The Political Economy of Conflict and Violence Against Women

The Political Economy of Conflict and Violence against Women shows how political, economic, social and ideological processes intersect to shape conflict-related, gender-based violence against women. Through feminist interrogations of the politics of economies, struggles for political power and the gender order, this collection reveals how sexual orders and regimes are linked to spaces of production. Crucially it argues that these spaces are themselves firmly anchored in overlapping patriarchies that are sustained and reproduced during and after war through violence that is physical as well as structural.

Through an analysis of legal regimes and structures of social arrangements, this book frames militarization as a political-economic dynamic, developing a radical critique of liberal peacebuilding and peacemaking that does not challenge patriarchy or modes of production and accumulation.

This book brings together the work of a group of feminists from the global South. The authors are diverse in their backgrounds, experience, and academic and disciplinary orientations. They work in different political, economic, social and cultural contexts and some have approached writing about the political economies of violence against women in their own countries as much (or more) from lived experience and experiential insights as from formal or scholarly research, which we consider entirely valid and in keeping with feminist epistemology.