Scholars have documented the gendered effects of civil war, but have paid less attention to the gendered effects of political violence in ‘mundane’ settings—meaning the daily practices of working within parties, holding elections, and running the government. True, scholars have noted a rising resistance to women politicians because they are women, terming this phenomenon violence against women in politics. Yet how this concept meshes with political violence remains unclear: women often enter political contexts already shaped by political violence, and women experience political violence for myriad reasons. How should policymakers interpret—and thus prevent and punish—abuses suffered by women political actors?
To answer this question, we disaggregate political violence into motives, forms, and impact.
Gendered motives appear when perpetrators use violence to preserve hegemonic men’s control of the political system: here, the motive is misogyny, and the targets are usually women. Yet gendered roles and beliefs can shape the forms and impact of political violence, without misogyny motivating the violence itself. Gendered forms emphasize how gender structures the means through which men and women commit and experience political violence (for instance, women are targeted sexually and men are targeted physically). Gendered impacts capture how different audiences understand the gender dimensions of political violence, allowing that understandings may differ from motives and forms.
Disaggregating forms, motives, and impacts offers theoretical and methodological improvements over prior approaches. We separate the structural violence of misogyny—meaning the indignities and attacks women experience because they are women—from political violence—meaning the abuses women suffer because perpetrators wish to disrupt politics, elections, or governance. Since differences in women’s and men’s experiences reveal how and when gender work, we emphasize the importance of comparing women and men. Finally, we show how our approach better informs laws and policies that protect women’s political rights.
