economics Association (CLEA) 2008 Meetings. Livingstone Jessica ‘Murder in Juarez: Gender, Sexual Violence and the Global Assembly Line’ (2004) 25(1) Frontiers 59 at 60. Camacho above note 35 at 259. As above at 267. See the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women Report on Mexico CEDAW/C/2005/OP.8/MEXICO. As above at para 63–64.

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did not enjoy basic social and economic rights including the right to decent work, education, health care, housing, sanitation infrastructure and lighting.43 The panel recommended ensuring compliance with the human rights provisions of CEDAW.44 Some multinational export industries located in impoverished regions need to import foreign male workers. Their presence may encourage the development of prostitution and sex trafficking as well as gender-based violence. For example, it is argued that liberalisation of the fisheries industry in the Pacific has encouraged the development of prostitution and sex trafficking on shore, and gender-based violence, which has been shown to rise during an economic recession or crisis such as the loss of markets.45 A case study of Padang province in Papua New Guinea (PNG) has linked the development of canneries by multinational firms and the import of foreign male workers to an increase in the sex-trade, child prostitution and HIV/AIDS. Moreover, many women working in fisheries processing plants in PNG and Fiji are unmarried and face problems of security and harassment, especially when they either live at cannery hostels or travel to and from their shifts in darkness.46 In another example of an extractive, multinational industry, in the Solomon Islands local government officials have accused foreign logging companies of exploiting not only their natural forestry resources but their teenage girls as well. Loggers from Asian countries working for multinational companies are said to employ these girls to work as domestic live-in servants, subjecting them to sexual abuse and leaving them pregnant when they return home.47

3.3 Liberation From What? Transitions to a Market Economy The destabilisation of economic patterns in society by macro-economic policies that facilitate a states’ global integration is associated with growing inequalities and increasing levels of violence against women in several regions, including Latin America, Africa and Asia.48 The market transitions in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union led to widespread increases in poverty, unemployment, hardship, income inequality, stress and violence against women. These factors also indirectly raised women’s vulnerability by encouraging more risk-taking behaviour, more alcohol and drug abuse, the breakdown of social support networks, and the economic dependence of women on their partners.49 43 44 45 46 47 48

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As above at para 289. As above at para 290 and Chinkin Christine ‘The Protection of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Post-Conflict’ OHCHR Women’s Human Rights and Gender Unit 3 at http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/women/. See Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat Gender Issues in Tuna Fisheries: Case Studies in Papua New Guinea, Fiji, and Kiribati Fishtech Consultants Suva 2008. Pacific Network on Globalization Social Impact Assessment of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) being negotiated between the European Community and Pacific ACP States (2008). Radio Australia ‘Solomon official accuses foreign logging companies of exploitation’ September 19 2008. UNICEF Americas and the Caribbean Regional Office The invisible adjustment: Poor women and economic crisis UNICEF New York 1989; Agnihotri Indu and Mazumdar Vina ‘Changing Terms of Political Discourse’ (1995) 30(29) Economic and Political Weekly 1869. UNICEF ‘Women in Transition’ No 6 (1999) Regional Monitoring Report 7. See also True Jacqui Gender, Globalization and Post socialism Columbia University Press New York 2003.

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Some have viewed Eastern Europe and Central Asia as ‘test regions’ for judging the impact of neoliberal policies. Rather than revealing positive effects of market reform, almost all the countries in these regions have exhibited regressions in women’s economic and social status.50 The biggest regression has been in Eastern Europe according to Social Watch’s 2008 Gender Equity Index. As well as increases in rape and domestic violence, this region has seen hundreds of thousands of young women trafficked for prostitution and other indentured labour each year due to the loss of economic opportunities emanating from liberalisation. Women are often the hardest hit by economic transition, financial crises and rising unemployment. ‘Economic and political insecurity provoke private and public backlash against women’s rights that may be expressed through violence and articulated in the form of defending cultures and traditions’.51 Widespread discrimination against girls and women in education, employment and business, and the lack of a state social safety net can mean they are not protected from violence when economies rapidly expand and contract. Export-oriented development in East Asia has had a detrimental impact on women and girls due to patriarchal family-firm structures and the lesser value attributed to women’s paid and unpaid labour. There is considerable evidence that economic growth in East Asian countries such as Korea, Taiwan, China and Hong Kong was accelerated by increasing women’s employment, while at the same time widening gender wage gaps in the labour market.52 When the Asian Financial Crisis hit in 1997-1998, the impact on women and girls in the region was disproportionate as early indications of the impact of the 2008 financial crisis also suggest. Girls were removed from school to help at home or they were forced to seek work in the sex sector to support household incomes as a result of cutbacks in public service jobs and salaries. 53 In some East Asian countries women’s paid labour intensified while in others, notably South Korea, their labour participation shrunk. The resulting increased financial burdens strained intra-household relationships, boosted suicides, family violence and abandonment.54

3.4 Crossing Borders: Exploitation of Migrant Women Workers All over the world, but especially in labour receiving countries, women domestic workers are abused and exploited. They work in the home where violence among family members is still acceptable or at least beyond the purview of national and international law.55

50 51 52 53

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See UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women Report on the Russian Federation E/CN.4/2006/61/Add.2, Report on Moldova A/HRC/11/6/Add.4 and Report on Tajikstan A/HRC/11/6/Add.2. ‘Montreal Principles on Women’s Economic, Social and Cultural Rights’ (August 2004) 26(3) Human Rights Quarterly 760. Gupta Nabanita Datta ‘Gender, pay and development’ (2002) 3(2) Labour and Management in Development Journal 1; Berik Gunseli ‘Mature export-led growth and gender wage inequality in Taiwan’ (2004) 6(3) Feminist Economics 1. Truong Thanh-Dam ‘A Feminist Perspective on the Asian Miracle and Crisis’ (2001) 1(1) Journal of Human Development 159; Young Brigitte ‘Financial Crises and Social Reproduction’ in Bakker Isabella and Gill Stephen (eds) Power, Production and Social Reproduction: Human In/Security in the Global Political Economy Palgrave Macmillan New York 2004 p 103. Floro Mario and Dymski Gary ‘Financial Crisis, Gender, and Power’ (2000) 28(7) World Development 1369. See Piper Nicola ‘Feminization of Labor Migration as Violence against Women’ (2003) 9(6) Violence against Women 724.

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The expansion of women’s labour market participation in developed countries and the reduction of state welfare provisions have fuelled a growing demand for workers in the growing service sector. The employment of foreign-born women has partially met this demand extending across an increasingly broad range of economic sectors, from prostitution and sex work, to domestic service, child and aged-care, and including highly regulated occupations such as nursing. Neoliberal structural reforms have created debt, unemployment, reduced social services and increased poverty especially in developing countries, requiring more women from those countries to become income-earners for their families. Migration has been one option for women to receive an income and provide economic security for their families. Women are often chosen by their families to migrate based on the expectation that they will sacrifice themselves to a greater degree than men for the welfare of their families — i.e., work harder, remit a higher proportion of their earnings, spend less on themselves, and endure worse living conditions.56 In 2005 women were nearly half of all economic migrants (95 out of 191 million) and they dominate in migration streams to developed countries. Remittances from international migration in 2005 totaled US$251 billion and have had a significant effect on diminishing poverty in developing countries,57 although these remittances have been falling since the onset of the financial crisis with households cutting back on services. Vulnerability to violence is frequently part of the employment relationship for migrant women workers due to the unequal power relations at work based on the combined oppressions of gender, class, nationality and ethnicity.58 Migrant women usually work in poor conditions with low social status, live in degrading housing situations, and lack basic legal protections and opportunities for redress. Domestic workers, for instance, are typically excluded from standard labour practices such as minimum wage, regular payment of wages, a weekly day off and paid leave. Employers evade domestic labour laws and governments rarely monitor their observance in the domestic sphere.59 Labour-sending countries for their part have an economic incentive to ignore their breach as they benefit from the high levels of remittances and may not wish to jeopardise their relations with relevant host countries. Structural inequalities in global trade regimes allow freedom of movement for firms, investors and professional workers typically from developed countries but limit the movement of low-skilled workers usually from developing countries. Very few countries have ratified the international conventions that extend citizenship and labour rights to migrant workers. Just twenty-three per cent of states have ratified the 1949 ILO Convention on Migration for Employment, only ten per cent have ratified the 1975 ILO Convention Concerning Migration in Abusive Conditions and the Promotion of Equality of Opportunity and the Treatment of Migrant 56

57 58 59

UN INSTRAW Gender, Remittances and Development: The Feminization of Migration: Working Paper UN INSTRAW Dominican Republic 2008. See also Kofman Eleonore and Raghuram Parvati The Implications of Migration for Gender and Care Regimes in the South UNRISD Stockholm 2008. United Nations Population Fund The State of the World’s Population: The Good, The Bad, The Promising: Migration in the 21st Century UNFPA New York 2006 p 62. Piper above note 55 at 724. Varia Nisha ‘Globalization Comes Home: Protecting Migrant Domestic Workers' Rights’ in Human Rights Watch World Report 2007 Human Rights Watch New York p 1.

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Workers, and a mere seventeen per cent of states have signed the 1990 International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families.60 There are clear linkages between violence against migrant women workers and the failure of states to protect these women workers by monitoring minimum labour standards and ensuring access to adequate housing, education, and alternative employment opportunities.61 Migrant women working in the sex sector as well as those trafficked for prostitution face extreme vulnerabilities. Trafficking is the underside of migration and inseparable from processes of globalisation and trade liberalisation.62 Yet it is more often addressed as a state security and immigration issue or even a problem of violence against women (as in the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action) but not as an economic issue, relating to the loss of economic opportunities brought about by state and global restructuring. The trade in human beings is part of the globalisation of trade in goods, investment, production and services, and needs to be part of trade policy discussions at the World Trade Organization.63 This recognition would make it clear that all trade occurs in an institutional and moral context and that trade policy as a result must be held accountable for its social as well as its economic impacts. Increasing rates of trafficking are linked with women’s low socio-economic status, gender discrimination in education, employment and business and women’s relative lack of economic opportunities in specific contexts of neoliberal globalisation. The majority of trafficked women have made a decision to migrate in search of better economic opportunities, not to be abducted, kidnapped, or to work in indentured labour conditions.64 State policies that treat trafficked women as criminals or mere victims in need of rescue and rehabilitation fail to take account of their economic agency and their basic human rights in the prevention, protection and prosecution of trafficking.65 States often seek to control women and police their bodies rather than empower them.66 Indeed, some argue that it is not migration for sex work that should be abolished, but rather the power relations between trafficked women and traffickers which involve physical, psychological and economic violence against women. When slavery was abolished, for instance, it was the power relationship that was abolished, not work in the cotton fields or in domestic contexts.67

60 61

62 63 64 65 66 67

United Nations International Migration and Development: Report of the Secretary-General A/60/871 2006. See the recommendations and best practice measures undertaken by states to address violence against migrant women workers in 2007: United Nations Violence against women migrant workers: Report of the Secretary-General, Sixty-Second Session A/62/177 2007. Truong Thanh-Dam ‘Organized Crime and Human Trafficking’ in Veriano E, Magallenes J and Bridel L (eds) Transnational Organized Crime Carolina Academic Press North Carolina 2003 p 53. Truong above note 53. For a political economy analysis that extends feminist debates on prostitution to global politics. See Jeffreys Sheila The Industrial Vagina: The Political Economy of the Global Sex Trade Routledge New York 2008. See Agustin Laura Sex at the Margins Zed Books London 2008. Sullivan Barbara ‘Trafficking in Women: Feminism and New International Law’ (2003) 5(1) International Feminist Journal of Politics 67. Lansink Annette ‘Human rights focus on trafficked women: An international law and feminist perspective’ (2006) 70 Agenda 8 see http://www.agenda.org.za/content/blogcategory/2/88889070/ at 4 March 2010.

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Globalisation introduces new vulnerabilities to violence, as well as offering potential for empowerment through labour migration. But neoliberal government policies that fail to attend to the basic social and economic entitlements of individuals and families make violence against women a more likely outcome than empowerment.68 Restrictive immigration policies focused on national security and a narrow construction of economic interests lead to greater economic exploitation, physical abuse and violence against migrant women workers. Research evidence shows that where countries have male biased immigration laws, women migrants are more vulnerable to violence. Prostitutes and domestic workers require not just cultural ‘recognition’ to redress their experiences of violence but material ‘redistribution.’69 Rather than restricting women’s and girls’ right to migrate and seek work, ‘the real challenge lies in creating the guarantees for them to do so safely and with dignity’.70

3.5 Gendered Violence in Armed Conflict In the Ugandan civil war, women were reportedly raped in order to extract resources from them, and also to take away the agricultural labour force of the community. Because women do the majority of agricultural work in that country, soldiers attempted to stop women from being able to work, effectively cutting the food supply of the ‘enemy’.71

It is by now well-documented that sexual and physical violence against women increases as a direct result of armed conflict. The large scale rape of women, for example, has been a military strategy in countless historical and recent conflicts.72 The causes of armed conflict are often linked with attempts to control economic resources such as oil, metal, diamonds, drugs or contested territorial boundaries.73 Violence against women may be one way to achieve this control and extraction of resources as the Ugandan epigraph highlights.74 Risk of violence is particularly acute for refugee and internally displaced women and girls (IDPs) in conflict situations. Women in refugee and IDP camps lack privacy and may be forced to live in the same quarters or in close proximity to male strangers, which decreases their security. Studies show a high level of sexual violence in and around these camps. Moreover, once the conflict has ended, women who are repatriated often no longer have houses or land to return to. This is due to a number of reasons, including destruction, their forced relocation to a different part of the country, discriminatory inheritance laws, lack of proper property titles, and secondary 68 69 70 71 72 73 74

See UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women above note 22. Varia above note 59. As above at 10. See also Ramírez Carlota, Domínguez Mar García and Morais Julia Míguez Crossing Borders: Gender, Remittances and Development UN INSTRAW Santo Domingo 2005. Turshen Meredith ‘The political economy of violence against women during armed conflict in Uganda’ (Fall 2000) 67(3) Social Research 803. See Kelly L ‘Wars against Women’ in Jacobs Susie M, Jacobson Ruth and Marchbank Jen (eds) States of Conflict: Gender, Violence and Resistance Zed Books London 2000 p 45. El Jack Amani Bridge Development — Gender: Gender and Armed Conflict Overview Report Institute of Development Studies University of Sussex Brighton 2003 p 8. In some cases the soldiers accomplished this goal further by amputating limbs. See Human Rights Watch cited in Turshen ‘The political economy of violence’ (2000) above note 71.

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occupants. Forced marriages by military commanders in order to obtain homes or land inherited by women are reportedly common in Afghanistan.75 Poor rural women, IDPs and refugee women, and women living in conflict zones are at risk of violence in their efforts to provide food for themselves and their families.76 Many women are raped and abused while seeking basic necessities such as water, food and firewood for cooking. This violence is perpetrated by local civilians, gangs, soldiers and other armed groups. In Sudan, rapes and other forms of sexual abuse have been frequently reported when displaced women and girls leave camp areas to gather firewood. 77 Lack of access to income sources has forced displaced women to collect firewood in the Kieni forest of Kenya, where they are reported to be subjected to abuse, including sexual abuse and severe beatings. ‘Sexual violence against displaced women collecting fuel has become so common that camp workers in Darfur have abbreviated the phenomenon to “firewood rape”.’ 78 During displacement, women are often forced to ‘pay’ for food with sex: ‘Demands for sexual services sometimes constitute an informal ‘currency’ in which bribes are paid. Examples range from rape and assault by service providers to sexual harassment and psychological abuse’.79 ‘In Liberia, displaced women have been forced to exchange sex for aid, including food from national and international peace workers, according to a report by Save the Children.’80 Internally displaced women are vulnerable to violence as a result of their economic resources being stripped from them during the displacement and their lack of access to economic resources afterward. They remain economically disadvantaged decades after the displacement. There are reports as well that displaced women fleeing their homes or living in IDP camps have sometimes been forced into prostitution in order to survive or have fallen prey to traffickers.81

3.6 Gender Violence in Post-Crisis Reconstruction In the 2004 tsunami many more women than men died in both Sri Lanka and India, resulting in an unbalanced current sex ratio. But the post-disaster reconstruction effort by international NGOs only compounded this gender discrimination. Compensation was generally handed out to male members of the family who, in many cases, did not share it

75

76

77 78 79 80

81

Proceedings of the Asia Regional Consultation on The Interlinkages between Violence Against Women and Women’s Right to Adequate Housing held in cooperation with the UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, New Delhi India, October, 2003 p 43. See Mooney Erin ‘The Concept of Internal Displacement and the Case for Internally Displaced Persons as a Category of Concern’ (2005) 24(3) Refugee Survey Quarterly 9; and Onyango J Oloka ‘The Plight of the Larger Half: Human Rights, Gender Violence and the Legal Status of Refugee and Internally Displaced Women in Africa’ (1996) 24(2) Denver Journal of Law and Policy 349. United Nations Development Fund for Women Progress of the World’s Women UNIFEM New York 2008 100. As above. As above at 44. Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre Briefing Paper see http://www.internal-displacement.org/8025708F004 D404D/(httpPages)/953DF04611AD1A88802570A10046397B?OpenDocument at 4 March 2010; ‘UN Faces More Accusations of Sexual Misconduct’ Washington Post 13 March 2005 p A22. As above.

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with the women or surviving women-only households. After the disaster there was also a large increase in documented cases of physical abuse, rape, forced and early marriage.82

Women and girls displaced by conflict and by natural disasters have been subject to rape, sexual abuse, early and forced marriage, and trafficking. 83 What is less known is the long term impact of this violence against women on women and girls’ wellbeing welfare in the post-crisis phase. The stigmatisation, and sometimes even forced displacement, of women who have been raped, for instance, often results in their impoverishment and in further violence against them.84 In the Darfur region of western Sudan, there are reports that thousands of women were raped and tortured, and have lost their husbands and livelihoods as a result of the conflict.85 These women and their families have become internally displaced persons vulnerable to ongoing violence in camps and resettlement zones.86 In both conflict and disaster situations, men may feel themselves powerless and unable to fulfill their duty to protect their families.87 As in the case of unemployment, this can arouse men’s resentment and erupt in violence against women family members, especially if women are the economic providers.88 Indeed, women often become heads of households during times of conflict or in the aftermath of a disaster, as men may be out fighting, be killed, or elect to leave the affected area in order to look for work elsewhere. Women who are left behind thus become primarily responsible for their family’s survival. Even when a political settlement has been achieved, organised crime may perpetuate political and gender-based violence. Failure to address women’s social and economic needs and opportunities in post-crisis situations contributes to their poverty, material insecurity and vulnerability to violence as a result. Begging and prostitution, which may be resorted to as a means of redressing poverty, create further vulnerability to violence and trafficking.89 The invisibility of violence against women both during and after the conflict/disaster is over, exacerbates gender inequalities and marginalises women in reconstruction and state-building processes despite UN Security Council Resolution

82

83 84

85 86 87

88 89

Housing and Land Rights Network Habitat International Coalition Post-Tsunami Relief and Rehabilitation: A Violation of Human Rights Report of a Fact-finding Mission to Tsunami Affected Areas of Tamil-Nadu, India and Sri Lanka South Asia Regional Programme (August 8 2005) p 14. Felten-Biermann Claudia ‘Gender and Natural Disaster: Sexualized violence and the tsunami’ (2006) 49(3) Development 82. See El Jack Amani above note 73. Women’s economic position also suffers as a result of natural disasters, making them more vulnerable to violence. See Ikeda Keiko ‘Gender differences in human loss and vulnerability in natural disasters’ (1995) 2(2) Indian Journal of Gender Studies 171. See Human Rights Watch Five Years On, No Justice for Sexual Violence in Darfur Human Rights Watch New York 2008; Hampton Tracy ‘Agencies Speak out on Rape in Darfur’ (2005) 294 Journal of American Medical Associations 542. United Nations Population Fund Dispatches from Darfur UNFPA New York 2007. Insufficient economic opportunities for men to provide for their families and as such live up to expectations of successful masculinity may encourage conflict in the first place. See Dolan Chris ‘Collapsing Masculinities and Weak States’ in Cleaver Francis (ed) Masculinities Matter! Men, Gender and Development Zed Books New York 2002 p 57. As above at 7; United Nations Population Fund The State of the World Population: Culture, Gender, and Human Rights UNFPA New York 2008. Chinkin above note 44; Enarson Elaine Gender and Natural Disaster Report: ICCPR Working Paper No. 1 ILO Recovery and Reconstruction Department 2000 p 14.

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1325, which recognises the right of women to participate in these processes.90 This has been the case in Timor Leste, Afghanistan and Iraq, for instance, where few women have held decisionmaking positions in reconstruction or state-building agencies and efforts. Despite a UN directive in East Timor calling for thirty per cent of all national and district hiring within every classification/level of employment to be of women, this commitment was not realised.91 In Iraq only three out of twenty-five members of the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority were women, there was only one woman in the interim cabinet, and not a single woman was part of the drafting committee for the interim constitution. The poor representation of women in political institutions is in part a consequence of the gender inequality in economic and social resources and of women’s experiences of violence in the public realm. However, when this gender imbalance in decision-making is sanctioned by the international community, it reinforces local hostility toward women’s public involvement, including on religious grounds. Most women candidates refused to campaign in public in the lead-up to the January 2005 elections in Iraq because of fears of violence. Men feared violence too but the violence perpetrated against women has religious support.92 Some research suggests women can be empowered in post-conflict political situations by transforming gender roles and women's place in society, as for example in Palestine and Rwanda.93 Certainly, there are opportunities for addressing endemic problems in society and improving the economic and social rights of citizens during the rebuilding of societies after crises, but these opportunities often discriminate against women.94 For example, in the early phases of state-building it is common to designate mass employment opportunities for men, such as roadbuilding and housing construction, which typically offer quick employment to large numbers of men. But mass employment opportunities for women that are culturally acceptable are typically not planned or implemented. In the first years of the Afghan reconstruction, external actors had a limited vision of women’s economic activity, such as in the form of sewing projects.95 At the time of the UN transitional administration in East Timor (UNTAET) domestic violence against women was pervasive across the whole society.96 In 2000, forty per cent of all offences committed against women were by male family members.97 Yet, some argue that international and Timorese policy makers turned their attention to establishing formal legal and 90 91

92 93 94 95 96 97

Wilson Jennifer, Phillips Brenda D and Neal David M ‘Domestic violence after disaster’ in Enarson Elaine and Morrow Betty Hearn (eds) The Gendered Terrain of Disaster Praeger Publishers Westport CT 1998 p 115. Although 33 per cent of UNTAET international civilian officials were women, only 11 per cent of UNTAET East Timorese staff were women with just 4 per cent in the civilian police force and 2.4 per cent in the peacekeeping force. See also Charlesworth Hilary ‘Worlding Women in International Law’ in D’Costa Bina and Lee Koo Katrina (eds) Gender and Global Politics in the Asia-Pacific Palgrave Macmillan New York 2008 p 23. As above at 26. Holt Maria ‘Palestinian Women, Violence, and the Peace Process’ (2003) 13(2) Development in Practice 223; See also www.profemme.rw at 4 March 2010. Benard Cheryl, Jones Seth G, Oliker Olga, Quantic-Thurston Cathryn, Stearns Brooke K and Cordell Kristin Women and Nation-Building RAND Stanford 2008. As above. Hall Nina and True Jacqui ‘Gender Mainstreaming in a Post-Conflict State: Toward Democratic Peace in Timor Leste’ in D’Costa and Lee Koo above note 91. Charlesworth above note 91 at 22.

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political institutions rather than addressing the basic economic and social needs of society, as well as the culture of impunity and the human rights violations rampant in the private sphere.98 The eighty per cent unemployment rate in urban areas partly explains the high prevalence of family violence. ‘Violence within the family became a way for men to reassert their domestic power’.99 This situation in Timor is typical of other conflicts and reconstruction processes.

4.0 CONCLUSION Patterns of violence against women from the home to the transnational realm are structurally linked to patterns of global transformation instigated by economic, political, military and natural environmental forces. This article has sought to highlight rather than comprehensively analyse some strategic sites where we can see global processes such as neoliberal economic policies, armed conflict, natural disasters and other crises, as well as reconstruction efforts, implicated in reinforcing existing gender inequalities and created new forms of marginalisation and violence against women For scholars, advocates and policymakers who seek to end violence against women, the lack of analysis of the political economic processes that shape and perpetuate gender-based violence worldwide is deeply troubling. Employing a feminist political economy method, the outlines of which I have suggested here, reveals the destabilisation brought about by economic globalisation and neoliberal policies promulgated by states and international institutions and how they exacerbate violence against women. Women’s experiences of violence and abuse are shown to be intertwined with the feminisation of poverty, transnational labour exploitation, trade liberalisation, limitations on their sexual and reproductive rights, and control of their mobility. Feminist political economy analysis, although undertaken only at a general level here, should make us sceptical that current global initiatives, such as the UN ‘UNITE’ Campaign to end violence against women by 2015 and the UN Security Council Resolutions on women, peace and security, will have a significant impact on eradicating violence against women. While these international initiatives remain disconnected from the larger transnational struggle for social and economic equality, they will most likely fail to achieve this goal. Nancy Fraser has argued that the emancipatory promise of feminism depends on our ‘reconnecting struggles against personalised subjection to the critique of a capitalist system’.100 She entices feminists to ‘think big’ by bringing back and integrating feminist political economy with cultural critique.101 This article and the larger book project of which it is a part, aim to contribute to that rejoining of critical, feminist interdisciplinary analysis to address the deep-rooted structural 98 99 100 101

Ospina S Participation of Women in Politics and Decision-Making in Timor-Leste Unpublished Report of UNIFEM Dili 2006 p 16. As above at 23 citing Fitzsimons Tracy ‘Engendering Justice and Security After War’ in Call Charles T (ed) Constructing Justice and Security After War US Institute for Peace Press Books Washington DC 2007 p 351 at 353. Fraser Nancy ‘Feminism, Capitalism and the Cunning of History’ (2009) 56 New Left Review 115. As above at 117.

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causes and consequences of violence against women. If ending violence against women globally is one of the key struggles of our age, then we should do nothing less than marshal the best feminist-informed analysis to interpret and to transform the causes of this violence.z

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