Our focus is on the messages conveyed by acts of violence that target women and feminised subjects, which constitute a system of communication of power and subordination with structural ramifications in society. The overall aim of the research is to unravel the meanings of gendered acts of violence in terms of existing power relations in these countries and as understood by a range of interlocutors, including survivors, activists, researchers, and government officials. Our investigation of the dynamics of acts of GBV has involved deeper feminist reflections on the politics of research and power relations.
Category: Archive
Transition Like an Egyptian: Investigating Transgender Experiences with Violence in Egypt
Our focus is on the messages conveyed by acts of violence that target women and feminised subjects, which constitute a system of communication of power and subordination with structural ramifications in society. The overall aim of the research is to unravel the meanings of gendered acts of violence in terms of existing power relations in these countries and as understood by a range of interlocutors, including survivors, activists, researchers, and government officials. Our investigation of the dynamics of acts of GBV has involved deeper feminist reflections on the politics of research and power relations.
Messages of Gender-Based Violence: Reflections on the Politics of the Methodology of Conversations
Our focus is on the messages conveyed by acts of violence that target women and feminised subjects, which constitute a system of communication of power and subordination with structural ramifications in society. The overall aim of the research is to unravel the meanings of gendered acts of violence in terms of existing power relations in these countries and as understood by a range of interlocutors, including survivors, activists, researchers, and government officials. Our investigation of the dynamics of acts of GBV has involved deeper feminist reflections on the politics of research and power relations.
Violence Against Women with Disabilities in Zimbabwe
In patriarchal societies, where inequalities between men and women prevail, women with disabilities are particularly vulnerable to gendered violence. While gendered violence affects all women, research indicates that women with disabilities face a heightened risk (United Nations General Assembly 4/67/227, 4). Globally, UN Women (United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women) reports that 60% to 80% of women with disabilities have experienced sexual violence, with 50% subjected to multiple assaults (2015, 149).
Researching Christian-related Violence Against Women/Intimate Partner Violence (VAW/IPV) in Ghana: Insider/Outsider Positionalities
The hierarchical relationship between women and men, the stereotyped socialisation of boys and girls, and varying levels of discrimination are not merely societal but also religious constructs. I would argue that this emphasis on a hierarchical family structure, together with biblical texts on female submission, contributes to providing a theological basis for women’s subordination and gender inequality. This, in addition to the cultural practice of payment of the bridewealth (tiri nsa among the Akan), weakens women’s ability to leave toxic marriages or relationships.
“We Are Not Just Data Sources!” The Pursuit of Epistemic Justice
Through these conversations, we queer and decolonise dominant epistemologies while reflecting on the unique ways queer knowledge is created in the global South. We explore the emancipatory potential of storytelling, uncovering resilience, trauma, queer joy and the complexities of the mundane. This engagement becomes a vantage point for exploring epistemic violence, examining the intimacies of queering imagined separations between “communities” and “researchers” and interrogating how the unequal power dynamics between funders and recipient organisations influence knowledge creation.
A Feminist Theory of Violence by Françoise Vergès. London: Pluto Press, 2022.
In A Feminist Theory of Violence, Françoise Vergès examines several broad questions concerning feminist theorising about violence. She aims “to contribute to the reflection on violence as a structural element of patriarchy and capitalism, rather than specifically male” (4). Vergès proceeds by eschewing an analysis of “patriarchy through the female victim/male perpetrator prism” (4), instead proposing “a critique of dependency on the police and the judicialization of social issues—in other words, of the spontaneous recourse to the criminal justice system to protect so-called ‘vulnerable’ populations”
Research As More than Extraction: Knowledge Production and Gender-Based Violence in African Societies edited by Annie Bunting, Allen Kiconco, and Joel Quirk. Ohio University Press, 2023
Research is more than extraction” is an obvious principle, a mantra, for studies about people’s lives and most especially the lives of those who have suffered and still do from unimaginable yet all too frequent gender-based violence in times of wars and armed conflicts. Yet, historically, researchers from various disciplines have simply extracted “data” as impersonal bits and pieces, commodifying survivors’ experiences before leaving the research sites, never to be heard from or to return. Papers and books are published and nothing more is said or done.
How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue. New York: Random House, 2021.
Most of these were Northern (Mbue lives in New York) and the book was heralded in the New York Times as one of the 10 best novels of 2021. Writing with some awe, reviewer El Akkad eulogised Mbue’s narrative of the resistances through which the fictional village of Kosawa seeks to survive being poisoned, attacked, and wearied into near-death, and then death, by the politics of oil extractivism under the control of Pexton, a United States-based company
Remembering Everjoice Jeketa Win (EJ)
This issue focuses on pan-African feminist popular education in Global Africa as a liberatory force for women. Our intention is to contribute to the documentation of both historical and contemporary practices of pan-African feminist popular education.