 The gender of violence in war and conflictLaura Sjoberg and Karia Hartung Chapter 27 in Handbook on Gender in World Politics, 2026, pp 173-179 from Edward Elgar Publishing Abstract: Often, those who think about gender-based violence in war conceptualize it narrowly: gender-based violence in conflict is sexual in nature, victimizes women, and happens in the context of direct fighting perpetrated by armed fighters. Frequently, if a case of gender-based violence fails to match more than one of the listed criteria, it is at best difficult to conceptualize and at worst ignored or downplayed. We argue that a broad understanding of gendered violence in conflict is essential to understanding it – as well as the relationship between gender and violence more generally. This chapter's readings of gender-based violence in war show that it is not purely sexual, not something that exclusively victimizes women, and not always committed by soldiers on the battlefield. Instead, it suggests that gender-based violence in war and conflict is complicated, multi-dimensional, and everyday. Coming from the theoretical position that war is gender-based violence, and gender hierarchy is war, we argue that a more holistic understanding of gender-based violence helps us to understand the full spectrum of gender/violence in a gendered/violent world. Keywords: Gender-based Violence; Feminism; Security; War; Women (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:21594_27 Ordering information: This item can be ordered from Access Statistics for this chapter More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing |
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