State Crime, Women and Gender

Victoria Collins, Victoria E. Collins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138023550
• eBook ISBN: 9781317690214
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

The United Nations has called violence against women "the most pervasive, yet least recognized human rights abuse in the world" and there is a long-established history of the systematic victimization of women by the state during times of peace and conflict. This book contributes to the established literature on women, gender and crime and the growing research on state crime and extends the discussion of violence against women to include the role and extent of crime and violence perpetrated by the state.

State Crime, Women and Gender examines state-perpetrated violence against women in all its various forms. Drawing on case studies from around the world, patterns of state-perpetrated violence are examined as it relates to women's victimization, their role as perpetrators, resistors of state violence, as well as their engagement as professionals in the international criminal justice system. From the direct involvement of Condaleeza Rice in the United States-led war on terror, to the women of Egypt's Arab Spring Uprising, to Afghani poetry as a means to resist state-sanctioned patriarchal control, case examples are used to highlight the pervasive and enduring problem of state-perpetrated violence against women.

The exploration of topics that have not previously been addressed in the criminological literature, such as women as perpetrators of state violence and their role as willing consumers who reinforce and replicate the existing state-sanctioned patriarchal status quo, makes State Crime, Women and Gender a must-read for students and scholars engaged in the study of state crime, victimology and feminist criminology.

1 State crime, women and gender

An introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781315776354-1

Violence against women both violates and impairs or nullifies the enjoyment by women of their human rights and fundamental freedoms. … In all societies, to a greater or lesser degree, women and girls are subjected to physical, sexual and psychological abuse that cuts across lines of income, class and culture.

(Beijing Declaration and Platform for Change, 1995, para. 122)

In November 2006, the international news media began reporting on the story of the rape of a 19-year-old girl in the small Saudi Arabian village of al-Awwamiya. The young woman was being driven home by a male friend when they were ambushed by two men. Having blocked their car, the men kidnapped the young woman and her companion and drove them to a deserted area where they, as well as five other men, brutally and repeatedly raped the young woman (Setrakian, 2007). Despite the shocking nature of this attack, the reason for the international news scrutiny was not the violent rape itself, but the events that occurred after the women reported her attack to the police. Instead of treating her as a victim of a horrendous crime, the young woman, known as the Girl of Qatif, was charged with the crime of being alone with a man, something that is illegal in the highly segregated Saudi society, and as a result was found guilty and sentenced to receive 90 lashes (NBC, 2006). This sentence was later increased to 200 lashes and six months in jail as she was accused of “exhibiting disrespectful behavior towards the court” (CNN, 2007) for speaking to the media. In an official statement from Saudi Arabia’s Supreme Judicial Council a spokesperson said, “the case was treated normally through the regular court procedure” (CNN, 2007). Although international outcry has been expressed over this particular case, something which is indeed warranted, this is not an isolated incident of barbaric treatment of a woman by the very power structures that are supposed to protect her from harm.

As a perpetrator of violence against women the state is overrepresented. The examples are innumerable and span the course of history. As noted in the above extract from the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Change (1995), violence against women persists across all cultures and societies impacting women from all social groups. A brief browsing of recent media stories exposes many different examples of the victimization of women and girls where there is evidence of state involvement. For example, consider the recent coverage from Burma that indicates that since the implementation of the nominal civilian government in 2010, there have been reports of over 100 rapes perpetrated by government soldiers in the northern region of the country (Women’s League of Burma, 2014). Also consider the sentencing of rape victim Gulnaz to twelve years in prison in Afghanistan (BBC News, 2011), the gang rape of a Danish woman in Delhi (BBC News, 2014), the saving of a woman from stoning in the Taliban controlled region of Kanduz (BBC News, 2013), and the recent reporting on the culture of impunity for perpetrators of rape in India where there has been a 7.1 percent increase in rape rates since 2010 (Tilak, 2013).

Violence against women has been called the “most pervasive yet least recognized human rights abuse in the world” (United Nations Population Fund, 2014). Reports indicate that between 35 and 70 percent of women have experienced non-partner sexual abuse and physical violence at the hands of an intimate (World Health Organization, 2013), over 46 million girls are child brides (Black, 2001), and women represent 55 percent of all people trafficked into forced labor (Pinheiro & Ward, 2008). In addition, 40 to 50 percent of women in countries in the European Union have reported experiencing unwanted sexual advances and harassment at work, including unwanted physical contact (Directorate-General for Employment, Industrial Relations and Social Affairs, 1998). Furthermore, women and girls are particularly vulnerable during times of conflict where they have been systemically targeted as a tactic of war as demonstrated in both the genocides in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Rwanda (Mullins, 2009). Based on the statistics listed above, violence against women can be likened to a global pandemic with far-reaching consequences including deaths, injuries, psychological harm, infringement on freedom and liberty, as well as devastating health consequences (UN Women, 2014).

There is a long history of the systematic victimization of women by the state especially as it relates to conflict (i.e., rape as a weapon of war, genocidal rape, enslavement, and the victimization of women as the “spoils” of war). State-perpetrated violence against women also occurs during peacetime where women are not afforded the same protections as men by the state and in some situations are even persecuted by the criminal justice system for their victimization by men, such as in the practice of sentencing a woman to death for being raped and punishing women and girls with violence for pursuing an education. Although there has been state crime scholarship investigating such abuses, the focus has been on explaining specific cases of state-perpetrated violence where gender and sex have not been the primary focus. State-perpetrated gender-based violence takes many forms, direct and indirect, specific and general, targeted and institutionalized, systematic and chaotic, as well as acts and omissions. Whether the focus is the short sentences received by the perpetrators of these crimes, or the lack of protections for women and children against male-perpetrated harms, the common threads that link them all is that they disproportionately impact women and are perpetrated overtly by the state or within a state structure that is supposed to protect the victims from these types of harm.

Interestingly, there has yet to be a more holistic criminological exploration of the relationship between state-perpetrated violence, or state crime, and women. This is not to say that state violence against women and girls has not been addressed in its various forms as there is a vast literature especially from feminist, victimology, and state crime scholars that has examined patterns of victimization, some of which have included examinations of state involvement, implicit and explicit, that have either directly caused or facilitated violence against women. For example, there is considerable research on the use of rape as a weapon of war (Baaz & Stern, 2009; Brownmiller, 1975; Buss, 2009; Farr, 2009; Meger, 2010; Mullins, 2009; Mwavita, 2002). This research recognizes that the violent victimizations perpetrated during conflict are experienced differently for men and women with women being particularly vulnerable to systematic sexual violence. But to restrict discussion of state-perpetrated violence to female victimization during times of conflict does not acknowledge larger issues of power that shape relations between the sexes and institutional structures of power that not only impact patterns of violence that disproportionately impact women and children, but also affect female criminality and the construction of control structures that have been implemented to prevent these varying forms of violence.

State Crime, Women and Gender broadens the focus of prior literature and takes an interdisciplinary and global approach to state-perpetrated violence against women as well as state crime committed by women. My argument here is not that the blatant abuses of state power and the resulting harms have not garnered significant attention from criminologists, nor that the large feminist literature on marginalization issues surrounding women and crime ignores the subject of state: rather my purpose is to link these two literatures to advance a literature on state crime and women. It is my suggestion that given the increased access to, and reporting of, state-perpetrated violence that specifically involves and/or impacts women, the experiences of women will become more and more relevant to contemporary criminological inquiry. Informed by state crime, feminist scholarship, international criminal justice and victimology this book takes an interdisciplinary approach to extend the discussion of state crime to include women and gender. Interestingly, and despite the increased criminological attention to the issue of state crime over the last three decades, research on women as victims and perpetrators of state crime has existed in the periphery, something that is reflective of broader patterns within criminology as a field.

Definitional issues and the problem with language

The concepts of gender and sex are often confused in everyday language and are frequently used interchangeably in their meaning and application. Sex makes reference to biological characteristics that differentiate males from females, such as chromosomes, anatomy, genitalia and hormonal profiles (Braidotti, 2002; Cranny-Francis, Waring, Stavropoulos, & Kirkby, 2003; Jegerstedt, 2000). In most societies a person’s sex is decided at birth by a medical professional based solely on their biological presentation. When sex cannot be easily determined through visual inspection of genitalia, then medical professionals will often rely on chromosomes to establish sex. As medical technologies have been improved and techniques refined, the determination of sex has also evolved. For example, reassignment surgery at birth is no longer a common practice for intersexed infants; instead it has been deemed controversial due to the possible social, sexual and emotional harms it can cause (Fausto-Sterling, 2000). In the case of intersexed persons there is considerable historical and cultural variation in how sex is determined – i.e., the criteria used to establish whether an infant is male or female is not, nor has it ever been, consistent (Devor, 1989). Although traditionally conceptualized as conveying purely biological characteristics, sex cannot be limited to biology. Sex is both biol...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• 1 State crime, women and gender: an introduction
• 2 Definitional issues and an introduction to relevant concepts
• 3 Feminist perspectives and theories of gender-based violence
• 4 War, violence and women: direct forms of state-perpetrated violence against women
• 5 Peace for whom? Indirect forms of state-perpetrated violence against women
• 6 Female criminality and state violence
• 7 State power consumed, replicated and reinforced
• 8 Women, resistance and the state
• 9 Voices of victimization: access to justice for female victims of state-perpetrated violence
• 10 Administering justice: women working in the international criminal justice system
• 11 Concluding thoughts
• Index