Feminism and Global Justice 2014016615, 9780415711111, 9780415711128, 9781315748368

Table of contents :
Cover
Title
Copyright
Dedication
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
About the author
Abbreviations
1 Feminism and global justice: introduction
2 Globalising feminist criminology: gender, crime and geo-spatial inequality
3 Violence against women and women’s struggles for justice: Asia and the Middle East
4 Violence against women and women’s struggles for justice: Latin America
5 Masculinity matters: super-capitalism, men and violence
6 Female violence, torture and terrorism: is feminism spoiling girls?
7 New directions in transnational feminist criminology
Index

Citation preview

This book will change the way in which criminology thinks about itself in relation to gender, crime and globalisation. In taking gender and globalisation seriously, anyone who reads this book can no longer claim that they did not know about the ways in which criminology’s domain assumptions around both of these concepts has served to frame debates on violence in particular. This book challenges those assumptions and lays down the gauntlet for us all to think differently about these issues. An absolute must-read for anyone claiming the label “criminologist”. Professor Sandra Walklate, Eleanor Rathbone Chair of Sociology, Department of Sociology, University of Liverpool, UK In this provocative book, Carrington adds a much needed global dimension to feminist criminology and convincingly demonstrates why “the world needs feminism more than ever.” Feminism and Global Justice features hard-hitting case studies from Asia, Australia, Argentina, and beyond to illustrate how the complex global and contextual production of both masculinities and femininities fosters violence and victimization, often in unique and surprising ways. Highlighting the value of transnational feminist intersectionality, she passionately urges academics and social change agents to see beyond essentialism, the metropole, the nation state, and the West if we are to effectively pursue global justice. Nancy A. Wonders, Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Northern Arizona University, Arizona, USA

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FEMINISM AND GLOBAL JUSTICE

In this book, Kerry Carrington takes a bold, critical and reflexive approach to understanding the global divisions and inequalities that shape distinctive patterns of gender and crime. The book argues that in order for feminism to enhance its relevance in the twenty-first century, bold new directions in scholarship are required that also take into account global divisions and inequalities. Issues explored in the book include the forced marriage of child brides, female genital mutilation, femicide, honour crimes, rape and domestic violence, and the systemic denial of female rights justified by religion, custom or culture. It also explores rising rates of violence recorded for women offenders globally, and their increasing participation in terrorism, as well as troubling male-on-male violence in anomic spaces cultivated by globalising forces. Feminism and Global Justice argues that the world needs feminism more than ever to address systemic, culturally shaped and diverse forms of injustice experienced by females across the globe, many of them children. It will be essential reading for international and national human rights organisations, as well as academics and students engaged in the study of criminology, development studies, sociology, politics and gender studies. Kerry Carrington, Head of School of Justice, Queensland University of Technology, is an internationally recognised expert on gender and crime, and recipient of the 2013 American Society of Criminology, Division of Women and Crime, Distinguished Scholar Award.

New Directions in Critical Criminology Edited by Walter S. DeKeseredy, West Virginia University, USA

This series presents new cutting-edge critical criminological empirical, theoretical and policy work on a broad range of social problems, including drug policy, rural crime and social control, policing and the media, ecocide, intersectionality and the gendered nature of crime. It aims to highlight the most up-to-date authoritative essays written by new and established scholars in the field. Rather than offering a survey of the literature, each book takes a strong position on topics of major concern to those interested in seeking new ways of thinking critically about crime. 1. Contemporary Drug Policy Henry Brownstein 2. The Treadmill of Crime Political economy and green criminology Paul B. Stretesky, Michael A. Long and Michael J. Lynch 3. Rural Criminology Walter S. DeKeseredy and Joseph F. Donnermeyer 4. Policing and Media Public relations, simulations and communications Murray Lee and Alyce McGovern

5. Green Cultural Criminology Constructions of environmental harm, consumerism and resistance to ecocide Avi Brisman and Nigel South 6. Crimes of Globalization Dawn L. Rothe and David O. Friedrichs 7. Contradictions of Terrorism Security, risk and resilience Sandra Walklate and Gabe Mythen 8. Feminism and Global Justice Kerry Carrington

FEMINISM AND GLOBAL JUSTICE

Kerry Carrington

First published 2015 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2015 Kerry Carrington The right of Kerry Carrington to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. The views of the author do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Carrington, Kerry. Feminism and global justice / Kerry Carrington. pages cm. — (New directions in critical criminology ; 8) 1. Feminist criminology. 2. Women--Crimes against. 3. Women— Violence against. 4. Feminism. I. Title. HV6030.C37 2014 364.082—dc23 2014016615 ISBN: 978-0-415-71111-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-415-71112-8 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-74836-8 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo and ITC Stone Sans by Apex CoVantage, LLC

I dedicate this book to girls and women across the world, some as young as ten, engaged in daily struggles for justice.

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgements About the author Abbreviations

x xii xiii

1

Feminism and global justice: introduction

1

2

Globalising feminist criminology: gender, crime and geo-spatial inequality

7

3 4 5 6 7

Violence against women and women’s struggles for justice: Asia and the Middle East

32

Violence against women and women’s struggles for justice: Latin America

76

Masculinity matters: super-capitalism, men and violence

101

Female violence, torture and terrorism: is feminism spoiling girls?

134

New directions in transnational feminist criminology

170

Index

183

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

When writing a book, there are always too many friends, colleagues and family members to thank individually. So I begin with thanking you all, but especially my daughters, Amie, Rosa and Georgia. This book would not have come to timely fruition without the support of Dr Margaret Pereira, a great colleague and a brilliant researcher who helped with sourcing and summarising literature from all over the world – some of which could only be located by going to India. To my colleagues, Alison McIntosh, John Scott and Russell Hogg, I acknowledge their contributions to chapter 5 especially, which draws upon some of the field research we did together on mining, masculinity and violence. Russell Hogg, also my ‘brains trust’, as many in the criminology world know, warrants an extra special mention for still being my husband after twenty-three years! I also acknowledge permissions granted by Sage, the British Journal of Criminology and the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology to reuse some material previously published in those journals in chapter 5. I acknowledge the International Journal of Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, which has granted permission to republish parts of the research I have drawn upon for chapter 6. Other colleagues from QUT who have kept me sane through insane times include Professors Susan Carrington, Allan Chay, Belinda Carpenter and Reece Walters. A special thanks to my dean, Professor John Humphrey, for giving me some ‘space’ to work on finishing the book as well as his strong leadership, and to Belinda Carpenter again for acting as Head of School

Acknowledgements

xi

during that period of leave. Last but not least, I thank the Routledge publishing team, Heidi Lee, editorial assistant, Thomas Sutton, commissioning editor, and Professor Walter DeKeseredy, the series editor of New Directions in Critical Criminology and a dear colleague.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kerry Carrington is the Head of School of Justice, Faculty of Law, at the Queensland University of Technology, Australia. She is author of Offending Girls (1993); Who Killed Leigh Leigh? (1998) and co-author of Policing the Rural Crisis (2006) and Offending Youth (2009) and has been widely published in journals and edited collections. She is the Pacific Rim Editor for Critical Criminology, vice chair of the American Society of Criminology, Critical Criminology Division, and cochief editor with Reece Walters of The International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy. Kerry Carrington is an internationally recognised expert on gender and crime, and recipient of the 2013 American Society of Criminology, Division of Women and Crime, Distinguished Scholar Award.

ABBREVIATIONS

AIC AIHW CELS CII CJRC CONADEP

DAW FGM FIFO FMU HBVA INSTRAW LTTE MCU NAFTA NGO NRW OSAGI

Australian Institute of Criminology Australian Institute of Health and Welfare Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (Centre for Legal and Social Studies) Council of Islamic Ideology Crime and Justice Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas (National Commission on the Disappearances of Persons) Division for the Advancement of Women, UN Female genital mutilation Fly-In Fly-Out Forced marriage unit (UK) Honour Based Violence Awareness Network International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women Liberation Tigers of Eelam Mining Communities United North American Free Trade Agreement Non-Government Organisation Non-Resident Worker Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women

xiv

Abbreviations

PFLP UCR UN UN Women UNICEF UNIFEM WHO

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine Uniform Crime Reports United Nations United Nations Women United Nations Children’s Fund United Nations Development Fund for Women World Health Organization

1 FEMINISM AND GLOBAL JUSTICE Introduction

Apart from the disturbing stories of atrocities endured by females across the globe, some as young as ten, the arguments advanced in this book are provocative, as it also includes instances of women (mainly young) committing torture and terrorism and inflicting violence upon others. Some will find the analysis refreshing and illuminating, others irritating or even repugnant. This book attempts to persuade a new generation of scholars, criminologists, activists and policy makers sympathetic to the quest for global justice to push the envelope, to step out of their comfort zones and typical frames of analysis to gaze at a world full of injustice against the female sex, much of it systemic, linked to culture, custom and religion. In some instances the sources of these injustices intersect with those that produce global inequality, imperialism and racism. This book also investigates circumstances where the globalising forces cultivate male-on-male violence in the anomic spaces of super-capitalism – the border zones of Mexico and the United States, and the frontier mining communities in the Australian desert. However systemic gendered injustices, such as forced marriage of child female brides, sati (the cremation of living widows), genital cutting, honour crimes, rape and domestic violence against women, are forms of violence only experienced by the female

2 Feminism and global justice

sex. According to Human Rights Watch there are estimated to be over fourteen million child brides worldwide, many of whom are traded for debt, bondage, and in contexts where polygamy and paedophilia go hand in hand, justified by religion or custom. While Western feminism has been somewhat insular and Anglocentric, the quest for global justice needs feminism now more than ever. Campaigns, protests and reforms to address gender injustices sprang largely independently from feminist movements in the Western world. Hence there is much feminists from the Western world can learn from the struggles for global justice waged by women activists, movements and campaigns from the global south. The global north is a metaphor for the Western world and the global south a metaphor for the countries and continents (not all from the global south) outside that Western world. Just as the colonialists of much of the southern hemisphere came from the north, so too has a great deal of criminological theory. Chapter 2 argues that criminological theories (including feminist criminologies) need to encompass more global perspectives and outlooks. There is nothing wrong with embracing worldly influences from the northern hemisphere; it is just that many criminological theories embed assumptions that do not translate well to the global south, where problems of crime and violence are constructed around Indigenous populations and the architecture, culture and customs of rural and regional life in these vast continents. Feminist criminology has tended to uncritically, although unwittingly, replicate these metropolitan biases. The chapter makes the case that for feminism to enhance its international relevance it also needs to widen its research agendas to include the distinctively different gendered patterns of crime and violence that occur across the globe. This chapter sets out an alternative framework of transnational feminist intersectionality to correct the biases embedded in the metropolitan criminological gaze, which is the conceptual scaffolding for the remainder of the book. There is much that feminists and criminologists can learn from the struggles for justice from the global south. Chapters 3 and 4 contrast the struggles for gender and justice in Latin America with the Islamist states of the Middle East and Asia and with the Hindi states in Asia, India especially. These chapters cannot present an exhaustive

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overview of violence against women in every one of these countries, so I select a number to highlight how gendered violence is shaped by local contours of power, patriarchy, religion and custom. Chapter 3 examines a wide array of systemic forms of violence against females, most of which are not even defined as crimes. These include infanticide of female babies; female genital mutilation; sati (the cremation of living widows); honour killings and dowry violence; arranged marriage of child brides as young as ten; zina (the punishment of women for sex outside marriage, even in contexts where they have been raped); and the denial of basic human freedoms to millions of women, such as the right to drive, work, vote or even appear in public without a man. This chapter also explores the victimisation of a new rising class of feminists in countries like Pakistan, where Islamist extremism targets and in instances even murders or attempts to murder women who challenge their patriarchal power base. The analysis represents these forms of violence against women and women’s struggles for justice using their voices and their stories, from their frame of analysis. As such the chapter relies heavily on accounts by victims of forced child marriage and Islamic violence targeting female rights campaigners and accounts from books banned in Pakistan and Malaysia. There are relatively few academic sources as these issues have escaped the attention of English speaking authors. Chapter 4 extends the analysis developed in the preceding chapter to provide a glimpse into the culturally diverse forms of violence against women and women’s struggles for justice outside the metropolitan horizons of the Anglophone world. The examples explored within this chapter include the many victims of rape, torture and femicide in the border city of Juarez, Mexico, and the abduction, torture and murder of activists, many of them women, by the brutal military regimes that reigned in Chile and Argentina from the 1960s through to the 1980s. The reasons for choosing these contrasting examples is to illustrate how grassroots campaigns for justice, bravely led by women (some feminist – others not), exposed the brutality of violence against women in Latin America. These women’s movements challenged the systemic inequities that women endured in a continent where deeply conservative Catholicism was intertwined with military fascist dictatorships to shape the distinctive patterns of

4 Feminism and global justice

violence against women. The chapter highlights the local as well as transnational women’s movements that have bravely resisted the violation of human and women’s rights, sometimes at their own peril. Ultimately it argues that the rise of women’s movements in these countries to seek justice cannot simply be interpreted as offshoots of Western feminism, but rather as distinctive and heterogeneous collectivities that are networked and strengthened by transnational global flows of discourse. It concludes with an analysis of the importance of United Nations Women and other such transnational entities in the elimination of violence against women and children by highlighting some the work they are undertaking with partner local organisations in Latin America. In other contexts, globalising processes and power structures have created anomic social settings where male violence flourishes. Chapter 5 analyses the interplay between globalisation, masculinities and violence. It argues that the high rates of violence, self-harm, suicide and injury among men living or working in the socio-spatial frontiers of global capitalism cannot simply be reduced to individualised expressions of deviance or psycho-pathological deficit. The argument advanced also rejects outright essentialist representations of men as essentially dangerous. Instead it argues that some patterns of violence among men are cultivated in psychosocial contexts that are also partly the product of the anomic spaces of super-capitalism. These are spaces where self-sustaining communities and forms of sociality based on social democratic norms of governance are largely absent or marginalised (Currie 2013). These are also social and organisational spaces where the valorisation of the self is primarily as an economic conduit for global forces. Drawing on field research undertaken in communities experiencing the globalising impacts of super-capitalism, this issue is approached through a comparison of two case studies, one in Australia and other in Latin America. The first is a case study of violence between rival groups of men in mining communities at the forefront of generating resource extraction for global economies in the Australian desert. The second is a comparison of masculinity and violence in the anomic spaces of free trade zones in Latin America, also surrounded by desert. From the local the analysis works outward to encompass the wider, structural forces

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driving change in these communities and shaping personal and local troubles, in a similar way as C. Wright Mills (1959) envisaged the workings of the ‘sociological imagination’. Female violence challenges deeply ingrained assumptions held by many, among them feminists, lawyers, criminologists, media commentators, parents and policy makers. Criminological theory has a long history of essentialising violence as a capacity associated primarily with boys, overlooking the capacity for the female sex to participate in and inflict violence. Feminist scholars too have tended to duck the discomforting issue of female violence, preferring instead to either construct violent women as victims or narrow their research interests to only where women are victims of men’s violence. It is perfectly understandable why feminists have had particular difficulty coming to grips with recorded rises in female violence over the last forty years. This is because feminism was, and still is, wrongly blamed. Feminism (a term of abuse used by feminist backlash ideologues) has also been blamed for spoiling the American military, luring men to participate in atrocities, war crimes and the torture of prisoners. Implicitly feminism is also sometimes blamed for encouraging women to become terrorists, in seeking equality with men. Chapter 6 overviews the empirical evidence that the reported increases in young women’s violence, and participation in terrorist groups and activities are global phenomena. The chapter canvasses possible theories to explain recorded rises of girls’ violence in the Westernised countries of the northern hemisphere including the UK, the US, Canada and Australia from the global south. The first relates to shifting cultural constructions which celebrate the violent femme and normalise ‘ladette’ culture. The second relates to the impact of new forms of social online networking that create a parallel universe that rewards and incites girls’ fights and girls’ violence in the real world. The chapter then canvasses possible reasons for the rise in women participating in terrorist activity, especially suicide bombing and assassination, in countries like Russia, Palestine, Israel, Iraq and Sri Lanka. Women, the fastest cohort swelling the ranks of contemporary organisations defined as terrorist, make better assassins and suicide bombers than men and since 2008 have been responsible for more than half of the world’s assassinations! This chapter offers an

6 Feminism and global justice

explanation as to why. The chapter will no doubt be controversial and met with scepticism, disbelief or even fury. The most important point made by this chapter is that acts of female terrorism are not rooted in any particular religion, politics, ethnicity or social background. Not all are Islamist. Many women involved in acts of armed struggle and terrorism both historically and in the contemporary context are associated with secular causes and political struggles. The final chapter synthesises the arguments developed in the book and suggests some possibilities for further research using a transnational feminist intersectional framework. It argues that if feminism wants to have a voice in the public, cultural, political and criminological debates about heightened, albeit often exaggerated, social concerns about growing female violence and engagement in terrorism, then new directions in theorising female violence are required. Feminist silences about the violent crimes, atrocities and acts of terrorism committed by the female sex leave anti-feminist explanations uncontested. It is time to contest these and offer counter explanations for the rise in female violence and female terrorism, in a global context where systemic gendered violence against women is alarming and entrenched. The world needs feminism to take hold across the globe, now more than ever.

References Currie, E. (2013) ‘The Sustaining Society’, in K. Carrington, M. Ball, E. O’Brien and J. Tauri (eds.) Crime, Justice and Social Democracy: New International Perspectives, Willan: Collompton, 3–15. Wright, Mills C. (1959) The Sociological Imagination, Oxford University Press: New York.

2 GLOBALISING FEMINIST CRIMINOLOGY Gender, crime and geo-spatial inequality

This chapter argues that criminological theories (including feminist criminologies) need to encompass more global perspectives and outlooks. Just as the colonialists of much of the southern hemisphere came from the north, so too has a great deal of criminological theory. There is nothing wrong with adopting theories from the northern hemisphere; it is just that many criminological theories embedded assumptions based on densely settled urban environments of Europe or North America. These theories do not transplant well to the southern hemisphere where crime problems tend to be constructed around Indigenous populations and the architecture, culture and customs of rural and regional life in these vast continents shaped by distinctly different patterns of crime and forms of violence. The chapter sets out an alternative framework of transnational feminist intersectionality to correct the biases embedded in the metropolitan criminological gaze that has for too long privileged theories from the northern hemisphere. The chapter makes the case that for feminism to enhance its international relevance it also needs to widen its research agendas to include the distinctively different gendered patterns of crime and violence that occur across the globe from outside the lens of urbancentric criminological theorising. It describes what those lenses are,

8 Globalising feminist criminology

how feminist criminology has tended to uncritically, if unwittingly, replicate them and how it can begin to rectify those conceptual shortcomings through a feminist transnational intersectionality, the conceptual scaffolding for the rest of the book.

Metropolitan thinking and the limits of the criminological gaze In Southern Theory, Connell takes issue with the way that social theory pretends to be placeless and universal. This theoretical strategy produces ‘readings from the centre’, which make universal claims about social relations and experiences about both global hemispheres, yet fails to reflect on the geo-political specificity of these (Connell 2007:44). In a hierarchy of global social science, southern theorists from Asia, Africa, Australia and Latin America are rarely considered of relevance to the social scientists from the global north. In one devastating swoop Connell argues, ‘Debates among the colonised are ignored, the intellectuals of colonised societies are unreferenced, and social process is analysed in an ethnographic time-warp’ (Connell 2007:44). This kind of theory, which Connell calls metropolitan theory, fails to conceptualise ‘the bloodshed’, ‘the destruction of social relations’ and the ‘dispossession’ ‘involved in creating the current world in which we live’ (Connell 2007:215). Southern theories are either ignored, excluded or pressed into service as a ‘data mine’ for metropolitan theory – as examples of ‘primitive’, ‘tribal’ or ‘pre-modern’ societies, as for instance Durkheim used them (Connell 2007:45–48). Like so much social theory, much criminological theorising also pretends to be placeless and universal, yet it is neither. As Barberet argues, ‘Criminology also tends to be monocultural – a domestic (national) project, confined to local or national interests’ (Barbaret 2014:16). Liberal traditions in criminological theory have for the most part had their roots in the traditions of classical thinking from eighteenthcentury Europe (Becarria 1764:1972). Sociological approaches to studying crime have derived from classic Chicago School studies in America and Durkheim’s structuralist accounts of the role of crime and punishment in affirming social morality and the collective

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conscious in early twentieth-century Europe (Garland 1994). Radical and critical variations have been founded on studies of the criminalisation of working-class kids and drug takers, largely though not entirely from England (Hall and Jefferson 1975; Cohen 1980). Deviance theories sprung up from the innovative frame analysis, labelling theory and ethnomethodological research in America from the 1960s to the present beginning with the works of Becker (1963), Cicourel (1968), Sykes and Matza (1957) and Matza (1964). Like so much social theory, nearly all these theorists, theories and their empirical referents just happen to have originated in the northern hemisphere and their empirical referents tended to be likewise located in the same geospatial locations. Within the discipline of criminology three interrelated concepts – crime, state and justice – are paramount. The criminological gaze has been bounded by the nation state for the reason that criminal justice systems tend to be jurisdictional (Hogg 2002:192). Definitions of crime have also tended to be state defined, a limitation of criminological theory roundly and repeatedly criticised by critical criminology for embedding biases against the crimes of powerless and creating an impunity for the harms of the powerful not so defined (Schwendinger and Schwendinger 1975). Indeed criminology as a discipline is bound up with the emergence of modern systems of punishment and state monopoly over criminal justice institutions (Garland 1994; Foucault 1981). Yet borderless transnational crimes such as human rights abuses, money laundering, environmental crimes, human and drug trafficking, and terrorism present major problems for nation states and expose the limitations of the criminological gaze (Garland 1994; Hogg 2002:195). As we shall see in chapters 3 and 4, crime and violence outside the metropolitan cities of the Westernised northern hemisphere take on distinctive geo-spatial patterns shaped by local as well as global cultures and power structures. Criminology as a discipline tended to produce a theoretical outlook that was both placeless and ahistorical. The development of critical criminology and initially feminist criminology in Australia were no exceptions. Although Australia is a small colonial-settler society concentrated in dispersed pockets across a continent almost as big as the USA and located at the foot of Asia, the theoretical

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universe of so much of its intellectual life has derived from Western Europe and North America. There is nothing wrong with embracing worldly intellectual influences, but an unquestioning tendency to look to what Connell (2007) calls ‘metropolitan thinking’ led to significant shortcomings. First, it underestimated the geo-political impacts on the emergence of criminology in Australia that militated against the rigid separation of academic, governmental and political life-worlds. Individual careers often traversed the various institutional sites of criminology: university, government bureaucracy, community legal centre, law reform commission, crime research bureau or institute (see Hogg and Carrington 2013 for a fuller account). It also led to a gravitation for some to look to Asia-Pacific and Latin America for inspiration, networking and collaboration. The strong and growing nexus between the Crime and Justice Research Centre (CJRC), where I work, and universities in Argentina is such one example. The intellectual origins in this relationship were forged, I believe, because of a shared sense of southernness and exclusion from metropolitan criminological theorising. Second, in treating countries in the southern hemisphere as fragments of the metropole, radical critique projected many of the assumptions derived from the geo-political specificities of the global north onto very different geo-political contexts. Maximo Sozzo’s critique of the explanatory power of neo-liberalism as a rationale for the wide disparities in political ideologies and practices of punishment in Latin America is a welcome corrective to the debates on crime and punishment (Sozzo forthcoming). Third, one of the most problematic assumptions of metropolitan criminology has been the embedded assumption that crime is primarily an urban phenomenon, although there is a growing body of critical rural criminologists who dispute this (Donnermeyer and DeKeseredy 2013; Baldry et al. 2007; Hogg and Carrington 2006). In continents like Australia, Asia and South America populations are highly unevenly dispersed, with much environmental crime and violent crime occurring in rural areas (Hogg and Carrington 2006). Even in America and Canada issues like violence against women in rural areas have been completely overlooked by urban-centric criminological theorising (Donnermeyer and DeKeseredy 2013).

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In Australia rates of violence in particular are on average higher per capita in regional and rural communities (Hogg and Carrington 2006). This is generally acknowledged only to the extent that high rates of crime and violence in Indigenous communities have been a recurrent public concern, but this cloaks the fact that non-Indigenous crime rates, mostly involving young men, are also disproportionately high in rural, regional and remote Australia (Carrington and Scott 2008). The selective official and criminological gaze settles on the socially excluded and overlooks, or normalises, violence elsewhere. Most notably, it overlooks the destructive environmental, social and criminological impacts of the globalisation of the resources sector, frontier masculinities and violence (see also Carrington et al. 2010; Carrington et al. 2011). This is an important dimension of the geopolitical dispersion of violence in Australia and Latin America to which I return in chapter 5. Most criminological analysis, even of a critical kind, has been preoccupied with transgression in urban settings. Indeed the construction of crime as an urban problem is deeply embedded in criminological theory, beginning with criminological interpretations of Durkheim’s analysis of the shift from organic to mechanical and industrial societies (Wilkinson 2010), to the Chicago School’s influence over social disorganisation theory, delinquency and the city (Bulmer 1984; Shaw 1931), gang research (Thrasher 1927) and contemporary research on the social ecology and spatial patterns of crime (Bottoms 2012). The analysis of race and crime is no exception, focusing on the role of race in the social construction and policing of muggers, hustlers and black youth living in the inner-city ghettos of America and the UK (Hall et al. 1978:389–395). This focus is understandable in the context of the northern hemisphere, where critical modes of social inquiry sought to describe, measure and manage the disorders and social pathologies of the rising urban, industrial societies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In many southern-hemisphere societies, and especially where Indigenous peoples rather than immigrant minorities are constructed as the ‘crime problem’, patterns of race and crime are often related to very different social-spatial contexts and forces. The next three chapters illustrate how forms of crime and violence vary widely across provinces, districts and nation states in

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Latin America, the Middle East, Asia and Australia, shaped by diverse and distinctive cultures, customs and geo-political realities. These geo-political specificities are made somewhat invisible by the grand criminological theorising from the northern hemisphere. Some of these shortcomings were reproduced and became entrenched in feminist criminological theorising, as I argue below.

Metropolitan thinking and the limits of the feminist criminological gaze The geo-spatial origins of feminist criminology have also tended also to mirror Anglophone and monocultural metropolitan biases. The main challenge to what is sometimes called hegemonic feminist theory has come from feminist theorists and scholars of colour who do not identify with the metropolitanism of feminist theory (Mohanty 1984; Sandoval 1991). Recent and important additions to this debate have come from feminist criminologists, such as Hillary Potter (2014), Rosemary Barberet (2014), Henne and Troshynski (2013) and Claire Renzetti (2013), who are applying intersectionality as a theoretical framework. The following locates the emergence of transnational feminist intersectionality in the context of the dynamic and constantly reflexive nature of feminist theory. A couple of years ago, a colleague and I1 surveyed ten distinguished scholars from the UK, Canada, the US and Australia, whose contributions to feminist criminology are recognised internationally. The ten participants who responded include: Frances Heidensohn (London School of Economics and Political Science, UK), a pioneer in the study of gender and crime in the 1960s and general editor of the British Journal of Sociology; Sandra Walklate (Eleanor Rathbone Chair of Sociology, University of Liverpool, UK), editor of the British Journal of Criminology, and arguably the world’s leading authority in victimology; Loraine Gelsthorpe (Cambridge University, UK), president of the British Society of Criminology; Jo Phoenix (University of Leicester, UK) book review editor for the British Journal of Criminology, and editor of Youth Justice; Nicole Hahn Rafter (Northeastern University, US), awarded the American Society of Criminology’s Sutherland Prize for her contribution to

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gender and justice debates; Molly Dragiewicz (Crime and Justice Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology, Australia), recipient of the 2009 New Scholar Award from the American Society of Criminology’s Division on Women and Crime and the 2012 Young Critical Criminology Scholar Award for her contributions to the study of violence against women; Nancy Wonders (Northern Arizona University, US), past chair of the American Society of Criminology’s Division on Women and Crime, a member of the editorial board of Feminist Criminology; Ngaire Naffine (University of Adelaide, Australia), author of two pioneering texts on feminism and criminology in Australia; Kathy Daly (Griffith University, Australia), former president of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology, with an impressive track record of research into the intersections among gender, race and justice both in Australian and US jurisdictions; and Judith Bessant (RMIT University, Australia), leading expert on youth justice and youth studies in Australia. We asked participants to reflect on a range of issues, including significant developments and challenges for feminist criminology, as well as the highlights of their careers. Interestingly, few respondents identified themselves as feminist and most had qualms about the prism of identity politics. Identity politics has been thoroughly problematised by poststructuralist theory in particular, so this is hardly surprising. I too share these qualms. Other participants actively identified with feminist approaches and linked this specifically to feminism as a political as well as an intellectual project. These scholars also stressed the links between injustices that affect women as victims or offenders and other harms and social injustices, such as poverty and gendered violence. Responses were thematically analysed and used to inform our analysis (see Carrington and Death 2014 for a longer version). The following summarises the survey responses to illustrate the dynamism of feminist contributions to criminology, its achievements but also its shortcomings, and its reflexivity in addressing those limitations. Over the last few decades, feminist criminology has contributed much to advance our knowledge about the complex intersections between gender, sex and crime. Early feminist critiques of criminological knowledge regarded the discipline’s main problem as its

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neglect of the female sex. To remedy the problem initially feminist scholars urged that the study of ‘women’ be added to the criminological knowledge bank. A much-cited article by Heidensohn (1968:171) describes the study of gender, women and deviance ‘as lonely uncharted seas of human behaviour’. When surveyed, Frances Heidensohn elaborated on the context in which she wrote that pioneering article: When I published my first article in 1968 there was no recognition of gender issues, no attention paid to the sex crime ratio, very little research on women and girls, what there was – was stereotyped and marginal. Familial violence was largely ignored, its gendered nature not considered. All that has altered, thanks to the effects of feminism and the efforts of feminist scholars. This first wave of feminist scholarship took issue with two main aspects of criminology: first, its omission of women and second, when it did attend to women, its misrepresentation of female offenders as doubly deviant (Heidensohn 1968; Klein 1973; Adler 1975). As Nicole Hahn Rafter responded to the survey, ‘Women were ignored as victims, offenders, and prisoners. The challenge was sexism.’ These pioneering feminist scholars argued for the inclusion of women in studies of crime (Naffine 1987; Rafter 2000; Mason and Stubbs 2010). While this new research aided our understanding of the complexity and patterns of female crime and deviance, it also had notable limitations, as Nancy Wonders points out in her response: Importantly, early feminists urged a focus on women and girls, drawing attention to their invisibility within the field of criminology. This led to important research on girls and women, but much of it tended to simply ‘add women and stir’. A subsequent wave of feminist work, mirroring wider shifts in feminist theory, argued that just adding women was no solution to the male-centric bias of criminology, a discipline that for most of a century had generalized theories of crime from observations of mostly male prisoners and offenders (Allen 1989). This approach left untouched

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the core assumptions and methodologies of criminology’s inherent phallocentricism (Allen 1989; Cain 1990; Young 1992; Green 1993; Heidensohn and Rafter 1995; Naffine 1997). The feminist project, they argued, had to broaden to include a critique of criminology’s state-based definitions of crime that excluded socially invisible harms to women (such as domestic violence and acquaintance rape). This theoretically informed body of feminist scholarship consequently rejected the positivist research methods of criminology that failed to render visible the largely privatised harms endured by women at the hands of mostly men (Renzetti 1999; Stanko 1990). Although feminist perspectives made some headway in deconstructing positivist methods, there remained a focus on traditional, masculinist ways of generating data and constructing knowledge. As Sandra Walklate stresses in her response to our questions: There is still much to do however in terms of conceptual understanding and development within victimology. Positivism and masculine conceptualisation are deeply rooted here. This is largely reflected in the dominance (still) of the way in which criminal victimisation surveys and their findings are used. Surveys can be feminist informed and conceptually nuanced but the drive towards surveys can also override meaning/ understanding. From the 1990s feminist scholars called for transgressive knowledge about women, gender and crime to be generated from outside what they saw as the hopelessly phallocentric discipline of criminology (Cain 1990; Young 1996; Heidensohn and Rafter 1995; Daly and Maher 1998). This spawned a good deal of innovative research mainly about women as victims of men’s violence (Stanko 1990), the masculinity of law (Young 1998; Threadgold 1993), and the masculinism of a criminal justice system that sees and treats women as the Other (Allen 1989; Smart 1989). In turn, this approach too was subject to strident internal feminist critique for its cross-cultural monolithic, woman-centric and ultimately essentialist constructs that falsely unify women’s and men’s experiences across culture, race, history and politics.

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These forms of feminist theory elevated sexual difference and gender as a central homogenising category of analysis which led to a narrowing of the feminist gaze to gendered power relations and structures, such as patriarchy. Like much of criminology they confined their analysis to domestic issues of criminal justice. The placeless and timeless unified female subject of history, politics and culture posited in these essentialist feminist theories is a fictional one that either excludes or marginalises Othered women of colour, race and non-Anglo origin. When women as a category becomes a universal construct abstracted from the specificity and variability of women’s real and ethnically diverse experiences across time, class, space, history, religion, economics, culture and geo-politics, women outside the normalised feminist constructions become colonised (Mohanty 1984:335). Key conceptual shifts in feminist criminology have tended to mirror the shifts in feminist theory more broadly, from liberal, socialist, separatist and postmodern feminist thought. Loraine Gelsthorpe neatly summed up the twin intellectual aspirations of feminist criminology in her response: I think that there have been two major feminist projects. The first is a substantive project which has raised awareness of discrimination, awareness of the complexities of victimhood, and awareness of the distinctive needs of women offenders and victims. The second project is a methodological and epistemological one; here feminist contributions have been to question methodological traditions by focusing on methodological plurality and the importance of deconstructionist approaches. The main challenge to what is sometimes called hegemonic feminist theory has come from postmodern feminist theorists and scholars of colour (Mohanty 1984, 2003; Sandoval 1991). Although there is a large body of work on the struggles of women in developing countries and their roles and status in individual cultures, the literature on third-world feminism are ‘in short supply’ (Mohanty 2003:4). Mohanty argues that third-world women are often described

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in terms of their ‘problems’, their ‘oppression’ or their ‘achievements’ in relation to an imagined free white liberal democracy. Western feminists, she argues, often define the ‘third-world woman’ in terms of a viable oppositional alliance, with a common political struggle against sexist, racist and imperialist structures. However, third-world women have very different postcolonial histories with regards to their inheritance of slavery, enforced migration, exploitative labour, colonialism, imperialism and colonialism, and genocide (Mohanty 2003:5–7). According to Mohanty (2003) third-world women’s writings on feminism have located oppression as simultaneous to the experience of social and political marginality, and the grounding of feminist politics in histories of racism and imperialism. Additionally, they insist on the complex interrelationships between feminist, anti-racist, anti-colonialist and nationalist struggles. Homogenised ‘third-world women’ are represented as far more impoverished and inferior than their Western female counterparts who, in contrast, are represented as ‘educated, modern, as having control over their own bodies and sexualities and the freedom to make their own decisions’ (Mohanty 1984:337). In light of these stinging critiques, it was obvious that a theory based singularly on gender was insufficient to explain the abundance of women of colour, rural women, Indigenous women and women from impoverished backgrounds susceptible to policing, criminalisation and imprisonment (i.e. studies of Carlen 1983; Carrington 1993; Miller 2004; Maher 1997; and Gelsthorpe 1989). Only by incorporating the tapestry of interconnections encompassing social position, race, ethnicity, location and gender could the chronic overrepresentation of particular groups of women in the criminal justice systems begin to be understood (Carlen 1999). This approach has come to be referred to as intersectional or relational. Intersectionality theorises gender as only one factor in the axis of power. Other significant factors in the social ordering of power operating in systems of criminal justice include race, colonisation and class (Burgess-Proctor 2006:37). Hence a multiracial feminism that adopts an intersectional approach has become regarded as a significant advance on essentialist feminist frameworks that privilege a unified monocultural, trans-historical conception of gender.

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In 2012 Frances Heidensohn, who first drew international attention to the dearth of research on gender and crime in 1968, described this body of research ‘as one of the most robust, resilient and important features of modern criminology’ (Heidensohn 2012:132). However she regards the lack of theoretical innovation, apart from the addition of the concept of intersectionality, as a major contemporary weakness of feminist criminology (Heidensohn 2012:128). Intersectionality is not without its critics. Henne and Troshynski (2013) point to the problematic nature of simply deploying intersectionality in a domestic politic, of emptying it of its postcolonial and geo-political importance, and of unintentionally reproducing representations of crime and violence that silence the subaltern voices and posit a Western feminist superiority. They argue that intersectionality has become a corrective tool to capture multiple and overlapping relations of inequality (Henne and Troshynski 2013:462). Because criminology has a history of being susceptible to postcolonialist universalist knowledges, they conclude: Intesectionality, however, is not a universalist concept, but rather a corrective concept. . . . If we are to pursue a transnational intersectionality within criminology, it needs to attend to, not negate, previous iterations of globalization that have informed the complexities of difference and subordination manifest in not only our research sites, but also our worldviews and methodologies. (Henne and Troshynski 2013:468) Postmodernism and poststructuralism were the underpinning theoretical tools and methods that many feminist scholars drew upon in an attempt to move away from universalistic analyses of gender and crime (Carrington 2002; Smart 1989). Sandoval argues that a ‘differential consciousness’ needs to be added to feminist theory incorporating elements of postmodern thinking to overcome the ‘symbolic containers’ of hegemonic white feminism. Feminist theory can then be realigned; gender becomes only one axis of power, albeit still a very powerful one – and the subject woman deconstructed – no longer a timeless, placeless, universal category of history, politics, society

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and culture. In the junctures, intersections and spaces of difference a praxis emerges based on an oppositional and differential consciousness (Sandoval 1991:349). No longer is there a conception of a single feminism but multiple feminisms. No longer is there a concept of a universal woman of history but diverse women of colour, race, class, ethnicity, culture and religion. This is a feminism without borders (Mohanty 2003) – a third way, a middle ground – an imaginary community of women that share alliances based on gender but respect differences. This feminism neither essentialises women nor pays too little regard to the politics of gender (Hautzinger 2010:244). Claire Renzetti argues that one of the theoretical problems with lapsing into an infinite regress into specific localised analyses of intersections is that it can lead to a divisive identity politics – for example an identity politics in which only women of colour can speak for the women assigned to that group and so on (Renzetti 2013:69). This is problematic on two counts as it automatically privileges one voice from a group to speak for all, despite internal differences such as class, caste or religion within any cultural or ethnic group of women. Such an approach also excludes other strategically aligned advocates from making representations in the interests of colonised and oppressed peoples (such as non-aligned human rights groups or agencies including United Nations Women that pursue gender justice regardless of ethnic origin. Another agency of this type is the Chihuahua State Human Rights Commission, which has pursued a relentless campaign for justice for the murdered women of Juarez, Mexico). Not everything that is apparently essentialist needs to be discarded. Hautzinger argues, ‘But in pausing before rejecting any and all essentialism, we preserve one of the most critical tools for uniting women for political ends: that there is some common ground and basis for women’s collective struggle, even if we experience, describe, and “imagine” these differently’ (Hautzinger 2010:249). Consequently the key challenge for feminist scholars going forward is how to continue the legacy of making women and children visible as victims of gendered crime, without confining them to a unidimensional victim or survivor status. Walklate’s (2011) current work on resilience is one such example. This research continues a tradition of challenging the gender-neutral construction of victims of crime, without lapsing

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into essentialisms, while theorising the social and individual factors that may enhance their resilience. Dozens of scholars and activists have participated in these debates over the past four decades, which the short summary above can only allude to. For a fuller account of the shifts in feminist criminology, consult Claire Renzetti’s most recent detailed text Feminist Criminology (2013).

Extending the gaze – globalising feminist criminology Claire Renzetti argues that it is time to ‘globalize feminist criminology’ (Renzetti 2013:96) to examine global inequities between continents and countries and to examine ‘gendered experiences of colonisation’ (Renzetti 2013:96). In other words, feminist criminologists from Anglophone countries are encouraged to engage with issues that impact on the social ordering of gender, crime and victimisation in other parts of the globe. This requires actively engaging in respectful exchanges with feminist scholarship from other countries – and perspectives outside of their own. Reflexivity is one of the key strengths of feminist theories and scholarship but it remains a challenge for most, to step outside one’s own comfort zone and cultural lens as an interpretative frame for wider analysis. Rosemary Barbaret’s recent work does just that. It aims to ‘add scholarly voices to the recurring international institutional demand to refashion, retool and resell women’s justice’ (Barbaret 2014:9). In globalising feminist criminology, therefore, it is important to reject the assumption that quests, campaigns and voices for justice for women outside the metropole or Anglophone world do not flourish independently. Thayer argues that Latin American feminisms, for instance, do not just follow the example of the developed feminist movements from the north, but that ‘they blaze their own set of independent trails’ and that ‘Latin American feminisms were far from pale and arrested imitations of those in the United States and Europe’ (Thayer 2010:36). Thayer also argues that it is important to contest the fatalistic constructions of globalisation, popularised in critical scholarship, as ‘inexorable forces beyond the control of ordinary human beings’ (Thayer 2010:3). While globalisation has exacerbated the feminisation of migration for exploitative labour (Wonders 2006)

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and other crimes that target women, such as human trafficking, the impacts of globalisation are not all inevitably negative. Global communication through the internet and social media has assisted the struggle for global justice, enhancing the possibilities of networking across transnational relationships (Thayer 2010:3). The local is therefore not lost by the processes of globalisation; but rather the global is experienced, resisted and reshaped at the local where the power effects of globalisation are played out (Thayer 2010:6). Indeed local issues can be globalised into powerful campaigns for social justice. Rosemary Barbaret likewise argues that globalisation brings new economic opportunities for women, and can enhance the well-being of women through international instruments, such as a raft of UN Conventions, and the funding of health and anti-violence initiatives (Barbaret 2014:34). Globalisation, especially new social networking through the internet, has also assisted the flourishing of transnational feminist networks and their struggles for an end to violence against women (Barbaret 2014:34). Avaaz internet and email campaigns are just one example of the success of combining new networking and campaigning for justice to bring about positive changes in the lives of real women. As an Avaaz member I receive regular emails, like the excerpt from one below. Dear friends, Ingrid, an Avaaz member, has used our site to help save a Norwegian woman from being sent to jail for being raped! Marte Dalelv was sexually assaulted while visiting Dubai, but when she reported it to the police, she was sentenced to 16 months in prison for “extra-marital sex”! When Ingrid read about Marte’s case, she started a petition on Avaaz calling on the Dubai and Norwegian governments to ensure Marte’s release. The petition and the Facebook page she created exploded on social media and people from all over the world signed the petition and flooded the two governments with messages at addresses that Ingrid posted on her Avaaz petition page. Within days, Marte was released, and the Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide posted a Twitter message saying: ‘Marte is released! Thanks to everyone who signed up to help.’ . . .

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The Prime Minister of Norway said, ‘There is no doubt that attention from around the world, and the tenacity of the foreign ministry . . . led to this decision.’ In just a few minutes, Ingrid started an amazing campaign that helped win over decision makers in Dubai and Norway . . . (public email to Avaaz members, Ingrid’s Amazing Win, 29 August 2013) Feminist transnational activism for justice has a rich history that began long before the internet (Barbaret 2014). This theme is elaborated in the next two chapters in relation to specific human rights and women’s groups and campaigns that emerged in Latin America, Asia and the Middle East to seek justice, to bring international attention to human rights abuses by the state, corrupt officials and patriarchal practices and forms of violence against women. Before doing this, it is important to describe in empirical terms what is known about the statistically uneven dispersion of violence against women across the globe.

The uneven dispersion of violence against women across the globe While methods for comparing the victimisation of women internationally are fraught (Johnson 2013:96–97), the data that does exist reveals glaring differences in prevalence across the globe. Table 2.1 summarises the data analysed by Johnson (2013). Johnson used multiple sources of survey data to produce reasonably reliable comparisons across Central and Eastern Europe, Central and South Asia, ‘developed regions’ including Australia, US, Canada, the UK and parts of Europe, East Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa (Johnson 2013:99–105). The lifetime prevalence of intimate-partner violence was highest in African and Latin American countries. Most ‘developed’ countries had rates between 16–30 per cent per cent. A mix of countries across several continents including Canada, South Africa, Asia, Ireland and parts of Europe had the lowest rates. Countries that shared the median rate between 31–45 per cent were drawn

TABLE 2.1 Prevalence of intimate-partner violence

Intimate-partner violence lifetime Countries less than 15%

Countries 16–30%

Albania 11%

Australia 27% Armenia 9% Cape Verde 16% Cambodia Denmark 14% 22% Canada 6% Dominican Republic 17% Georgia 5% El Salvador 26% Honduras 9% Gana 23% Hong Kong 9%

Haiti 20%

Ireland 14% Italy 14% Japan 15% Morocco 13% Philippines 10% South Africa 12.5% Switzerland 10% Ukraine 13%

Iceland 22% Jordon 23% Korea 27% Malawi 28% Maldives 19% Moldova 25% Nigeria 18%

Countries 31–45%

Countries 46–60%

Countries over 61%

Bolivia 42%

Mexico 47%

Brazil 36% (province) Cameroon 42% Chile 36%

Samoa 46%

Bangladesh 62% (province) Congo 64%

Colombia 43% Costa Rica 36% Czech Republic 37% Egypt 34% India 37% Kenya 41%

Tajikistan 58% Tanzania 56% (province) Thailand 47% (province) Uganda 59%

Ethiopia 71% Kiribati 68% Solomon Islands 63%

Zambia 49%

Liberia 39%

Lithuania 38% Mozambique 40% Norway 27% Nambia 36% New Zealand 39% (rural) Rwanda 26% Nicaragua 29% (Continued)

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TABLE 2.1 (Continued)

Intimate-partner violence lifetime Countries less than 15%

Countries 16–30%

Countries 31–45%

Serbia 24% United Kingdom 28%

Peru 39% Timor-Leste 35%

Countries 46–60%

Countries over 61%

Turkey 42% Vietnam 34% United States 36% Zimbabwe 38% Source: Data extracted from Johnson (2013:99–105), Table 5.1. Johnson’s data sources include demographic and health surveys conducted by WHO, International Violence Against Women Surveys, and surveys funded by the United Nations.

most noticeably from Latin American, the Middle East and North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa, but also included United States and New Zealand. There is no simple pattern or set of correlates for violence against women to be found in this data. In her analysis Johnson includes indicators of age, family and parental status, Indigenous status, disability, family history of violence, gender inequality in marriage, emotionally abusive and controlling behaviours, and use of violence in other contexts outside the home (Johnson 2013:106). Interestingly she does not include socio-economic indicators such as household income, unemployment and poverty, which have been found in other studies to be strongly correlated with family and domestic violence. Given the potential for methodological and data limitations in the study, the findings should be interpreted with caution. Violence against women is a global problem and much attention has been focused on this issue in feminist criminological scholarship (DeKeseredy 2011; Dragiewicz 2009). According to the table above,

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the percentage of women in Australia who experience intimatepartner violence is 27 per cent, in the United Kingdom 28 per cent and in the United States 36 per cent. Many non-Western nations have lower levels of recorded intimate-partner violence. This could be the effect of poor data recording methods, lower reporting rates and the normalisation of violence in countries such as Pakistan and Middle Eastern countries. Nevertheless violence against women is by no means an issue confined to the global south or non-developed or Westernised countries. In Australia the distinctive feature of intimatepartner violence is that Aboriginal women are disproportionately represented among the victims of domestic violence and especially lethal partner violence (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 2007; Taskforce Report 2000; Gordon Report 2002; Lucashenko 1996; Memmott et al. 2001; Blagg 2000; Northern Territory Government 2007; Fitzgerald and Weatherburn 2001:1). Indigenous Australians are over-represented in custody by about seventeen times, before the courts for public order offences by about eight times, and for child abuse about six to ten times.2 According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) (2007:51), around twice as many Indigenous people report being a victim of violence as nonIndigenous Australians. However in remote and very remote areas concerns about family violence in Aboriginal communities are about three times higher than they are in urban communities (AIHW 2007:42). The rate of Indigenous women escaping family violence is also significantly higher in these localities. It might be tempting to conclude that the higher rates of violence in rural Australia are due mainly to Indigenous violence. This however is not necessarily the case as we shall see in chapter 5, which investigates masculinity and frontier violence in mining camps and communities across remote Australia. For transnational feminist intersectionality to enhance its global relevance it needs to widen its research agendas to include the distinctively different gendered patterns of crime and violence that occur across the globe. Examples of new research in this direction include studies of human trafficking and sex trafficking (Pickering 2006; Segrave et al. 2009; O’Brien et al. 2013). The following two chapters explore these issues with respect to the distinctive gendered

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nature of violence in Latin America, the Middle East and Asia, as well as the women’s movements that have emerged to struggle for justice. These chapters cannot present an exhaustive overview of violence against women in every one of these countries, so I select a number to highlight how gendered violence is shaped by local contours of power, patriarchy, religion and custom. In particular the next chapter examines forced migration, honour crimes, child marriage and bride bondage; and crimes of violence targeting a new rising class of feminists in countries where Muslim extremism embeds patriarchal power structures that oppress women and religious minorities.

Notes 1. I acknowledge and thank Jodi Death, School of Justice, QUT, for allowing me to use the survey responses in this book. I take full responsibility however for how I have interpreted the data. 2. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women’s Task Force on Violence published a lengthy report about the evidence of ‘escalating violence’ in Indigenous communities, particularly in remote and rural regions of the state (Taskforce Report 2000:ix). Reasons for the worrying incidence of family violence, child and sexual assault in Indigenous communities identified by these inquiries include situational factors such as alcohol consumption and drug abuse, overzealous policing, racial tension, conflict between cohabitating tribal communities forcibly moved from their traditional lands onto reserves or missions and kinship feuds. Other factors identified by these inquiries as contributing to the levels of violence included: colonisation and the violent dispossession of Aboriginal land, the undermining of the authority of Aboriginal elders and community leaders, the forced removal of Indigenous children and patterns of trans-generational trauma and cycles of abuse (Gordon Report 2002:31; Taskforce Report 2000:45–73).

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O’Brien, E., Hayes, S. and Carpenter, B. (2013) The politics of sex trafficking: a moral geography, Critical Criminological Perspectives series, Palgrave Macmillan: London. Pickering, S. (ed.) (2006) Borders, mobility and technologies of control, Springer: the Netherlands. Potter, H. (2014), Intersectionality and criminology: gender, race, class and crime, New Directions in Critical Criminology, Routledge: London and New York. Rafter, N. (2000) ‘Preface’, in Nicole Hahn Rafter (ed.) Encyclopedia of women and crime, ORYX Press: Phoenix, AZ, xxv–xxx. Renzetti, C. (1999) ‘The challenge to feminism of women’s use of violence in interpersonal relationships’, in S. Lamb (ed.) New versions of victims, New York University Press: New York, 42–56. Renzetti, C. (2013) Feminist criminology, Routledge: London. Sandoval, C. (1991) ‘U.S. third world feminism: the theory and method of oppositional consciousness in the postmodern world’, Genders, 10:1–24. Schwendinger, H. and Schwendinger, J. (1975) ‘Defenders of order or guardians of human rights’, in I. Taylor, P. Walton and J. Young (eds.) Critical criminology, Routledge: London, 133–146. Segrave, M., Milivojevic, S. and Pickering, S. (2009) Sex trafficking: international context and response, Willan Publishing: Collumpton. Shaw, C. (1931) The natural history of the delinquent career, University of Chicago Press: Chicago. Smart, C. (1989) Feminism and the power of law, Routledge: London. Stanko, E. (1990) Everyday violence, Pandora: London. Sykes, G. and Matza, D. (1957) ‘Techniques of Neutralisation: a theory of delinquency’, American Sociological Review, 22:667–670. Sozzo, M. (forthcoming) ‘Left turn and punishment in South America’, International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy. Taskforce Report (2000) The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women’s taskforce report on violence, Department of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Policy and Development, Queensland Government: Brisbane. Thayer, M. (2010) Making transnational feminism, Routledge: New York. Thrasher (1927) The gang, University of Chicago Press: Chicago. Threadgold, T. (1993) ‘Critical theory, feminisms, the judiciary and rape’, Australian Feminist Law Journal 1:7–25. Walklate, S. (2011) ‘Reframing criminal victimisation: finding a place for vulnerability and resilience’, Theoretical Criminology, 15:175–192. Wilkinson, I. (2010) ‘Emile Durkheim (1858–1917)’ in K. Hayward, S. Maruna and J. Monney (eds.) Fifty key thinkers in criminology, Routledge: London and New York, 43–47.

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Wonders, N. (2006) ‘Global flows, semi-permeable borders and new channels of inequality’, in S. Pickering and L. Weber (eds.) Borders, mobility and technologies of control, Springer: Dordrecht, the Netherlands. Young, A. (1992) ‘Review of feminist perspectives in criminology’, Journal of Law and Society, 19:289–292. Young, A. (1996) Imaging crime: textual outlaws and criminal conversations. Sage: London. Young, A. (1998) ‘The waste land of the law, the wordless song of the rape victim’, Melbourne University Law Review, 22(2):442–465.

3 VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND WOMEN’S STRUGGLES FOR JUSTICE Asia and the Middle East

This chapter is the first of two to analyse how specific types of violence against women, and associated struggles for justice, are shaped by the diverse but distinctive social structures and spiritual and religious beliefs of Hindu cultures in Asia and Islamist cultures in the Middle East. It examines a wide array of systemic forms of violence against females, including: infanticide; female genital mutilation; sati (the cremation of living widows); honour killings; dowry violence; arranged marriage of child brides; and the denial of basic human freedoms to millions of Hindu and Muslim women. This chapter also investigates violence that is targeted at a new rising class of female activists demanding gender rights and equity for women in countries like Pakistan, where Islamist extremism protects its patriarchal domination with violence and even assassination. The analysis attempts to represent these forms of violence against women and women’s struggles for justice using their voices and their stories, from their frame of analysis. Few would call themselves feminist. But they are brave trailblazers who challenge the subjugation of the female sex, often at their own peril. As such the chapter relies heavily on books written by victims of forced marriage and rape, newspaper articles from the countries of origin, and sources collated by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Avaaz, United Nations Women

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and other human rights and women’s organisations from these parts of the world. There are relatively few academic sources as these issues have escaped the attention of English-speaking authors and activists.

Women’s struggles for justice in Asia and the Middle East Some of the most powerful and rapidly growing economies are in Asia. However two thirds of the world’s poorest people live in these countries and a disproportionate number are women as socioeconomic disparities are linked to gender (UN Women 2014). According to UN Women, while women comprise half the business owners, women also comprise the largest number of the unemployed, those who migrate to supply cheap labour and those who work for little money under conditions with no protection against exploitation. International attention on the plight of garment factory workers in Asia was heightened after the collapse of the Raza Plaza Factory on the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh, killing over 1,100 factory workers and seriously injuring another 1,000, the vast majority of them women. While the victims and their families are set to receive an initial compensation package to the equivalent of around 390 British pounds each (Butler 2014), shocking details emerged after the collapse that the factory workers were locked in, the windows barred, and many died simply because they could not escape. This is an atrocity of immense proportion, and one entirely preventable. The garment industry in Bangladesh employs around four million workers, who are mostly female (Al-Mahmood and Harding 2013). In the aftermath, two clothing factory owners were arrested as well as the owner of the collapsed building, Sohel Rana, also a member of the Bangladesh National Party. He had approval to build a five-story building, but it is alleged that he added another three stories. When cracks emerged in the walls he allegedly reassured workers the building was safe, yet only forty-five minutes later it collapsed, entombing thousands. The Guardian reported that Rana’s dramatic capture raises a broader question: whether Wednesday’s disaster was all the fault of one man, or, as some suggest, was the product of Bangladesh’s dysfunctional system,

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where politics and business are closely connected, corruption is rife, and the gap between rich and poor continues to grow. (Al-Mahmood and Harding 2013) Western clothing companies are certainly implicated in the exploitative, largely non-unionised work conditions that characterise these factories. This chapter, however, focuses on the occurrence of these tragedies against a background of systemic gendered socioeconomic inequality and women’s diverse struggles for justice in Asia and the Middle East. These conditions render women of the lower castes and the poor especially vulnerable to a wide variety of forms of human rights violations, violence and exploitation. Chief among them are: genital mutilation; child brides forced into arranged marriages; honour crimes; forced labour and migration into domestic service around the globe, where women are exploited and subject to debt bondage; the abduction and trafficking of women for other forms of exploitation such as organ harvesting and sex work; and the widespread infanticide of female babies. Asian countries figure prominently among those with high percentages of intimate-partner violence against women – in Bangladesh 62 per cent of women experience intimate-partner violence, in India 37 per cent and in Vietnam 34 per cent (see Table 2.1). The comparable data for Islamic countries of the Middle East mostly does not exist (although Egypt recorded 34 per cent for intimate-partner violence). In many of these Islamic states intimate-partner violence against women is normalised by local customs, norms, laws and religious beliefs, so would not be recorded in any case. I now turn to a more detailed analysis of these forms of violence and associated feminist and human rights struggles for justice.

Women, forced labour, exploitation and human trafficking of women from the global south ‘Trafficking’ of humans refers to the movement and recruitment of people in sex work and other exploitative labour (Danailova-Trainor and Laczko 2010). The numbers of trafficked persons globally has been estimated between five hundred thousand to four million

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(United States Government Accountability Office 2006). Up to two million of these (around 56 per cent) are women and girls who are trafficked across international borders every year for the purposes of forced labour (UNODC 2006; International Labour Office 2009; Watts and Zimmerman 2002; Larsen and Renshaw 2012). In 2009 the International Labour Office found that the annual profits from human trafficking were at least US$32 billion (International Labour Office 2009). Trafficking of a child can earn a trafficker up to US$30,000 and in recent years there has been a growth in child trafficking for the purposes of labour exploitation, adoption, child marriage, drug smuggling, sex and organ theft (McCabe 2008:89–90). Women are often confined, beaten and raped, have their passports confiscated, receive no payment for their services and have no access to medical services (Watts and Zimmerman 2002). Domestic work is the most common category of employment among the thousands of women who migrate to the Middle East region – many of whom remit a proportion of their wages to families in South and Southeast Asia. Over 80 per cent of women migrant workers from Sri Lanka and 39 per cent from the Philippines are employed in domestic service in Middle Eastern countries including Saudi Arabia, Behrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (Moreno-Fontes Chammartin 2005). Women who migrate to the Gulf States for domestic service employment are often driven by poverty and have little or no knowledge of the conditions of their work or the different cultural, social or religious conditions of their work. They are often deprived of basic human rights in their work and have little knowledge of their rights before commencing work (Samath 2003). Sri Lankan journalist Faizal Samath estimates that between 25 per cent and 34 per cent of women migrant workers face abusive and dangerous work conditions (cited in Solidarity Center 2013). According to Sri Lanka’s Migrant Service Center, Sri Lankan migrant domestic workers are typically married women with children. Domestic workers with some education tend to receive higher wages than women who are relatively less educated. However, those who are not educated are highly vulnerable to exploitation as is illustrated in the case of Nalani Samarasinghe. Nalani moved to Qatar three times for jobs ranging from eleven months to three years. While she

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understood her contract agreement before leaving Sri Lanka, upon arrival in Qatar she said the conditions of the job did not match the agreement. At her last job she worked from 5 am to 1 am daily, was charged rent and not allowed to return home for more than two years. Nor could Nalani leave for a better job because this is prohibited in Qatar (Solidarity Center 2013:6). Domestic workers have complained of non-remunerated overtime and non-payment of wages – sometimes for months, or even years. They have also reported working over one hundred hours a week, and being subjected to physical, sexual, psychological and verbal abuse. In particular, workers reported sexual abuse by male employers, who are often also their visa sponsors, and abuse by sons or other men visiting the home (Moreno-Fontes Chammartin 2005). Abuse of female migrant domestic workers in countries like Kuwait, Lebanon, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates is systemic as it is illegal to run away from an employer’s household. Women domestic workers who leave their employer may be hunted. Once located, the worker is often imprisoned, then deported, and she may also incur a debt to her employer in order to retrieve her passport so she can travel home. This is what makes domestic workers vulnerable to being trafficked, as lack of proof of citizenship renders women particularly at risk of trafficking for exploitative sex work or abusive forms of labour (Feingold 2005). Some domestic workers have also reported being subjected to inhumane treatment in custody (Esim and Smith 2004). In early 2013 a twenty-four-year-old Sri Lankan maid was beheaded after spending seven years on death row for allegedly killing the four-month-old baby of her employer. She was denied access to a solicitor and reportedly made a confession under interrogation (Burke 2013). In 2002 forty-one-year-old Sri Lankan domestic worker Somalatha Satharasinghe was returned home from Kuwait in a coffin with parts of her brain removed and several other organs removed (Samath 2003). The exploitation and abuse of women in domestic service roles is deeply embedded in essentialist, classist and racialised notions of female labour. Romero (2013:192–193) points to the glaring contradiction in a feminism that fought for women to work outside the home, yet remains silent on professional middle- and upper-middle-class

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American women who hire poor women of colour to perform nonunionised housework and child care. She argues that these work arrangements have been redefined as a progressive shift that has moved women from unpaid work to the paid labour market. Women of colour, particularly immigrants, are exploited, for long hours of work at relatively low wages, with few benefits. Stiell and England (1999:43) argue that exploitation of poor, immigrant women is rarely regarded as problematic, first because there is a global assumption that domesticity is a ‘natural attribute’ of women, and second, because paid domestic work is highly racialised. Domestic service is typically marked by inequalities in status, mobility, gender roles, racial and ethnic differences, with employer-houseworker relations being hierarchical and conflictual (Radcliffe 1999:85). Sex trafficking as a particular form of illegal border crossing has attracted disproportionate attention by non-government agencies, governments, and a whole host of feminist and religiously motivated groups, sometimes referred to as the rescue industry (Agustin 2007, Carrington and Hearn 2003). The rescue industry tends to classify all women engaged in transnational mobility for the purposes of selling sex as helpless victims, regardless of their particular circumstances or whether or not they want rescuing (Agustin 2007:163; Segrave et al. 2009). Some of the controversies in this body of scholarship overlap with those apparent in feminist criminology more generally. Despite the prevalence of exploitation of women in sweatshops, agricultural and domestic work, it has been the far less common instances of sexual trafficking of women and girls that has generated the most concern by conservative Christians, prominent feminist activists and the press (Chacon 2006; Chuang 2010). Bernstein (2010:50–51) argues that modern-day moral anxieties about sex trafficking as slavery resonate with the white slavery scare of early nineteenth-century America. Similar to the nineteenth century, during the past decade, the term ‘trafficking’ has been synonymous with not only forced, but also voluntary, prostitution. This has been facilitated by the embrace of human rights discourses by abolitionist feminists, who have neutralised domains of political struggle around questions of labour, migration and sexual freedom, through their dominant focus on prostitution as gender violence and sexual slavery. According to

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Chuang (2010:1683) the conflation of prostitution with ‘slavery’ in conservative debates has resulted in moral crusades against prostitution. Many scholars argue that the reasons women migrate for and engage in sex work are complicated and is not necessarily captured in international definitions of trafficking, nor does it indicate how best to meet the needs of their communities (Buszar 2004:232; O’Brien et al. 2013). Rather, there is a need to address trafficking as a problem rooted in broader structural issues, such as restrictive migration intakes, ineffective labour protections for poor and unskilled workers, and endemic gender, race and class discrimination that facilitates a demand for exploited labour (Buszar 2004:1721, 1725). In reality, sex trafficking can be difficult to define, due to complex migration and work arrangements, particularly women’s voluntary participation in sex work migration. Recent debates on sex trafficking centre around whether prostitution is always coercive and therefore a form of trafficking, or whether the definition of trafficking should be applied only to forced prostitution (Chuang 2010:1657–1658). Buszar (2004) cautions against addressing the problem of human trafficking through approaches that equate all sex work migration with trafficking and exploitation; as such an approach only complicates efforts to meet the immediate needs of sex workers. Sex trafficking has also attracted considerable attention from feminist criminologists who have exposed how the fight against sex trafficking ‘has enabled the expansion of border enforcement to the detriment of the human rights of women from the Global South’ (Segrave et al. 2009:200). In Sex Trafficking, Segrave et al. (2009) highlight the diversity of experiences of women engaged in transnational sex work. They urge policy responses that respect human rights, and allow legal opportunities to engage in international sex work (Segrave et al. 2009:200–203). The authors also call for more ‘critical studies of the regulation of sex work’ that evaluate the impact of state and non-state responses to the issue (Segrave et al. 2009:203). Importantly the authors resist one of pitfalls of feminist criminology, to construct women who are trafficked or cross borders into the sex work industry as mere victims. While acknowledging that the control of sex trafficking is a gendered practice with adverse impacts upon the global mobility of women mainly from

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poor countries in the global south, they also point to the desire of some of these women to actively seek a better life through mobility (Segrave et al. 2009). Mohanty (2003) argues that numerous studies have focused on racist and sexist stereotypes in recruiting third-world women into exploitative labour, locating them as victims of multinational capital and of their own ‘traditional sexist cultures’. Relatively few studies, however, have examined questions of social agency in a context of women who are subjected to capitalist discipline. ‘Third-world women’s work’ as exploitation of the poorest women needs to be located beyond sexualised or racialised categories, in relation to the state and the international economy. According to Mohanty (2003:202–203) historical relations of racial and gender inequality operate through discourses of citizenship and individual rights, and are dependent on patriarchal households, cultures and customs. These relations are reflected in the construction of immigration and nationality laws, which have been connected to ideological and economic priorities of the state, and the search for cheap labour through the processes of capitalist neo-colonialism or super-capitalism – an issue of consequence to the cultivation of new patterns of crime and violence discussed in this and subsequent chapters.

Female genital mutilation Genital cutting is also heavily used in some of these countries to control women’s sexuality. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that more than 125 million girls have been subjected to genital mutilation, of whom the majority are found in Africa and the Middle East (WHO 2014). Egypt has the highest proportion of female population with female genital mutilation (FGM) in the Middle East, with an estimated 80 per cent of women having experienced genital cutting. The causes of FGM are linked to culture, religious and customary beliefs and not necessarily to Islamic countries or beliefs, as commonly misconstrued. Although religious beliefs have been linked to FGM, the practice predates contemporary religions, including Islam (Morgan 1997;

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Khalafzai 2008). The highest prevalence of FGM is in predominantly Muslim countries such as Africa, the Middle East and some Asian countries. For this reason, the practice has been erroneously linked to Muslim beliefs, even though it is practiced in some Christian communities in Africa and is not practiced in all Muslim countries (Morgan 1997:94). For example, FGM is rarely practised in Iran, Iraq, Jordon, Libya or Saudi Arabia (Black and Debelle 1995). Culturally, the practice of genital mutilation is usually carried out on girls aged from birth up to fifteen years (Khalafzai 2008). The procedure is often carried out by village midwives and a female relative, such as the girl’s grandmother, using razor blades or pieces of glass, and without anaesthetic or antiseptics. All girls experience haemorrhaging and pain, and complications can include infection, shock or death. The number of deaths resulting from the procedure is unknown (Morgan 1997). Long-term consequences can include recurrent reproductive and urinary tract infections and painful intercourse. The term ‘female genital mutilation’ encompasses procedures involving partial or total removal of external female genitalia. The procedure can also include narrowing of the vaginal orifice (infibulation), or pricking, incising, scraping and cauterizing female genitalia (Khalafzai 2008). During infibulation the clitoris, the labia minora and parts of the labia majora are removed and the two sides of the vulva are stitched over the vagina, making intercourse impossible. On her wedding night the woman’s husband cuts open her infibulated vagina, often with a knife (Annas 1995–1996:328–329). Women who have been subjected to infibulation have to be incised in order to have intercourse and to give birth, and women are then restitched after every birth (Khalafzai 2008). In contemporary Kenyan communities FGM is not simply a cultural practice but is an important part of the local economy. Cutters earn around eighteen English pounds for each girl and it is their livelihood (Howden 2014). Female genital practices also play an important role in dowry practices. Girls are seen as a valuable asset because a girl offered for marriage in the ‘right’ condition attracts a good dowry from the groom’s family. A bride can attract a good price in livestock, however no one will negotiate a price for an uncut girl. They are shunned by

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their neighbours and are forced to walk miles to fetch water to ensure they don’t contaminate pumps and wells (Howden 2014). The literature on FGM is predominantly concerned with whether the practice is a human rights violation or a justifiable cultural initiation ritual. There are opposing views on the subject. One perspective, a culturally relativist one, argues that genital cutting has cultural significance which celebrates femininity (Njambi 2007). Proponents of this view argue that FGM has positive cultural and social significance for practicing communities that celebrates womanhood and emphasises female fertility and procreation (Khalafzai 2008). The procedure is a celebration of the child’s sex, not a celebration of female sexuality. Rather the child is brought into adult female circles in preparation for marriage, and this is accompanied by festivity and gift-giving (Khalafzai 2008). Those on this side of the debate point out that girls who have not undergone FGM may be considered unmarriageable, as the practice is seen as an elevation of their status to ‘mothers of men’ (Annas 1995–1996), and relegated to a life of poverty, exclusion and humiliation. The other perspective, usually associated with feminism, regards genital mutilation as little more than a barbaric act of gendered violence and a form of social control over female sexuality. Feminists argue that genital cutting is a form of castrating women’s sexuality and that these rituals have no place in the modern world (Hosken 1981:11). There is an assumption that when women in Africa and the Middle East become sufficiently educated to transcend their cultural blinders, they will oppose such barbarity (Njambi 2007:690). Njambi (2007) argues that practices of FGM are complex and need to be understood in historical contexts that take into account their different meaning. She argues that in Kenya, British efforts to ban the practice of FGM were a focal point in anti-colonial struggle from the 1920s, through the Mau Mau uprising against colonial rule in the 1950s, up until Kenya’s independence in the 1960s. The struggle became known as the ‘female circumcision controversy’. During the uprising,‘women’s initiation’ symbolised a militant anti-colonial activity. Women played active roles in the Mau Mau uprising, involving themselves in gun smuggling, spying, supplying food and medicine, and combat (Njambi 2007:703). Those who were caught were

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tortured by white policemen, white settlers and African home guards, through beatings, cutting, burning, killing, crushing their breasts, food deprivation and hard labour. Other efforts made to extract information from women included rape with bottles, the use of snakes and vermin, and stuffing the woman’s vagina with nettles or boiling water. According to Njambi (2007), without women’s participation, the anti-colonial movement would probably not have been as successful, and their courage to resist torture was cultivated by their ability to endure the pain of female genital cutting (Njambi 2007:704). She criticises feminists for ignoring the cultural and political context of female genital cutting practices, and argues those who oppose genital cutting implicitly support the views of colonial rulers, while turning a blind eye to the brutality of colonialism itself (Njambi 2007:692). Her point is that there is a persistent colonial legacy in the feminist discourse of eradication of genital cutting, based on a presumption of the right of the ‘civilised’ West to intervene in the ‘backward’ cultural practices of Others. Perhaps the way that feminist objections have been cast has been through a Western lens of superiority; however, I take exception to the argument that feminist objections to female genital cutting are imperialist. There are plenty of practices in Western societies – in plastic surgery for example – that involve the mutilation of women’s bodies. The debate is fraught with various tensions between universal and particular standpoints (Kirby 1987). This causes an impasse between Western feminists, positioned as cultural outsiders interpreting the cultural specificities of a practice outside their own experience – and non-Western feminists situated in cultural contexts where FGM is normalised. While some might assume those within have a more authentic understanding of this practice because of their location within the customs and cultures that have produced it, this is also problematic because it invokes a cultural relativism. Njambi’s argument, for example, justifies FGM on the basis of a cultural or historical relativism. This is dangerous and misguided. Nazis exterminated Jews, and those who did not support the genocide risked being ostracised, banished or killed, but genocide should never be justified, regardless of the historical or cultural context. The World Health Organization and a raft of other human rights agencies have

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declared that the practice of FGM is a human rights violation and are supporting significant global efforts to stop the practice (London 2013). This should be the end of the debate.

Abducted and disappearing women: female infanticide, child brides and forced marriages There are fewer girls than boys in India – a fact attributed largely to lower female birth rates and higher mortality rates among female children compared to male children. Jha et al. (2006) argue that the most plausible explanation for the fewer numbers of female births is prenatal determination, followed by induced abortion of female foetuses. There is a cultural preference for boys in India, prenatal determination is common although illegal, and female infanticide is regularly performed. According to India’s Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (2012), there has been a sharp decline in the female population among children aged zero to six years. During 2011, infanticide was rated the most common crime (46.9 per cent) nationally of those convicted for crimes against children (Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation 2012). Anderson and Ray (2012) estimate that over two million women go missing every year, due at least in part to factors such as sex-selective abortion, violence, inadequate health care and inequality. Female infanticide is usually performed either directly by using poisonous chemicals or by neglecting to feed an infant after birth. According to Tandon and Sharma (2006) female infanticide is motivated by cultural, economic and social factors – in particular poverty and the cost of dowry, lack of economic independence and social customs and traditions that relegate women to secondary status as citizens. A study of female infanticide in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu found that common reasons for women killing their baby girls are: concerns about the family lineage (patrilinealism), pressure from a husband to kill the baby, women’s fear of being beaten by their husband if they do not kill the girl baby, and the economic burden of female children (Giriraj 2004, cited in Tandon and Sharma 2006). The imbalance in the gender ratio enhances another culturally specific crime against young women, such as the forced marriage and the sale of child brides.

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Recent reports from India of young women being kidnapped into forced marriages have suggested that the cultural preference for a son, and sex-selective abortions, have created a shortage of girls available for marriage, resulting in a spark of abductions of women (MacAskill and Pradhan 2013). A recent case of kidnapping involved a fourteenyear-old student named Rupsona, from an Indian village, who was pushed into a car at knifepoint as she walked home from school. Rupsona was drugged, beaten and driven to a town almost a thousand miles from her home, where she was introduced to a man who claimed to be her husband. She was forced to have sex with the man for fourteen months until she managed to escape and later learned that the man had paid US$800 for her abduction (MacAskill and Pradhan 2013). According to Human Rights Watch (2013) fourteen million girls are married worldwide, some as young as eight or nine. These marriages are common in South Asia, Central and West Africa and traditional Muslim villages of Afghanistan, Yemen, Egypt, Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Most victims are girls from poor, uneducated, rural backgrounds whose fathers, uncles or brothers promise them to older men, according to cultural traditions that refer to Mohammad as marrying a girl aged nine in their defence. Forced marriages also frequently involve domestic violence, marital rape, no access to education or economic resources, and a higher risk of death from childbirth. Although the average age of marriage for girls in India has increased from 14.5 (Ghosh 2011) in 1951 to 18.3 years in 2001 (UNICEF 2001), child marriage continues to be widespread, with India comprising a substantial proportion of child marriages globally (Ghosh 2011). In the Indian state of West Bengal, around one in five girls is married by the age of fifteen, compared with only one out of a hundred boys (Ghosh 2011:43). According to Ghosh (2011) the main reasons for marrying girls off early are poverty and patriarchal values. In rural peasant families girls’ virginity and chastity are strongly linked to honour and status of a family and early marriage is perceived as a way to minimise the risk of improper sexual activity. Peasant families do not normally report sexual misconduct cases towards girls to the police due to the shame of the girl losing her chastity. Their silence is usually encouraged by community

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and religious leaders (Ghosh 2011:50). This is common practice in India and Pakistan, where community and village panchayats and tribal councils (jurgas) often uphold localised customary practices, even in contravention of constitutional law and the rule of law (Baxi et al. 2006). An example of this is the case of a six-year-old girl who was raped by a forty-year-old man in the Indian village of Rajasthan. Rather than going to the police, the parents of the girl complained about the rape to local council and community elders, who held a meeting to decide what should happen to the rapist. The parents were told the girl must now marry the eight-year-old son of her attacker, however the family has refused to accept the decision (Evans 2013). In South Asian nations, including India and Bangladesh, girls can be married as soon as they reach puberty to a man they have never met. According to Warner (2004) this practice is usually due to pressure on impoverished families to marry their daughters off as soon as possible. After marriage girls live with their husband’s family, and hence cease to be a financial burden on the family (Warner 2004). According to Warner (2004:235) some girls might experience contentment within such a marriage, however the majority are forced to marry men much older, bear children at a young age and are often subjected to extensive physical and emotional abuse by their husbands and husband’s families. The girls are often forbidden from receiving any education or working outside the home. Much of the literature on forced marriages is concerned with marriages among South Asian communities in Western societies, particularly the United Kingdom. According to a report from the Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) in the UK, the majority of cases of forced marriage reported to the unit involve women of South Asian origin from India (7 per cent), Pakistan (57 per cent) and Bangladesh (13 per cent). These figures may, however, partly reflect the large South Asian population in the United Kingdom (Sharp 2008). Forced marriages often take place in the family’s homeland after girls are taken on a vacation during school holidays. One such example is that of Sameem Ali, a Manchester city councillor, who was forced into marriage after being taken to Pakistan at the age of thirteen. She was returned to the UK after she became pregnant at the age of fourteen (McSmith, 2013).

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Another tragic case involved two sisters, Zana and Nadia, who grew up in Birmingham, England. Aged fourteen and fifteen, they were sold by their father as child brides to Yemeni men (Mushsen 2000:12). Tricked into going on a holiday to Yemen by a strict Muslim father keen to remove his daughters from the evil influences of West, when she arrived Zana discovered she had been promised as a bride to Abdulla, the son of her father’s friend. She was taken to a remote mountainous Mokbana region ‘where all men carried guns and where nothing had changed for women in many centuries’ (Mushsen 2000:13). This is how she describes her new life as a child bride: I suddenly found that I had become a Yemeni peasant woman. I was expected to serve the men of the family with complete obedience; to carry water on my head for miles each day; to cook, clean and provide sexual services to my ‘husband’. (Mushsen 2000:13) After eight years she managed to escape what she describes as her imprisonment on those mountains but was forced to leave behind her young son and her sister Nadia, who at that time had two infant children she could not leave. Zana spent ten years trying to find Nadia to bring her and her now six children home, but all efforts failed. Nadia was taken into the remote mountains, hidden by the Yemeni village men from Mokbana and was nowhere to be found or contacted (Mushsen 2000). In Australia, new laws have introduced a maximum penalty of seven years in prison for anyone deemed to have forced another person into marriage. The new laws follow several cases of Australian girls being forced to marry men abroad. One such example is that of a thirteen-year-old Victorian schoolgirl who was placed on a Federal Police watch list after her school alerted child protection services that the girl’s parents may be preparing her for marriage to a man they had chosen for her – a seventeen-year-old living overseas (Kukolja 2013). Another case involved a girl who, after completing year twelve, was sent to her parent’s home country to marry. Following threats from her father, the girl agreed to marry; however,

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upon her return to Australia she managed to annul the marriage (Burn 2013). An inquiry by the Community Relations Commission of New South Wales is currently under way to investigate forced marriages in this state of Australia (Community Relations Commission 2013). In Afghanistan, despite the overthrow of Taliban rule and the establishment of a democratic government in 2002, Afghan women and girls still face widespread domestic violence, abduction and rape, forced child marriages, and being traded as capital in the settlement of disputes and debts (Raj et al. 2011). Research suggests that girls with access to education and health services from urban, educated, wealthier families are less likely than girls from rural, poor, uneducated backgrounds to be married at a young age. These results are hardly surprising, given that early marriages of girls in Afghanistan can be linked to debt bondage, slavery and families trading girls for debt (Raj et al. 2011). Debts are often accumulated due to drug use and gambling among men who marry off the girls in the family to provide the resources to pay off the debts (Raj et al. 2011). A girl might be engaged as young as two years old; then at eight or nine years she will be given to her husband’s family for marriage. While the poor are ready to relinquish their daughters for money, rich men often take the girls as brides, with the support of community elders and leaders (Raj et al. 2011). The story of Nujood, told through her own words, is a harrowing account of a forced marriage of a young girl from Yemen. In 2008, aged just ten, she was told by her father she was to be married to a man three times her age from a distant village where she grew up. When her older sister objected that she was too young, her father responded ‘Too young? When the prophet Mohammad wed Aisha, she was only nine years old’ (Ali and Minoui 2010:54). On her wedding day, her mother told her ‘From this day on, you must cover yourself when going out into the street. You are now a married woman. Your face must be seen by no one but your husband. Because it is his sharaf, his honour, that is at stake. And you must not disgrace it’ (Ali and Minoui 2010:63). Nujood was taken out of school and to her husband’s household to live. That first night he told her, ‘You are my wife! From now on, I decide everything. We must sleep in the same bed’ (Ali and

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Minoui 2010:76). She repelled his advances and ran to other rooms in the house to seek assistance. None was forthcoming. He dragged her back to the room and raped her. Nujood describes it this way: . . . something burning, a burning I had never felt before, invaded the deepest part of me. No matter how I screamed no one came to help me. It hurt awfully, and I was all alone to face the pain . . . I shrieked one more time and lost consciousness. (Ali and Minoui 2010:78) Nujood continued to be ill-treated and exploited as a servant to her mother-in-law. She was repeatedly beaten and raped by her husband and prohibited as a married woman from playing with other children or leaving the house without the full black veil or niqab. She made a brave and daring decision to escape, with the help of her father’s second wife who was left abandoned to raise his children by begging. They hatched a plan. Nujood left one morning to buy bread and instead caught a bus into the city, then a taxi to the courthouse, and with remarkable determination told the judge she wanted a divorce and why. Fearing for her life, the three judges and Shada, a female defence lawyer, hid Nujood from her family until they could imprison her father and husband. One of the judges took Nujood to his family home for a few a days before placing her with a relative who protected her from the rage of the men in her and her husband’s family. Judge Abdo, who later heard the case summed it up this way: Here we have the case of a little girl who was married without her consent. Once the marriage contract was signed without her knowledge, she was taken away by force in to the province of Hajja. There her husband sexually abused her, when she hadn’t even reached the age of puberty and was not ready for sexual relations. Not only did he abuse her, but he also struck and insulted her. She has come here today to ask for a divorce. (Judge Abdo, in Ali and Minoui 2010:113–114) There were complex legal obstacles, the main one being that Nujood was too young to initiate divorce proceedings – yet not too

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young to be married! Shada, her pro bono lawyer, enlisted the help of the media and Nujood’s story fast became a world news story. When they went to court in a blaze of international publicity, according to Nujood’s account, her husband denied raping and bashing her. Yet when the judge moved to in camera proceedings away from the glare of international publicity, her husband admitted consummating the marriage, but alleged her father had lied about her age. In the end the judge negotiated her husband’s and father’s agreement to the divorce. The judge then announced, ‘The divorce is granted’ (Judge Abdo, in Ali and Minoui 2010:117). Nujood was waiting for justice. She is still waiting. But at least she was free to be a child again and no longer had to wear the niqab. Her uncle yelled out from courtroom that she had sullied the reputation of the family and stained their honour. However when she left the courthouse Nujood was greeted by a large crowd of mostly journalists, feminists and human rights activists who had gathered to congratulate her and shower her with gifts. Afterwards they arranged a divorce party where she ate chocolate cake for the first time in her life, and played with a doll. Nujood had no choice but to live with her parents, and continued to be scorned by most of the men in her family, but she at least returned to school, and is studying to become a lawyer. Her courage to resist an age-old patriarchal tradition justified by invoking the marriage of the prophet Mohammad to a nine-year-old has left a significant legacy in Yemen. Soon after Najood’s divorce other young girls in Yemen sought divorces from men they had been forced to marry, nine-year-old Awra and twelve-year-old Rym (Ali and Minoui 2010:171). In 2009, a women’s rights group fought a successful campaign urging the Yemeni parliament to raise the legal age of sexual consent to seventeen to prevent forced child marriages at an earlier age (Ali and Minoui 2010:171). In Yemen women’s rights are severely and systematically curtailed by an extremist Islamist culture and political system, where there is only one woman in Yemeni Parliament. This country ranks last on most indicators of equality and freedom. In anticipation of the standard objection that feminist critiques of Islamist states construct Muslim men as a monolithic monstrous, barbaric, dangerous and homogenous group of men, let me make clear my objections to this

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critique. Cultural relativism of the kind that justifies human rights abuses is mistaken. Just as it is not right for Catholic priests to prey upon altar boys, as the growing number of inquiries into sexual abuse in the Christian church have revealed (Death 2013), it is not right for Islamist cultures to violate the rights of women in the name of the prophet Mohammad, who took a wife aged nine. Islamaphobia is a cultural syndrome that attributes negative traits to all who practice a Muslim faith, criminalises Muslim immigrant youth in Anglophone countries and misrepresents Muslims as terrorists (Tufail and Poynting 2013). This too is misguided, but so is turning a blind eye to the forced marriages of young girls, honour killings of women and institutionalised inequality between men and women in Yemen and other Islamist countries (Sasson 2012:vii).

Honour crimes and zina According to the London-based Honour Based Violence Awareness Network (HBVA) there are five thousand honour killings internationally per year, one thousand of which are estimated in India and one thousand in Pakistan. However, due to the informal jirga or panchayat court systems in both India and Pakistan, which may demand the death of women, it is difficult to know how many cases of honour killings go unreported (HBVA). Honour killings have been defined as the killing of women for deviations from sexual norms when an honour code is believed to have been broken and shame is brought upon the family (Faqir 2001; Meetoo and Mirza 2007). Women may also be forced to carry the burden of shame when their sexual honour is violated by rape or incest, particularly if they become pregnant. Honour killings are often carried out by a group of people, such as a husband and family members such as mothers, brothers, uncles and cousins, and sometimes the entire community (Meetoo and Mirza 2007). Acid attacks, involving sulphuric or nitric acid being thrown at or poured over the victim, most frequently result from a woman’s refusal of a marriage proposal or sexual advance, or conflicts over dowry, land or property. Acid attacks usually target a woman’s face in order to diminish her value and beauty, and of all those who are attacked,

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95 per cent die immediately (Shah 2008–2009). In one such case the wife of a powerful Pakistani politician, Bilal Khar, was attacked by her husband after she left him. Bilal Khar was acquitted of the charges. During the three years Fahkra Younus was married to Bilal Khar she was physically abused. When she left him he threw acid on her, causing extensive burns – her lips were fused shut and one of her eyes was permanently damaged. She was transported to Italy, where she underwent more than three dozen operations over a decade. In 2012 she eventually committed suicide by throwing herself from the sixth floor of a building where she lived in Rome (Hallowell 2012). In Pakistan women who claim they have been raped risk being viewed as bringing dishonour to the family through zina or sexual relations outside marriage (Franiuk and Shain 2011). This is because under certain interpretations of Islamic law rape is not necessarily a crime, and in many contexts, like forced child marriages of girls as young as ten, their rape is sanctioned by Islamic customs. Courts in Bangladesh regularly punish raped girls and women by flogging and beating them, and in Pakistan thousands of raped women accused of zina have been punished with long-term imprisonment (KARAMAH; Assyrian International News Agency 2008). According to the US organisation KARAMAH, Women Muslim Lawyers for Human Rights, the Pakistani laws of zina and rape are incompatible with Islamic law, and there is certainly not a direct relationship between the writings of the Qur’an, Islamic law and the punishment of women for rape. Rather, the problem lies in legal definitions that blur the distinction between zina and rape and the lack of adherence to the Qur’anic principle of ‘adalah’ (justice, balance and equity). The following case provides an example of how girls who are raped can be punished by zina under Shari’ah law: In 1982, a thirteen-year-old Pakistani girl Jehan Mina was raped by her uncle and his son, while she was doing domestic work for her aunt. She became pregnant but did not tell anyone until she was almost six months pregnant. Another uncle filed a complaint of rape; however at the hearing Jehan Mina was convicted of zina and the two rapists were acquitted. She was sentenced to one hundred stripes or floggings, but on appeal the sentence was changed to three years rigorous imprisonment and fifteen lashes (Oette 2011:248). According

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to Asma Jahangir, who is the cofounder of Pakistan’s first law firm established by women, and the head of the Pakistan Human Rights Commission, Jehan Mina’s conviction was based on the fact that she was pregnant and unmarried. In Pakistani courts, historically there is often no difference between zina and rape and women have no protection from being implicated in a false zina case (Jahangir 1988). Until 2006, Pakistan courts required the testimony of four men to support one woman’s allegation of rape (Esposito and Mogahed 2007). Now they require only two! While this is an advance, it’s hardly gender equality. In countries where Islam is the predominant religion, such as Yemen, Pakistan and Bangladesh, there is an expectation of strict adherence to behaviour that supports family honour. Female sexual purity is regarded as crucial to upholding honour, as symbolised in an Arabic phrase that states that ‘a man’s honour lies between the legs of a woman’ (Vandello and Cohen 2003; Fatah 2011). Nevertheless, there remains a great deal of debate about the extent to which Muslim religiosity, cultural norms and laws accurately reflect Islamic religious texts (Franiuk and Shain 2011). Some argue that in Islam under Shari’ah law women are highly esteemed and respected (Esposito and Mogahed 2007:99–109). What is problematic is not the critique of the way women are systematically denied human rights in parts of the Islamic world, but when all Muslim countries and cultures are homogenised as ‘backward’ and barbarism is presented as an inherent characteristic of Islam. There is significant variation among Islamic states in regards to the treatment of women. In Kurdish Iraq, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates for example Muslim women enjoy many of the same rights and freedoms as women in Western social democracies and their testimony in court is considered equal to that of a man. They have the right to drive, work, study, vote, have high rates of literacy and participate in public life. The contrary is the case in other Middle Eastern Islamic countries such as Yemen, the Gaza strip, Egypt and Iraq, where women are largely invisible, many are circumcised, and they are heavily restricted from studying, working, driving, voting or being independent (Sasson 2102). In these countries a woman’s court testimony is still considered only half that of man’s. Hence the inequalities that women experience under Islam

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varies across Muslim countries, and not all want to be ‘liberated’ by well-meaning but misdirected feminists or human rights activists from the West. Nevertheless there is strong local feminist resistance to repressive Islamic regimes that normalise honour crimes, female circumcision, violence against women, forced marriages and the rape of child brides. Honour crimes are forms of violence justified by the perpetrator, usually with the support of their community (Meetoo and Mirza 2007). Baxi, Rai and Ali (2006) argue that crimes of honour constitute a gendered violence that regulates sexuality within communities, circumscribing cultural boundaries and preventing transgression of community norms by girls and women.

Sati: cremating a living wife Sati refers to the ancient Hindu tradition of cremating a living wife with her dead husband. With widowhood being a highly stigmatised status in India, and although the sati woman is hailed as a heroine by the community, it may be carried out forcibly (Singh and Unnithan 1999). Traditionally the practice of sati is based on the Hindu karma principle, which demands that a widow kill herself so that her soul may join that of her dead husband, and the dharma principle of a wife’s duty and sacrifice (Singh and Unnithan 1999). Sati has been rationalised in orthodox Hindu belief on the basis that a woman was responsible for her husband predeceasing her, by sin in a previous life or in the present. Sati was based on the belief that women are essentially sexually unreliable and unable to lead chaste lives without a husband to control them (Stein 1978:256). Sati was banned by the British government in 1829, yet there continue to be incidents of the practice in India and also, allegedly, in the United States (Sen 2001; Singh and Unnithan 1999). According to Ania Loomba (1993:209) widow immolation, or sati, is one of the most spectacular forms of patriarchal violence. Sati is produced by, and helps to validate and circulate, ideologies that strengthen the oppression of women. The burnt widow is hailed as a woman with special powers, such as a goddess, to curse or bless, who feels no pain, and who will be rewarded by eternal marital bliss after death. Her ‘decision’ to burn with her husband is revered by the community, even as her decisions and desires

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are erased, and she is also cast as a symbol of normative femininity. The origins of sati are thought to date to the first millennium AD among the Kshatriya warrior and ruler caste, who endowed it with a social prestige (Loomba 1993; Stein 1978). During the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries the death of a ruler could result in the burning of his queens, concubines and servants (Stein 1978), who were said to then join the ruler in heaven (Loomba 1993). The tangible benefits of sati included reducing the possibilities of women remarrying outside the family, and thus, preventing complications with the inheritance (Loomba 1993).The following vignette is an example of sati in modern India. In 1987, in the Indian state of Rajasthan, an eighteen-year-old woman, Roop Kanwar, who had been married by arrangement to a man she hardly knew, was burned alive on her husband’s funeral pyre before a crowd of several thousand people, most of whom were men. Many litres of ghee (cooking butter) were poured on her as she burned. Roop Kanwar was literate and fashionable and her husband had a bachelor of science degree; they had been married for only eight months (Sen 2001). After Roop Kanwar’s death she was hailed as a goddess, and her parents and in-laws celebrated her death. It was not until three weeks after her death that the Prime Minister of India declared sati a national shame (Sen 2001). Although a number of people who assisted in the suicide were arrested, they were later acquitted on the grounds that the suicide was a social and religious tradition. Since Roop Kanwar’s death there have been several other incidents of sati in India, as recently as 2008 (Ahmad 2009). Handsome profits were made following Roop Kanwar’s death by those who turned the sati into a commercial spectacle involving hundreds and thousands of people. Much was made of the fact that Roop Kanwar was educated and not simply an uneducated village girl; this fact was used to argue that her death was a case of ‘free choice’. Although sati is often justified on the basis that it is ‘voluntary’ Indian feminists argue that voluntary sati does not exist (Loomba 1993). Traditionally, an unfaithful woman could not be burnt with her husband, and therefore sati proved the woman had been virtuous all her life. This left the widow with the choice of death as a heroine, or a humiliating life in which she would be ostracised as a sinner – a choice that

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often made death preferable to widowhood (Stein 1978:254–255). In theory the widow could refuse sati, however, she was strongly advised to burn herself and not dishonour the family. Once she committed herself to sati she could not change her mind and measures to ensure the sati went ahead included tying the woman down with firewood and bamboo poles. If she escaped she was often dragged back by force, sometimes by her own son (Stein 1978:255).

Dowry deaths and domestic violence In India some acts of violence towards women in the family are intertwined with demands for dowry (Vindhya 2000:1089). Dowry is a coercive payoff to a woman’s in-laws for accepting her and usually takes the form of property and cash. The woman is not only regarded as a liability, but is also a hostage for her in-laws’ desires and demands for gifts, and pressure is frequently applied on the woman’s family for more gifts. A large number of these demands result in ‘dowry murder’, often where wives are burned alive by their husband’s families (Bloch and Rao 2002). When a woman in India enters an arranged marriage, she leaves her parents’ home to live with her husband. Dowries have increased substantially since the 1980s, and an unmarried daughter is considered not only a social and economic burden, but also dishonourable to the family. As divorce is not an option, the woman cannot remove herself from an abusive husband, and is never able to move back permanently to her parents’ home. Instead, the woman can be used as a hostage for her husband’s family to extract or control resources from the woman’s family. It is not uncommon for a man to beat his wife if her family refuses to meet his ongoing demands for money or property (Bloch and Rao 2002:1031). According to the India’s National Crime Records Bureau there were 8,233 dowry deaths in India during 2012. This constitutes an increase of around 1,400 deaths over the past ten years. Indian crime statistics indicated substantial increases for the offence ‘cruelty by husband or his relatives’, with 106,527 cases reported during 2012 – an increase of more than 100 per cent (49,237) over the past ten years (National Crime Records Bureau 2012). One such example is the

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death of twenty-five-year-old Pravartika Gupta, a technology graduate, and her thirteen-month-old baby daughter. In October 2012, in New Delhi, Pravartika and her daughter were set on fire over a dowry dispute with Pravartika’s husband and her in-laws. Pravartika died in a hospital shortly afterwards and her daughter suffered burns to 55 per cent of her body. Pravartika was alleged to have suffered domestic violence during the two years she had been married, and her in-laws had made dowry demands of several thousand dollars from her father. They were also alleged to have been angry that their first born child was not a son (Nelson 2012). According to Bates et al.’s 2004 study, the better the dowry, the stronger position a woman has in her in-laws’ home. This was explained by a thirty-two-year-old female study participant: ‘. . . Her mother-in-law cannot torture her, nor can her husband beat her’. The dowry system is therefore a way of families ensuring their daughters are treated well in the marital home. Dowry demands impose considerable stress and hardship on families, and this is compounded by families’ concerns about higher dowry demands for older daughters. Hence the social and economic imperative to marry daughters early often overrides other considerations such as girls’ educational attainment, which could delay marriage (Bates et al. 2004).

Rape as cultural gendered violence against women The prevalence of rape of Indian women was brought into the public arena in December 2012 after twenty-three-year-old physiotherapy student Jyoti Singh Pandey was brutally beaten and gang raped by four attackers on a bus in Delhi. Jyoti died from horrific internal injuries thirteen days after the rape, resulting from her attackers inserting iron rods into her body and disembowelling her. She and her male friend were then thrown onto the road naked (Singh 2013). The case sparked outrage and protests in India and around the world, and has since mobilised global debate about rape, cultural violence against women and women’s rights. National crime statistics reveal that during 2012 there were 24,923 reported rapes across India (National Crime Records Bureau 2012). According to Professor Tithi Bhattacharya of Purdue University, however, the ratio of the

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actual number of rapes to reported cases is at least five to one, and often higher (Bhattacharya 2013). According to Bhattacharya (2013) the massive protests that continued for weeks in India after the brutal rape and murder of Jyoti Singh Pandy were a culmination of pent-up anger, from years of regular sexual assault of Indian women. Author and activist Arundati Roy (2012) described the protests in terms of an exceptional response to an unexceptional event – as rape is a common occurrence in India. Targets of the violence, according to Kavita Krishnan (2012), secretary of the All India Progressive Women’s Association, who led activism on violence against women following the gang rape case, are mostly Indigenous women, low caste Dalit women, those working in the non-unionised labour sector, women with disabilities, sex workers and transgender people. One such example is that of a sixteen-year-old Indian woman, from a poor family, who was gang raped in October 2013, during two separate attacks, and then died after being set on fire. The young woman (who has not been named in media reports) reported the first rape to police, then was gang raped again by the same men on her way home from the police station, as punishment for filing a police case. She was then set on fire in her own home, by men known to the gang who raped her, so that she could not testify in court. The girl’s burns were initially reported as attempted suicide, however it has since been alleged that the police tried to prevent disclosure of the burning to cover up that they gave the girl no security after she reported the rape (Banerjie 2014). Following the girl’s death on 31 December 2013, the All India Progressive Women’s Association organised a rally against the government’s apathy and attempt to cover up the case (Saul 2014). Authorities frequently turn a blind eye to rape, and there have been numerous cases of police refusing to respond to reports of rape, particularly if it involves men from a socially dominant caste (Bhattacharya 2013). According to Arundati Roy (2012) the Delhi rape case created a great deal of outrage because it played into the idea of the criminal poor assaulting a respectable girl, yet rape is regularly used as a means of domination by upper castes, the army or the police. She argues that there are starkly contrasting worlds

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between the truth of women in India and the image of modern India portrayed by Bollywood and hi-tech India. In reality, feudal India has a long history and legacy of disrespect and violence towards women. The role of village councils (panchayats) in upholding patriarchal cultural norms of sexual violence against women has been the subject of public media reports. According to Kripa AnanthPur of the Madras Institute of Develoment Studies in Chennai, India, local village panchayats, or informal local government institutions, are a manifestation or extension of the caste system (AnanthPur 2002:4). Panchayats operate in most Indian villages as informal caste-based local governance institutions and as a higher-level organisation with jurisdiction over the entire village. They play a central role as custodians of traditional norms and rules, in addition to dispensing informal justice, dispute resolution, maintaining local law and justice, and organising social activities (AnanthPur 2002). Although there are many types of panchayats with diverse roles and complex organisational structures, they are typically comprised of representatives from dominant caste groups while lower castes are under-represented or absent (AnanthPur 2002). Panchayats can play an important role in maintaining communal harmony, bringing justice to victims and providing financial assistance to impoverished families (Varshney 2002; AnanthPur 2002). However, there are numerous news reports on the role of village panchayats in facilitating atrocities against lower caste Dalit groups and women who transgress cultural or social norms. One such case is that of a Hindu woman who was ‘sentenced’ by the village elder to gang rape for having a relationship with a married Muslim outsider. The trial of the twenty-year-old woman was watched by around three hundred people with at least one capturing the proceedings on a mobile phone. Following the woman’s sentence to gang rape by her neighbours, she was untied from a tree and taken to a shed where she was raped repeatedly over a period of about six hours. Among her thirteen alleged rapists was the village headman himself. After two days, the victim escaped and was hospitalised, and police investigating the case have seized mobile phone footage of the gang rape (Mehrotra et al. 2014).

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Shari’ah law and women’s struggles for justice in Islamic countries In Shari’ah law, provocation provisions built into the courts’ interpretation of the law have allowed for Islamic or cultural justifications for judicial decisions that systematically discriminate against women. This has resulted in some men accused of committing honour crimes, rapes or violence against women being acquitted or receiving light sentences (Shah 2008–2009:1188). In cases of extreme violence by a husband, the provocation provisions can also result in women dropping all charges against the perpetrator in exchange for a divorce. According to Shah (2008–2009) the provisions also encourage crimes such as acid attacks against women who are accused of dishonour. In South Asia the highest numbers of acid attacks occur in Bangladesh and Pakistan. The Progressive Women’s Association in Pakistan reported increasing numbers of acid attacks, with 1,500 cases reported between 1994 and 2004 (Shah 2008–2009). Esposito and Mogahed (2007:100–133) argue that feminism has been used to justify colonialist and Western intervention in Islamic states, to justify the war on terror and assert the cultural superiority of American and Western values. They caution against those feminists from the West who want to ‘rescue’ Muslim women, as these women do not need or want rescuing. They assert that Muslim women regard the veil as a symbol of respect for the feminine body and that the way Western women reveal their bodies as a way of pleasing men. The politics of the burqa – the total veiling of women in public – are contentious. The French president, in banning the burqa, said, ‘It is not a sign of religion, it is a sign of subservience . . . It will not be welcome in the territory of the French republic’ (Kambara 2009). The Urban Affairs minister, herself born to Algerian parents, described ‘the burqa as a prison, it’s a straightjacket . . . It is not a religious insignia but an insignia of a totalitarian political project that advocates inequality between the sexes and which is totally devoid of democracy’ (Kambara 2009). Other Muslim feminists also argue that the veil is a symbol of their subjugation, invisibility, passivity and seclusion in Islamic societies (Ahmed 1982:160).

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Esposito and Mogahed disagree. They argue that veiling is a symbol of women’s centrality and respect within Islam. Even though most Muslim woman want the democratic right to vote and drive a car, Esposito and Mogahed (2007) assert that Muslim women want political and economic development more than they desire gender equality – a big claim and one historically contested through the voices of Muslim feminists such as The Egyptian Feminist Union, formed in 1922 by Huda Sha’rawi, who famously ‘cast off her veil’ (Ahmed 1982:162). According to Esposito and Mogahed (2007) those most successful in struggling for women’s equality are Muslim women who challenge interpretations and practices of justice under Shari’ah law that discriminate against women. Esposito and Mogahed argue that ‘reform in Muslim societies will likely be most effective if promoted within an Islamic framework. . . . This was the case when Muslim scholars issued a statement against FGM in light of Islamic teachings; and when Pakistan women use Qur’anic teachings to amend the discriminatory rape laws’ (Esposito and Mogahed 2007:131). Being an insider gives Muslim women a strategic advantage to bring about reform. Well aware of the imperial distortions of Islam by the West, other Muslim feminists, who resist the lure of cultural relativism, argue that ‘this of course in no way alters the fact that the reality of women’s oppression in the Middle East is indeed ugly and unacceptable’ (Ahmed 1982:159). According to Egyptian writer, feminist and activist Nawal El Saadawi (2008) women in Arab countries have been the primary targets of attacks by both neo-conservatism/ neo-colonialism forces and religious fundamentalist movements. According to El Saadawi (2008) these ostensibly conflicting interests combine to maintain the subjugation of women. The most pervasive forces are those of political religious fundamentalism embedded in the traditionalist, conservative social structures of Islamist societies. Fundamentalism, according to El Saadawi (2008:29), creates a ‘false consciousness’ among men and women that makes women obedient instruments of their own oppression and transmitters of this false consciousness to future generations of children. El Saadawi (2008) describes fundamentalism as an invisible gender mutilation which instils fear, obedience and resignation, and destroys the capacity to understand what is happening, to react or resist.

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The women’s movement in Pakistan emerged from the dictatorship of Zia ul-Haq, who imposed the harsh penalties of Shari’ah law during the 1970s and 1980s, and made a woman’s evidence in court worth half that of a man’s, and only a quarter that of a man’s in the case of rape. The Islamisation agenda of the dictator President Zia ul-Haq targeted women and minority groups and instituted legal and social discrimination. In contrast, under General Masharraf ’s rule, from 1999 to 2006, women gained unprecedented rights to political representation in parliament, appointments in federal cabinet and appointments in the armed forces and public services (Zia 2009). Contemporary Islamic feminists in Pakistan strive to unravel patriarchal cultural practices from religion. According to Zia (2009) the biggest challenge for feminists is the realisation that women’s sexuality is the site where culture and religion interact to control women’s status and sexuality. For example Zia (2009) questions whether the shooting of the Pakistani woman minister for social welfare, Zille Huma, in 2007, for not adequately veiling herself in public, should be understood through a framework of cultural norms or religious sanction. While the interpretation of the law through a framework of patriarchal morality is problematic, a larger concern is that patriarchal culture and/or religion will continue to dominate any translation of the social order. Zia (2009) argues that feminists are not looking simply for improvements for women within an existing patriarchal framework, but rather for ways to uproot and transform gender relations to ensure women’s choices are not constrained either by faith-based political and legal systems, or sanctioned by a patriarchal culture (Zia 2009:239). In 1981, human rights lawyer Asma Jahangir established the Women’s Action Forum. She was subsequently arrested, imprisoned and threatened with death (Coyle 2014). In 2012 files leaked by Edward Snowden revealed an assassination plan on Jahangir’s life by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Jahangir promptly appeared on several television programs to denounce the ISI plot (Popham 2013). Women who speak out or oppose fundamentalist interpretations of Shari’ah law still risk being targeted like this. Politicians, human rights activists and judges are also at risk of assassination for supporting the rights of women under Islam. The most notorious

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instance of this from Pakistan is the shooting of fifteen-year-old schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai, a devout Muslim committed to rights of all children, not just boys, to be educated. Following sixteen months of feuding between local Islamists and government forces in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, in 2009 the Pakistan government introduced judicial regulations to ensure that all legal cases in the region would be determined according to Shari’ah law. While the new regulations were applauded by local people as well as the Taliban in the Swat region, less fundamentalist Islamic and secular groups of Pakistan were vocal in their criticisms. Among the critics was Malala’s father, who established a coeducational Kushdale school that taught both boys and girls (Yousafzai 2013:90). He came under intense pressure from the local mufti to stop girls from attending the school. At first he negotiated that girls would use the back, not the front entrance, and be taught separately from boys. Critics, like Malala’s father, were concerned that the regulations would strengthen the militants and encourage demands from the Taliban to implement a Shari’ah-based judicial system in other parts of the country, or in the whole of Pakistan (Khan 2009). Shari’ah law had a profound impact on the people of the Swat region, even before the implementation of the new regulations. Women and girls were instructed to wear burqas in public. The Taliban closed barber shops and music stores, banned TVs and CDs, banned girls’ education, prohibited women from going to the marketplace and torched or bombed more than three hundred girls’ schools. The Taliban warned more than four hundred other girls’ schools not to open (Khan 2009; Hashim 2012). In 2008 the Taliban announced on radio that ‘From 15 January girls must stop going to school’ (Yousafzai 2013:146). Malala’s father refused the order to close his school to girls, described as ‘a haven from the horrors outside’ (Yousafzai 2013:137). Taliban leader Mallah Fazlullah was a key instigator of the demands for Shari’ah law in the Swat region. He set up a shura, similar to a local Shari’ah court, where disputes and allegations were heard and punishments determined. They began to flog offenders in public after Friday prayers (Yousafzai 2013:119). They engaged in other human rights abuses, killing political opponents and critics including a close friend of Malala’s father, Malak Bakht Baidar (Yousafzai 2013:121).

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They also murdered a young woman called Shabana in January 2009, known for dancing talents regarded by the Taliban as immoral and anti-Muslim (Yousafzai 2013:147–148). Her bullet-ridden body was left in the main square for all to see, as a warning to other young women from the Swat valley of their fate should they not comply with the strict Islamic regime imposed on women by the Taliban. Fazlulah, the local Taliban leader, is alleged to have ordered the shooting of Malala Yousafzai in October 2012 (Hashim 2012; Salahuddin 2013). Born in Mingora, Pakistan, located in the country’s Swat Valley, Malala, then aged fifteen, was an exceptionally bright student attending her father’s secondary school in Pakistan’s Swat Valley. In 2009 at only eleven years old, she began blogging for the BBC about living under the threats of the Taliban to deny her and other girls in Afganistan and Pakistan an education (Van Gilder Cooke 2012; Hashim 2012). International attention was sharply focused on her struggle for gender justice under Shari’ah law in South Asia, when on 9 October 2012, on the orders of the Taliban, a tall man bordered the school bus, asked which one was Malala and shot her in the head. Some of her friends were also shot and seriously injured. Malala sustained life-threatening injuries and was flown to Birmingham, England, for treatment, where she lives today with her family. She has since written a book I am Malala about her struggles for justice against the Taliban. The book has been banned in Pakistan (Gul 2013) and Malaysia (Jasarat 2013). A Taliban spokesman told the Dawn online newspaper, ‘The Taliban will not lose an opportunity to kill Malala Yousufzai and those who were found selling her book will be targeted’ (Gul 2013). Reviews of her book in Pakistan have been scathing – accusing Malala of abandoning Islam for secularism, and for pairing up with a white Western feminist to attack Islam. Her story is a mirror reflected on the brutally patriarchal Islamist ideology and extremist practices in Pakistan. In a remarkable attack on the book, Hassan Altaf, one reviewer, accuses feminism for making Malala a global martyr. A white, female, seasoned British journalist writing in conjunction with a brown Pakistani teenager poses its own questions of feminism, the location of the subaltern, and the trope that

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situates white women as somehow necessary midwives to the production of this brown girl’s emancipation. (Zakaria 2014) Almeida, a columnist for the Dawn newspaper, asks: For where’s the rage against the TTP [Taliban] then? If the victim has earned scorn for unwittingly bearing testimony to the monstrousness that stalks this land, then why not opprobrium for the perpetrators too? No, it feels less like guilt and shame and more like resentment. Resentment against a teenager shot in the face for speaking about a girl’s right to education? (Almeida 2013) The international reaction outside Pakistan has been the stark opposite. In 2009 Malala was awarded Pakistan’s National Youth Peace Prize (Bio 2014). In 2013 she spoke at the United Nations and was the youngest ever nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize. In a deeply moving and historic speech to the United Nations, Malala urged all governments, all religions, all leaders and all people of the world to unite peacefully, to support the rights of all children to be educated and to protest against the human rights violations of children across the world, forced into slavery and arranged marriages and denied basic freedoms such as the right to be educated. So here I stand . . . one girl among many. I speak – not for myself, but for all girls and boys. I raise up my voice – not so that I can shout, but so that those without a voice can be heard. Those who have fought for their rights: Their right to live in peace. Their right to be treated with dignity. Their right to equality of opportunity. Their right to be educated. . . One child, one teacher, one pen and one book can change the world. Education is the only solution. Education First. (A World at School 2013)

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According to human rights lawyer Asma Jahangir, cofounder of Pakistan’s first law firm established by women and herself a target of an assassination plot by the Taliban, sixteen-year-old activist Malala Yousafzai is the best-known of a new generation of young Pakistani women who are fighting for a fairer society, gender equality and human rights. Jahangir describes all the women who have gone before Malala to fight women’s oppression under Muslim extremism, as ‘the proud mothers of our Malalas’ (Coyle 2014). In April 2014 in Lahore, the newly initiated Women’s Parliamentary Caucus of Punjab Assembly introduced new bills including a domestic violence bill, laws protecting home-based workers and a reproductive health bill (International News 2014). The Caucus also responded to recommendations made by the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) ruling that laws relating to a minimum age of marriage were un-Islamic and the children of any age should be able to marry (Ali 2014). The Women’s Caucus condemned CII recommendations for child marriage and polygamy on the basis that the Qur’an did not sanction marriage before the age of eighteen (International News 2014). While feminists in Pakistan and the Middle East have a long struggle ahead, the courage and actions of the Women’s Parliamentary Caucus provide some hope for optimism.

The Pink Sari movement and female activism in India Women’s rights movements in India date back to the early nineteenth century with social reformers agitating for widow remarriage, women’s education, abolition of sati and the eradication of child marriage (Luthra 2007:155). Since the 1970s the urban women’s movement in India has focused, particularly in the major cities, on atrocities such as rape and dowry murders, and women’s reproductive rights and legislative reform. Dalit movements also gained impetus during the 1970s and 1980s as Dalit women took on battles at grassroots levels against landlords, government contractors and other vested interests (Luthra 2007:156). One such group is the Pink Sari movement, formed by a group of Dalit women in 2006 to stop child marriages, honour crimes, rape and domestic violence. This Indian female Gulabi Gang from Uttar Pradesh, in Northern India, is also commonly referred to as the Pink Saris, which has become its

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signature garment. The group was formed by Sampat Pal who, as a child bride, was married off to man much older and gave birth to her first child at fifteen (Fontanella-Khan 2013). The Pink Sari movement, also known as the Gulabi Gang, now has around twenty thousand women members, who wear bright pink saris and carry bamboo sticks (lathis). In a region of India that is characterised by high levels of domestic violence, child labour, child marriages and dowry demands, the women seek justice. They confront abusive relatives and corrupt police, and recently attracted widespread attention by pursuing a powerful legislator who raped a young girl. They have also punished oppressive husbands, fathers and brothers and attacked male perpetrators of domestic violence, or publicly shamed them when they refused to listen or relent. If these men used force, the Pink Sari women resorted to using their lathis. They have also stormed police stations when police refused to register complaints of abuse against women (Saner 2011). The kick-ass, female crime fighters have as their warrior leader the intrepid Sampat Pal Devi. ‘Nobody comes to our help in these impoverished parts. The police and officials are corrupt and anti-poor. So sometimes we have to take the law into our own hands. At other times, we shame the wrongdoers. But we aren’t a gang in the usual sense of the term. We are a gang for justice who wear pink,’ says Devi, 55, who trains new recruits in fighting with sticks. (Lal, 21 March 2014) The police in Utter Pradesh have a fearful respect for Sampat – the woman who once stormed a police station demanding justice, with a hundred women armed with lathis, and several hundred spectators and the media in tow. She has also been charged with rioting, obstructing police and criminal intimidation. Nevertheless, she has gained the support of the Indian mainstream media and the Indian National Congress Party, and has been invited to meet the president of the Congress Party, Sonia Gandhi (Fontanella-Khan 2013). It is only much more recently (since the 1980s) that international human rights organisations like the United Nations and the World

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Health Organization have provided support for women’s and nongovernment organisations to empower women, to increase their political participation, to promote their socio-economic equality and to lobby for reform to stop culturally specific violence against women and girls, such as genital cutting, dowry bondage, forced child marriage and sati (United Nations Women 2014). Bharati Ray (2005) traces the origins of grassroots organic feminism in India to the writings and protests of women against colonialists, Hindi and Muslim cultures around the turn of the twentieth century. She uses the example of the literary works of an educated woman Rokeya, who wrote Padmarag, a fictional book that challenged patriarchal domination of women by both Muslim and Hindi cultures and spirituality. She was chiefly concerned however with the unequal treatment of Muslim women in her community (Ray 2005:448). Ironically it was the Muslim and Hindi men of colonial Bengal who embraced the education of women like Rokeya, who then used their newly acquired knowledge to challenge the social ordering of gender inequality embedded in culture and religion. Rokeya did not challenge the institutions of family or religious faiths of either Hindu or Islam. Rather she protested about women’s unequal treatment in religion and culture, encouraging women to organise collectively and men to recognise and value women equally (Ray 2005:448). Arundhati Roy, the author of prize-winning novel The God of Small Things, is a contemporary of Rokeya, who likewise used her literary talents to expose, protest and challenge the injustices of the caste system and the treatment especially of untouchable women. Her politics are more complex than feminism, and her protests include the injustices of development wrought about by super-capitalism; political corruption; caste inequality and nepotism (Deb 2014). These powerful women and the collectivities in which they were enmeshed did not need Western feminism to organise or encourage them to struggle for gender justice. Muslim feminists were burning their veils long before Western women were burning their bras! Nor did the women’s movements in Latin America model themselves on the political strategies of Western feminism, as we shall see in the following chapter.

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Salahuddin, G. (2013) ‘The return of Fazlullah’, Pakistan Peace Collective, 10 November 2013. http://ppc.org.pk/?p=1129 Samath, F. (2003) ‘Furor over dead worker shows migration risks’, cited in A. Ahsan Ullah, Risking lives beyond borders: reflections on the international migration scenario. http://iussp2005.princeton.edu/papers/50713 Saner, E. (2011) ‘Sampat Pal Devi: leader of the Gulabi gang in northern India, an all-women vigilante force’, The Guardian, 8 March 2011. www. theguardian.com/world/2011/mar/08/sampat-pal-devi-100-women Sasson, J. (2012) Princess: a true story of life behind the veil in Saudi Arabia, Windsor-Brooke Books: Atlanta. Saul, H. (2014) ‘India gang rape victim who died after being set on fire ‘was pregnant’ police confirm’, The Independent, 3 January 2014. www. independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/india-gang-rape-victim-who-diedafter-being-set-on-fire-was-pregnant-police-confirm-9037361.html Segrave, M., Milivojevic, S. and Pickering, S. (2009) Sex trafficking: international context and response, Willan Publishing: Collumpton. Sen, M. (2001) Death by fire: sati, dowry death and female infanticide in modern India, Weidenfeld and Nicholson: London. Shah, H. (2008–2009) ‘Brutality by acid: utilizing Bangladesh as a model to fight acid violence in Pakistan’, Wisconsin International Law Journal, 26:1172–1199. Sharp, N. (2008) ‘Forced marriage in the UK: a scoping study on the experience of women from Middle Eastern and North East African communities’, Refuge, United Kingdom. http://refuge.org.uk/files/1001-ForcedMarriage-Middle-East-North-East-Africa.pdf Singh, S. (2013) ‘Delhi gang-rape case: It’s murder, injuries meant to kill, court says’, The Times of India, September 11 2013 http://articles.timesofindia. indiatimes.com/2013-09-11/india/41970044_1_acts-nirbhaya-rods Singh, R. and Unnithan, N. (1999) ‘Wife burning: cultural cues for lethal violence against women among Asian Indians in the United States’, Violence Against Women, 5(6):641–653. Solidarity Center (2013) ‘Sri Lanka: migrants gain voice and protections’, www.solidaritycenter.org/Files/Sri%20Lanka.English%20Final.bug.pdf Stein, D. (1978) ‘Suttee as a normative institution’, Signs, 4(2):253–268. Stiell, B. and England, K. (1999) ‘Jamaican domestics, Filipina housekeepers and English nannies: representations of Toronto’s foreign domestic workers’, in J. Henshall Momsen (ed.), Gender, migration and domestic service, Routledge: London, 43–61. Tandon, S. and Sharma, R. (2006) ‘Female foeticide and infanticide in India: an analysis of crimes against girl children’, International Journal of Criminal Justice Sciences, 1(1). www.sascv.org/ijcjs/Snehlata.html Tufail, W. and Poynting, S. (2013) ‘“A common outlawness”: criminalisation of Muslim minorities in the UK and Australia’, International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 2(3):43–54.

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UNICEF (2001) ‘Age at marriage’, UNICEF: India. www.unicef.org/india/ Media_AGE_AT_MARRIAGE_in.pdf United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) (2006) Trafficking in persons: global patterns. www.unodc.org/pdf/traffickinginpersons_ report_2006-04.pdf United Nations Women (2014) ‘Asia and the Pacific’, United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. www.unwomen. org/en/where-we-are/asia-and-the-pacific United States Government Accountability Office (US GAO) (2006) Human trafficking: Better data, strategy and reporting needed to enhance US antitrafficking efforts abroad, US GAO: Washington DC Van Gilder Cooke, S. (2012) ‘Pakistani heroine: how Malala Yousafzai emerged from anonymity’, Time World, 23 October 2012. http:// world.time.com/2012/10/23/pakistani-heroine-how-malala-yousafzaiemerged-from-anonymity Vandello, J. and Cohen, D. (2003) ‘Male honor and female fidelity: implicit cultural scripts that perpetuate domestic violence’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(5):997–1010. Varshney, A. (2002) Ethnic conflict and civic life – Hindus and Muslims in India, Oxford University Press: New Delhi. Vindhya, U. (2000) ‘“Dowry deaths” in Andhra Pradesh India: Response of the criminal justice system’, Violence Against Women, 6(10): 1085–1108. Warner, E. (2004) ‘Behind the wedding veil: child marriage as a form of trafficking in girls’, American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy and the Law, 12(2):233–271. Watts, C. and Zimmerman, C. (2002) Violence against women: global scope and magnitude, Lancet, 359(April 6):1232–1237. World Health Organization (2014) ‘Female Genital Mutilation’, Fact Sheet no 241, February 2014. www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs241/en Yousafzai, M. (with Lamb, C.) (2013) I am Malala: the girl who stood up for education and was shot by the Taliban, Little, Brown and Co.: New York. Zakaria, R. (2014) ‘The “Global” Malala’, Dawn.com, 12 April 2014. www. dawn.com/news/1099398/the-global-malala Zia, A. S. (2009) ‘Faith-based politics, enlightened moderation and the Pakistani women’s movement’, Journal of International Women’s Studies, 11(1):225–245.

4 VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND WOMEN’S STRUGGLES FOR JUSTICE Latin America

This chapter extends the analysis developed in the preceding chapter to provide a glimpse into the culturally diverse forms of violence against women and women’s struggles for justice outside the metropolitan horizons of the Anglophone world. The examples explored within this chapter include the many victims of rape, torture and femicide in the border city of Juarez, Mexico, and the abduction, torture and murder of activists, many of them women, by the brutal military regimes that reigned in Chile and Argentina from the 1960s through to the 1980s. The reasons for choosing these contrasting examples is to illustrate how grassroots campaigns for justice, bravely led by women (some feminist – others not), exposed the brutality of violence against women in Latin America. These women’s movements challenged the systemic inequities that women endured in a continent where deeply conservative Catholicism was intertwined with military fascist dictatorships to shape the distinctive patterns of violence against women. I argue that these distinctive women’s resistance movements have in some respects been more successful than many in the Western world to advance gender equity and the status of women, and bring an end to violence against women. They have also left an enduring legacy as the rates of female participation in

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politics are higher in Latin America than almost anywhere else in the world (with the exception of Rwanda). There is much to be learned by feminists from the West about the effectiveness of their campaigns for justice. This chapter explores the local as well as transnational women’s movements that have bravely resisted the violation of human and women’s rights in these countries, sometimes at their own peril. Ultimately it argues that the rise of women’s movements in Latin America to seek justice cannot simply be interpreted as offshoots of Western feminism, but rather should be seen as distinctive and heterogeneous collectivities that were strengthened by transnational global flows of discourse – especially but not only – feminism. It concludes with an analysis of the importance of United Nations Women and other such transnational entities in the elimination of violence against women and children by highlighting some the work they are doing with partner local organisations in Latin America.

Violence against women in Latin America As established in the previous chapter, patterns of gender, crime and violence vary across the global north and south, Anglophone, Asian and African continents. They also vary within countries and nation states. This section provides a brief segue into a deeper appreciation of those varying patterns by exploring gender, crime and violence in Latin America. Homicide rates in Latin America have become ‘the highest in the world (rate 27.5 per 100,000 pop.), over three times greater than those for the European Region, almost four times greater than rates reported by the Eastern Mediterranean Region, close to five times the rates of South-East Asia, and eight times greater than homicide rates reported by the Western Pacific Region’ (Briceno-Leon et al. 2008:752). The rates vary greatly however within Latin America, as the authors note: Countries such as Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, and Uruguay, have low violence mortality rates; Peru, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Dominican Republic, Panama, and Paraguay have moderate rates, and Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras and Venezuela have high to extremely high mortality rates. Factors

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related to violence include social inequalities, lack of employment opportunities, urban segregation, a culture of masculinity, local drug markets, and the availability of firearms and widespread use of alcohol. (Briceno-Leon et al. 2008:751) In Colombia and Mexico, where the murder rates are most pronounced, the disappearances and deaths of thousands have been largely attributed to the drug wars and the chronic corruption of officials either inept or unwilling to pursue the perpetrators. Chapter 5 deals with the murder of young men by men during these drug wars. This chapter deals with violence against women and especially the murder of hundreds of women in the deserts of the free trade zone in Mexico. International attention has been drawn for some time to the inexplicable murders of women, mostly young females who work in the maquiladora free trade zone of the city of Juarez, a border city between Mexico and the United States, with a population of around 2.5 million. Between 1993 and 2010 an estimated 878 women were killed in the border city of Juarez (Arsenault 2011). For two decades the Mexican criminal justice system was accused of failing to adequately investigate the murders of these women. Activists have long complained that few of the fatal attacks upon young women were either properly investigated or recorded (Arsenault 2011). Most of the murders took place in the desert surrounding the city of Juarez. In 1994 the US North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Mexico removed many of the obstacles of trade between the two countries, turning this border zone into a hub of global manufacturing. One of the effects was the rapid growth of the cities in the Chihuahua province and especially the cities of Tijuan, Juarez and Reynosa, where cheap goods are made in macquiladoras (or factories) for the export market, mostly headed for the wealthy countries in the global north. The free trade agreement between Mexico and America created a transitional zone – a zone of suspension – arguably an anomic space of capitalist deregulation and social normlessness. Those dislocated from agrarian communities came to these border zones to find work, economic independence and a new life. The erosion of self-sustaining agrarian communities

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undermined by colonisation and globalisation has accelerated the migration of millions people from the rural to the industrial zones of large cities of Latin America, such as those in Chihuahua province. Since the 1960s the internationalisation of economies and labour forces has seen massive migration of ex-colonial populations to Europe and America, to fill the need for cheap labour (Mohanty 2004:44). World market factories have relocated in search of cheap labour, in countries with unstable political regimes, low levels of unionisation and high unemployment. Global demographic changes, and women’s changing social and economic roles, have resulted in a mass incorporation of third-world women into a multinational labour force and domestic service (Mohanty 2000:206–207). While there have been huge expansions of third-world women into export-processing, labour-intensive industries, there have also been significant increases in the demand for private domestic services, particularly childcare and care of the ageing population (Mohanty 2000; Anderson 1999). In Latin America around a fifth of all working women are employed in domestic service and nine out of ten domestic servants are women whose lack of education restricts them from other employment opportunities (Radcliffe 1999; Pappas-DeLuca 1999). Female Latin American domestic workers constitute around 60 per cent of all internal and international migration (Moreno-Fontes Chammartin 2005). Many of those who migrated to the Chihuahua province looking for factory work were young women of Indigenous descent from rural communities of Latin America. Thayer calls these rural areas the sertao – ‘a place apparently located somewhere back in time, untouched by the reach of an increasingly globalised civilisation’ (Thayer 2010:1). Yet she argues that through the global flows of knowledge discourses of gender equality and feminism have pierced the local struggles of women from the sertao, empowering them to seek better futures and economic independence, and to venture outside the sertao (Thayer 2010:2). Hence globalisation has opened up opportunities for the poor rural women that would otherwise have been historically denied them. The restructuring of rural livelihoods and the commodification of agriculture since the middle of the twentieth century has resulted in young, rural women migrating to

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seek out alternative labour opportunities, typically in urban domestic service for middle class professional women (Radcliffe 1999; Moreno-Fontes Chammartin 2005), or in the factories that produce cheap consumer goods for world markets. Ironically the factories employ more women than men, primarily it seems because they can pay women less for the same work. These factory workers live in the squalor of the colonias – makeshift shanties on the outskirts of the sprawling industrial cities lacking basic services such as water and electricity (Wright 2005:285). Their journeys to and from work are often at night, and often through dangerous neighbourhoods, where drug cartels operate, much of time with seeming impunity, making them vulnerable prey for sexual predators. These are a new generation of women in Latin America. They are public women – seen on the streets as they walk to work – seen in the workplace and seen in the cantinas dancing, drinking and socialising in similar ways to Latino men. Their visibility, argues Wright, aligns them with a discourse of public women, public trouble and prostitution (Wright 2005:289). Hence for many years the brutal murders of these young women were blamed on the victims, diverting public attention from the corrupt government officials, police and drug cartels and complicit factory owners (Wright 2005). The experience of Guillermina, the sister of a murdered manquiladora worker – Sagrario Gonzalez – and her family is a familiar tale of victim blaming. They were initially told by police they had to wait twenty-four hours before reporting a missing person and then when her body was found that Sagrario was ‘killed while leading a secret life’ (Rodriguez et al. 2007:87) as a sex worker. Guillermina founded a local group called Voces Sin Eco (Voices without Echo) (Rodriguez et al. 2007:89) to seek justice for the young female victims of femicide in Juarez. Like victims’ rights groups in the Anglophone world, these victim support groups lobbied for professional police investigations, proper investigative standards and better treatment for victims by the criminal justice system. They argued that young female victims of domestic and sexual violence should be interviewed sensitively and have a dedicated investigative office set up to take their statements and investigate reports (Rodriguez et al. 2007:147).

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Jessica Livingston argues that these murders reflect both ‘the gendering of production, the gendering of violence, and the relationship between the two’ (Livingston 2004:60). Most of the victims were thought to be maquiladora workers, many of whom migrated from poor rural areas of Mexico to seek economic independence (Livingston 2004:60). The city is also infamous for its drug cartels, which have claimed thousands of victims (Briceno-Leon and Zubillaga 2002). Livingston argues that these young women were sexualised by their employers, encouraged to be consumers, and taken on trips to women-only male strip clubs and other dance clubs (Livingston 2004:61). They were also stigmatised as outsiders, who violated the social and gendered norms of a maschismo Latino culture where the ideal woman is constructed in the image of the Virgin Mary. As many of the murdered victims had migrated from Indian Indigenous rural communities, there could have been an element of racialisation involved in the contempt and lack of empathy for the victims and their families. ‘The maquiladoras draw on local patriarchal practices, discourse, and tolerance of sexual violence against women, and thus violence against women has intensified’ (Livingston 2004:67). The factory managers encourage the women to ‘dress fashionably, to participate in beauty contests, and to go dancing in the clubs’ (Livingston 2004:68). Importantly as temporary workers, little or no investment is made in their training. They are considered dispensable and as a cheap alternative to employing men. Unemployed or underemployed men who had to compete with cheaper female factory labour may have felt emasculated or resentful of these women. It is not surprising that a group of bus drivers, hired by the factories, were found to be involved in the rape and killing of some women. Hence the fissures and social divisions fuelled by this anomic space of super-capitalism also fuel contempt and resentment for maquiladora workers – almost a thousand of whom have just gone missing or have been found murdered since the 1990s, after being tortured, raped; in some instances their breasts and sexual organs were mutilated. These women are still going missing, presumed murdered, though not in as high a number as in the past (Arsenault 2011). Initially it was speculated that the murders could be the work of a serial killer – but after one alleged offender, an Egyptian called Shariff,

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was arrested the murders continued for many years. Every time other suspects were arrested for the murders (such as gang members and later a group of bus drivers), the Mexican prosecuting authorities would continue to assert that Shariff was behind the plot, paying them to kill these women to prove his innocence (Rodriguez et al. 2007). On 18 March 1999 a young maquiladora worker called Nancy was brutally raped, strangled, bashed and left for dead in the desert (Rodriguez et al. 2007:137). Like so many other victims, she had just left her shift at 1am before the near-fatal attack. But unlike so many other victims Nancy survived and identified her attacker as the factory-hired bus driver. The driver had a history of domestic violence. When arrested he implicated other factory employed bus drivers in the rape and murder of a number of other recent femicides (Rodriguez et al. 2007:140). Somewhat unbelievably, after being in custody and allegedly tortured for many days he implicated Shariff, the alleged serial killer in jail, as the mastermind behind the plot (Rodriguez et al. 2007:140). Another botched investigation. Unsurprisingly, suspicion and speculation that the police were incompetent, or involved in the murders, began to mount (Rodriguez et al. 2007:81). There was growing evidence that Shariff had been scapegoated for the murders as the real murderers continued to rape and kill young women with impunity for years after his imprisonment. Even after Shariff died in prison the murders of macquiladora workers continued. The Mexican authorities had lost their scapegoat, and Chicana feminists began protesting against the ineptitude of careless, corrupt or complicit officials.

Women’s movements for justice in Mexico In Mexico, a great number of women’s movements have formed since the early 1990s to seek justice, better lives, education, clean water, better healthcare and more jobs for their communities and families. Many emerged to bring attention to the plight of the thousands of female victims of femicide, violence and sexual assaults.1 One of the largest and according to Wright (2005) most successful umbrella protest groups is the Mujeres de Negro (Women in Black), an activist alliance of a range of human rights, feminist, religious, social and

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non-government organisations based in Chihuahua City in northern Mexico. Their signature uniform of black tunics and pink hats united them as a collective of mothers demanding social justice for their missing or murdered daughters. This is the province that houses the industrial zones and border towns of macquiladoras, discussed above, where so many young women have gone missing or been murdered on their way to or from work. On 25 November 2002 thousands marched under the banner ‘Ni Una Mas’ (Not One More) (Wright 2005:277). They were protesting not only for justice for the victims of violence, but also ‘against the political disregard and lack of accountability, at all levels of government, in relation to this surging violence against women’ (Wright 2005:278). Their protest asserted a female democratic voice in a masculinised public sphere where women in public lack safety and are stigmatised as ‘unfit’ citizens, whose deaths are not worthy of investigation. One of key strategies of the Mujeres de Negro was to contest the discourses that discredited the victims, and to redefine them as legitimate victims of femicide – as their daughters (Wright 2005). Their anger ‘is born of sorrow, grief, a mother’s worry, and beneath their black capes and pink hats, we expect to find soft, feminine bodies – no weapons, no muscles, no phallus’ (Wright 2005:280). This strategy follows a similar one adopted by the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo (Mothers from the Plaza de Mayo) in Buenos Aires, Argentina, during the brutal military dictatorship, discussed later. Like the debate between feminists about the political strategy of the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, the strategy of the Mujeres de Negro was subject to strident critique from victims’ families, opportunistic politicians, and an unsympathetic media, who likened them to public women and public trouble (Wright 2005). Some feminists also criticised the strategy of using the gendered subject positions of mother and daughter. Wright argues that the protests of the Mujeres de Negro embody a paradox. By taking their protests about violence that largely occurs in private into the public field of citizenship, the coalition were discredited by being aligned with public women – women of trouble – women who do not conform to the Latino construction of women as being confined to domesticity and the private sphere. Their political strategy made them vulnerable to false allegations of

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‘filthy lucre’ of profiting from the families of the victims to generate income for their non-profit organisations – mostly housing, material and legal support for female victims of violence (Wright 2005:286). Esher Chavez had been seeking justice for the women of Juarez since 1993 (Rodriguez et al. 2007:144). In 1999, she established the first women’s refuge, Casa Amiga, for women seeking refuge from violence, apparently only one of six in the entirety of Mexico (Rodiguez et al. 2007:147). Caught up in the politics of accusation, her organisation was falsely accused of profiting from the victims’ plight to support the women’s refuge. Nevertheless Wright concludes that this social movement has been successful in opening up ‘new spaces for women’s civic activism in Mexico’ (Wright 2005:280), demanding the state protect them, work toward the elimination of violence against women and deliver justice to the many victims of male violence and femicide.

The dirty wars, resistance and women’s movements in Latin America During the period of Peronism in Argentina, women had become visible as political actors, due largely to the creation of the Feminine Branch of the Peronist Party, gaining the right to vote, recognition of women’s conditions as a workers, access to divorce and participation in parliament (Feijoo et al. 1996:9). After the fall of Peron to a military dictatorship, many women were jailed for their political participation. During the 1960s progressive groups reorganised and began to participate directly in politics. At the same time, more broadly, as Argentinian society mobilised and radicalised, women achieved considerable autonomy, including greater access to university studies and the labour force, sexual freedom, access to contraceptives and financial independence (Feijoo et al. 1996). The period from the mid-1960s to the beginning of the ‘Dirty War’ in 1976 was characterised by military intervention in national universities, the formation of a confrontational student movement and guerrilla movements, coups, uprisings and widespread violent repression (Taylor 1997; Feijoo et al. 1996).

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Significantly many women’s movements emerged in the shadow of dictatorships. In Brazil, as in Argentina and Chile, women’s movements, especially mothers’ movements, challenged the imprisonment, disappearance, torture and murder of their sons and daughters by repressive regimes. In Brazil it is estimated that fifty thousand people disappeared (most of whom were imprisoned, tortured and murdered) when the military dictatorship took over in 1964 (Thayer 2010:9). In Chile, on 11 September 1973, General Augusto Pincohet’s brutal military dictatorship violently seized power, rounding up alleged subversives and killing many. Amnesty International, the major international human rights organisation involved in exposing human rights abuses under General Augusto Pinochet’s brutal military regime to the Western world, claims that ‘3,216 people are officially recognised as missing or murdered, while 38,254 people are recognised as survivors of political imprisonment and/or torture’ (Amnesty International 2013). Again a group widely referred to as the mothers of the disappeared (Los Madres de Desaparecidos) played a vital role in agitating for justice and the return of democratic rule. Their important role in the resistance was popularised in 1987 through the U2 pop band’s song ‘Mothers of the Disappeared’. In 1998, some twenty-five years after the coup, U2 sang the song in Santiago, the capital of Chile, inviting the mothers of the disappeared to come on stage, with a photo of their missing child, and speak their name into the microphone (Greene 2013). Similar disappearances of people involved in resisting military dictatorships occurred in other countries in Latin America under military rule, including Bolivia, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua around the same time. Many thousands of victims of the disappearances were never found, presumed dead, and many of the perpetrators were given immunity. While setting up a truth commission after the topple of the military dictatorship, Chile gave amnesty to the military perpetrators of systematic state violence. As I write, the mothers of the disappeared, some forty years or more later, are still seeking justice. In Argentina it was a different story – one in which women played, and still continue to play, a vital role, first in the overthrow of military rule, and then in the ongoing quest for justice, which was more successful than the quest for justice in Chile.

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In her account of gender, nationalism and the Argentinian Dirty War, Diana Taylor (1997:37–44) argues that national identity was constructed through the exaltation of the military male as the ‘authentic national being’. Women were invisible outside the church and the home. Around a third of those who disappeared during the Dirty War were women regarded as a threat to the military dictatorship. In a detention camp known as Olimpo (Olympus) soldiers raped and tortured female detainees in front on an image of the Virgin Mary. Sexual assaults included guns being shot into the women’s vaginas, their breasts being pounded, women being paraded naked in front of guards, and other atrocities, such as ripping open their orifices, buttocks and mouths. Pregnant women made up 3 per cent of those who disappeared. Children born in prison were usually given away to military families and the military often threatened to kill the children of disappeared women (Taylor 1997:84). During the last few years of the Dirty War (1976–1983), women’s groups played visible roles in the resistance to military rule, particularly the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, who publicly and collectively displayed their protest with placards that simply said ‘where is my child?’ (Taylor 1997; Jaquette 2009). The women met in the Plaza de Mayo every week with the same simple protest. The junta characterised the unarmed women as emotional terrorists and mothers of ‘nonhuman’ subversives (Taylor 1997:83). This was a time when women actively joined armed resistance movements across Latin America. Women ‘guerilleras’ were depicted as promiscuous types who used their sexuality as a weapon of war to engage in monstrous activities which rejected all ‘feminine traits’ (Taylor 1997:80). It was their mothers who courageously flouted and confronted the military juntas. This was not a group of passive women, using their gendered subjectivity to reinforce women’s unequal social status, yet some commentators, even feminist ones, have thought so. The invocation of the mother image in women’s struggles for justice in Latin America remains a recurring theme of contention among transnational feminist scholars and activists (Wright 2005). The political strategy of using one’s gendered position as a mother or grandmother sparked a debate between egalitarian and difference feminists as to whether the strategy was effective in bringing private

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concerns into the public arena, or whether their protests reinforced traditional gender roles (Jaquette 2009:209). Viviana MacManus (2013:2) argues that discourses of women’s participation in Latin American political movements have largely been ‘gender normative’, reinforcing women’s subordinate social status. However, the vital and active role of women’s movements, and especially the Los Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, and Los Abuletas de Plaza de Mayo, in the downfall of military rule, demonstrates that they were key historical actors bringing about positive social change and justice for the victims. To depoliticise Latin American women’s narratives reduces their histories of resistance to one of victimhood – as grieving mothers or grandmothers. This interpretation of the mothers and grandmothers movements for justice in Latin America is fundamentally flawed, as it obscures the testimonies of survivors, their legacy and the effectiveness of women’s protest groups. Passivising women’s histories of political resistance during the Dirty War was part of a rhetoric, MacManus (2013) argues, used to reconcile a divided nation and allow Argentineans to gain credibility as survivors of state violence. When Alfonsin was democratically elected president, his government immediately established a National Commission on the Disappearances of Persons (Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas, CONADEP) to investigate the human rights abuses of the military dictatorship. The inquiry solicited the voluntary support of key ‘notables’ from a number of human rights groups, including Los Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, Los Abuletas de Plaza de Mayo, Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (Centre for Legal and Social Studies, or CELS), Servicio Paz y Justicia (Service for Peace and Justice), Familiaries de Detenidos y Desparecidos Razones Politicas (Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared) and the Movimiento Ecumenico por los Derechos Humanos (Ecumenical Movement for Human Rights) (Crenzel 2008:180). The notables and commission officials travelled the country in the search for evidence about the state crimes, the destruction of evidence and the existence of a clandestine systematic network of detention and torture centres. The strategy generated thousands of new testimonials from other victims, morgue and hospital professionals, police, military, community, religious and other leaders with first-hand knowledge and experiences of the clandestine

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torture and detention centres that operated throughout the country under military rule, in Cordoba, Mendoza and Buenos Aries, including the notorious Escuela de Mecanica de la Armada (Naval School of Mechanics), where political detainees were tortured and interrogated before being killed (Crenzel 2008). ‘The nonplace that the detention centers (sic) had been became the focal center around which the materiality of the disappearances was reconstructed’ (Crenzil 2008:183). In Argentina the National Commission systematically documented 8,961 disappearances, but human rights groups claim the number could be as high as thirty thousand (Crenzil 2008:175). The national commission released a report Nunca Mas (Never Again), which became a best-seller. On the strength of the evidence a number of military juntas were successfully tried and convicted of human rights abuses and other atrocities. Crenzil argues that the national commission was an exercise of public remembrance that has important lessons for transitional justice policies and practices (Crenzil 2008:190). Moreover this history has left a distinctive legacy on the emergence of feminism and subsequent women’s movements in Latin America seeking justice for the victims of violence. Sonia Alvarez (1998:295) argues that Latin American feminism, like many other new social movements that emerged in the context of authoritarian or exclusionary regimes, can now be characterised as an expansive, polycentric, heterogeneous field of action, spanning a vast array of cultural, social and political areas. The distinctive culturalpolitical identity, configured by Latin American feminists during the 1970s and 1980s, has its origins in women’s participation in a general struggle for social justice against military and oppressive political governments of the 1960s and 1970s. Importantly, Latin American second-wave feminism from the 1970s was inspired by women’s resistance against the oppressive ‘masculinist’ military regime and a sexist political culture (Alvarez 1998:296). In Argentina the military junta was an all-male, conservative institution underpinned by a Catholic religious fundamentalism that assigned women to the confines of the family (Taylor 1997). It was women’s shared opposition to military rule that provided them with the opportunity to link women’s issues to political issues. Female

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oppression was understood as cultural, and spanning all public and private discourses and spaces. It was in this radical political context that grassroots women’s movements emerged to question repressive regimes, and launch a struggle for human rights of which women rights were a subset. Of particular concern to these early feminists was the dismissal by the masculine left of important issues, such as domestic and sexual violence, sexual discrimination in work places, reproductive health, publicly funded child care and reproductive rights. Feminist struggle was directed at the everyday issues relating specifically to women’s interpersonal and social relations, rather than simply at the level of structures and class domination (Alvarez 1998:296). According to Alvarez (1998:299) there has since been a redefinition and expansion of the Latin American feminist agenda to include social transformation. Feminist struggles are no longer confined to specific issues relating to women, but rather a ‘general struggle’ through the ‘eyes of women’, and a feminist agenda for public policy.

Los Encuentros = transnational feminist intersectionality The politics of Los Encuentros – annual meetings of Latin American feminists and women’s groups from the 1990s through to the present – exemplify the dynamics of intersectionalism in practice. These meetings are described as ‘productive transborder sites that not only reflect but also reshape local, national, and regional movement discourses and practices’ (Alvarez, et al. 2003:539). Different ways of doing feminist politics – autonomous as opposed to institutionalised feminist networks – collided at Los Encuentros during the 1990s. Over this period of polarised contestation participants debated, reflected and reconstituted what feminist politics meant and could be for Latin American women. Heightened engagement with international bodies and politics (such as the United Nations) advanced a transnational feminist agenda but simultaneously conflicted with localised autonomous women’s movements. Debates raged about who was and who was not a feminist, who belonged and who didn’t; who was co-opted and who wasn’t. By the end of the millennium a

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politics of separatism, autonomy and localised struggles for women’s rights and identity politics about who belongs and who can speak (one largely based on essentialist assumptions that the state was inherently patriarchal) had given way to a pluralistic construction of feminism as a diverse broad-based inclusive movement. At the last Los Encuentros of the millennium many of these old conflicts gave way to a third way – a politics of allegiance, trans-border networks, transnationalism, inclusion and diversity – called ‘ni las unas, nil as otras’ (neither the ones or the others) (Alvarez et al. 2003:557). The emergence of a cultural feminism, heightened by the entry of a younger generation of female activists into the Los Encuentros, went some way to bridging the gap between autonomous and institutionalised feminisms (Alvarez et al. 2003:562–564). Latin American feminist movements occupied what Thayer theorises as a ‘transnational feminist space – “or counterpublic”’ (Thayer 2010:7). Women’s movements in Latin America have had strong and enduring involvement in democratising and liberalising movements. In Chile, Nicaragua, Argentina and El Salvador women’s groups have played active roles in the overthrow of military dictatorships, as already detailed. In Mexico, mothers and sisters of hundreds of women raped and murdered in Juarez (Rodriguez et al. 2007) campaigned for years for justice for their slain daughters and sisters, as described at the beginning of this chapter. These women organised politically, not necessarily as feminists, but as mothers, wives, sisters and Indigenous peoples – to resist oppression and widespread human rights abuses (Alvarez et al. 2003:544). As feminist movements became more transnational, as military regimes toppled and women’s rights became legitimised in state-based policies and programs, the strategies changed from resistance to working within and alongside the United Nations and the state and to form NGOs to bring about positive changes in the lives of women and children. In Western countries this was called femocratisation. In Latin America it was called institucionalizadas. These NGOs were effective in gaining the entry of women into work, government, universities and the seats of power. The presidents of Argentina and Chile are currently women. In 2014 Argentina has one of the highest rates of women elected to parliament in the world, with 38.9 per cent of all parliamentarians female

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(United Nations Women 2014a). This is a reflection of the effectiveness of Latina women’s movements and demonstrates that they were, and continue to be, active, not passive, participants in the political process and the ongoing democratisation of Latin America. Non-government agencies that pursue femocratisation strategies, regardless of which part of the world they exist, form alliances with state agencies to bring about change through gender-based policy approaches. These strategies for reform were successful for instance in convincing the state to protect women against men’s violence, and to provide women and children fleeing domestic violence with support such as shelter and sustenance (Carmody and Carrington 2000). One particular example from Mexico was the emergence of women’s only police stations in Brazil to address the problems of violence against women (Delegacias de Polica Dos Direitos da Mulher). Between 1985 and 1998, 260 specialised stations were formed across Brazil (Hautzinger 2002:244). The all-female police stations were designed to enhance confidence in the criminal justice system, reduce revicitimisation, encourage reporting and deter men from attacking women. However the implementation of these specialised police stations fell short of that envisaged and feminists hopes were dashed (Hautzinger 2002:248). Hautzinger argues that in a country under paramilitary rule, and where police stations are under-resourced, it was not surprising the all-female delegacies were less effective than anticipated (Hautzinger 2002:248). There are other specialised police stations in Brazil, for racism, robbery, etc., and hence the experiment was not entirely driven by a feminist agenda to deal with men’s violence. Research by Hautzinger suggests that female police officers identified with the masculinised occupation of policing and were not always sympathetic to victims reporting. She argues that the female police officers internalised ‘maschista’ values, blaming female victims for their own attack and seeing them as ‘weak and helpless’ (Hautzinger 2002:246–247). Unexpectedly many female police officers remained unsympathetic to the circumstances in which so many victims were entrapped, too poor to leave a violent abusive partner. ‘Thus poor, black women predominated among the delegacia’s complainants; lighter-skinned, better educated women worked as police officers, and mostly white, university-educated women led the

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stations as delegadas, or magistrate-police chiefs. In class and colour terms, then, the delegacia reflected, in microcosm, the distribution of status, power, and dependence of the broader society’ (Hautzinger 2003:247). Hautzinger argues that ‘In sum, the central contradiction hampering the women’s delegacas was the essentialist assumption that the “female” element in policewomen’s identity would naturally take precedence over the “police” element. The specialised climate in which female solidarity was supposed to thrive was left to chance’ (Hautzinger 2002:249). She concludes: Imaging a women’s police station that truly is distinct and specialised, that serves as a vehicle to build coalitions between women and with divergent histories and social locations, is but one example of the kind of work that moves Brazil in the direction of becoming a more just society. (Hautizinger 2002:250) Apart from the simplistic assumptions of feminist essentialism that women would make better police officers than men in dealing with men’s violence against women, what this research highlights is that there are serious limits too with working with the state as if it were always neutral and reliable. This is probably more of a problem in countries where the state is an active colluder in the oppression of women and even participants in violent atrocities (including rape and murder). The hundreds of femicides of mostly young poor women from the border city of Juarez, described previously, attest to this and to the folly of seeking or expecting a masclinised state and its corrupt police force to protect women. Co-partnering with the state might work in some contexts, but certainly not where the state is underdeveloped, under-resourced, masculinist, or corrupt and where its officials and police force are a significant part of the dark networks of violence, cover-up and corruption that protect perpetrators of violence against women. Women’s global activism cuts across what is commonly referred to as transnational justice. These concepts refer to a large, wellestablished body of international law and human rights conventions, practices, networks and policies to protect and restore human rights,

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democracy and freedom. The United Nations is the single most important international entity around which women’s demands for justice and freedom against violence have become enshrined in international instruments; chief among these the UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women in 1993. The United Nations established a commission on the status of women in 1946, declared 1975–1985 the Decade for Women, and organised several famous networking meetings around women’s issues in the 1980s and ’90s (the last one in 1995) (Barbaret 2014:63). In July 2010 the UN established United Nations Women to promote gender equality and empower women. The new entity brings together the Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW); International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW); Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women (OSAGI) and United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) (United Nations Women 2014b). The main role of United Nations Women as described on their website is To support inter-governmental bodies, such as the Commission on the Status of Women, in their formulation of policies, global standards and norms. To help Member States to implement these standards, standing ready to provide suitable technical and financial support to those countries that request it, and to forge effective partnerships with civil society. To hold the UN system accountable for its own commitments on gender equality, including regular monitoring of system-wide progress. (United Nations Women 2014b) The United Nations has provided much material and ideological support to grassroots NGO women’s organisations to address issues such as women’s health, employment, education and the feminisation of poverty. Transnational and feminist activists are able to use the UN framework of international conventions to make the case for domestic changes in laws and policies to protect women, make violence against women illegal and support the rights of women to work and be educated. Much has been achieved by the way of the trialling and introduction of comprehensive laws and

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policies to address violence against women – including support for women’s shelters, women’s police stations, apprehended violence orders, victims support programs, male perpetrator programs, DV hotlines, support groups and public-awareness-raising campaigns (Barbaret 2014:68). In Latin America UN Women is supporting local Indigenous women’s groups to address gender-based violence in their communities. Fatima Leonor Gamboa, an Indigenous lawyer from Maya communities in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, with UN Women support is helping women victims of violence to develop an integrated pathway to addressing gender-based violence. She describes her work this way: I work for greater gender equality between the brothers and sisters of our peoples in the Maya communities in Yucatan. I am a lawyer who represents women suffering gender-based violence, although in my walk through life I have become aware that most of the violence to which we Maya women and men are exposed is State violence, which is multifactorial . . . All these forms of violence are much more structural in nature than the violence that exists between Maya men and women, and they are precisely the ones that occupy me at the moment. For this reason, I am currently building an integrated care path for dealing with violence (gender-based and State) in which I am involving both indigenous and non-indigenous authorities so that together we can recognize one another as human beings and address one of the biggest problem areas for women – gender-based violence. In this way, we are creating strategies rooted in our context, in our reality, not only to eradicate gender-based violence but also to begin intercultural dialogues between indigenous Maya authorities and State authorities in search of a good life, of a life with identity, free from violence of all kinds . . . so that our ways of ancestral life may be considered in international decisions, through the generation of intercultural dialogue, so that Western and indigenous perspectives may coincide and intersect in order to achieve a world of respect and social inclusion . . . (United Nations Women 2014c)

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This year, at the most recent meeting of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, gender-based violence emerged as a major issue, with the director, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, declaring, . . . Notably, Member States highlight the pandemic of violence against women and girls that affects women and girls worldwide. The Commission also points to the urgent need to fully ensure women’s access to opportunities and resources, including quality education, control and ownership of land and other productive assets, as well as women’s sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights, and recommends taking steps, including temporary special measures, to achieve women’s full participation in public- and private-sector decision-making. (United Nations Women 2014d) In Latin America the United Nations has worked with women’s movements, human rights groups and democratically elected governments for over thirty years to bring about widespread change. As a result all Latin American countries have ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women; and fourteen have ratified the Optional Protocol (United Nations Women 2014e). UN Women makes an observation consistent with Thayer’s argument that feminism in Latin American is not just an offshoot of feminism from the West: . . . through years of dedicated advocacy by women’s movements, a number of countries have acted to advance gender equality by changing constitutions, creating women’s affairs ministries or institutes, reforming civil codes, penalizing gender-based violence and enacting gender-based quotas for political offices. (United Nations Women 2014e) This history is sometimes referred to as the feminising of human rights discourses (Barbaret 2014:66). MacManus (2013:2) argues that while a framework of women’s human rights has brought

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violence against women into the international public arena, the discourse of women’s human rights places limitations on how gendered violence can be prevented and addressed. MacManus suggests that a more useful framework would be one which takes seriously the gendered dynamics and gender inequalities of violence against women in the present, and historically. A predominant focus of women’s human rights constructs third-world women as victims of their own cultures and/or political tyranny. According to MacManus (2013), this ‘reinforces hierarchical notions of the West and the Global South, and situates the West as the forerunner of human rights’. It is in this context that Fregoso and Bejarano (2010:4), in their analysis of femicide, attempt to dismantle the colonialist notions of the ‘Global South’ as a ‘field of study’ and reposition Latin America as a place where ‘theory is produced’. The violations of women’s rights and the crimes of violence described above are not recounted as representations of a backward Latino culture, or as innate to a particular religiosity (i.e. Catholicism), but constituted in a complex interplay between postcolonial inequalities and multiple axis of inequality and power. Globalisation creates both opportunities and challenges for transnational feminist intersectionality. On the downside, neo-liberalism and global capitalism has eroded self-sustaining agrarian communities, confiscated traditional lands and accelerated the feminisation of poverty. However globalisation also enhances the prospects for a transnational feminist intersectionality and transcultural feminist dialogue across nation state boundaries, through such agencies as UN Women. Alvarez and her colleagues from across the Americas (north and south) propose that ‘transnational ethnographies’ presents itself as a method for intercultural exchange between feminist thinkers and activists. Transnational ethnographies is modelled loosely on the Los Encuentros – an intellectual space of solidarity and difference – a cross-cultural and multilingual form of inquiry that is ‘neither the ones or the others’ (Alvarez et al. 2003). I interpret this as a strategy for genuinely embracing diversity and intersectionality – moving beyond identity politics – where nothing has to be othered and nothing has to be privileged. This approach does not succumb to the

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postcolonial methodologies and assumptions embedded in criminological paradigms. It outright rejects constructing subaltern subjects of the global south as Othered through a form of Occidentalism (Cain 2000). Feminist transnational intersectional frameworks equip researchers with methods to explore ‘how interlocking systems of power operate and come to bear on notions of crime and deviance’ (Henne and Troshynski 2013:457). The processes of globalisation have distinctive impacts on the social ordering of gender relations at the local level (Connell 1998). However those impacts are complex and multifarious, and not necessarily homogenising or universal. ‘Thus the effects of transnational cultural flows have often been to expand men’s choices, while generating anxieties about identity that push men to limit the choices of women’ (Derne 2002:146). The next chapter examines the impact of globalising processes and super-capitalism on men, frontier masculinities and patterns of violence using an intersectionalist approach and method.

Note 1. Wright (2005:283) lists the groups as including: Las Mujeres Barzonists (Rural Legal Aid Organisation); Mujeres por Mexico (Women for Mexico); La Comision de Solidaridad y Defensa de los Derechos Humanos (The Commission for the Solidarity and Defence of Human Rights); Estudios de Genero (Gender Studies Group); El 8 de Marzo (The 8th of March); Nacional de Abogadas Feministas (The National Network of Feminist Lawyers); el Fondo National de Mujeres (The National Organisation of Women); Mujeres de Negro (Women in Black); Voces Sin Echo (Voices without Sound) and Exoda por la Vida (Exodus for Life).

References Alvarez, S. (1998) ‘Latin American feminisms “go global”: trends of the 1990s and challenges for the new millennium’, in S. Alvarez, E. Dagnino and A. Escobar (eds.) Cultures of politics, politics of cultures: re-visioning Latin American social movements, Westview Press: Boulder, CO, 293–325. Alvarez, S. (2000) ‘Translating the global: effects of transnational organising on Latin American feminist discourses and practices’, Meridians: A Journal of Feminisms, Race, Transnationalism, 1(1):29–67.

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Alvarez, S., Friedman, E., Beckman, E., Blackwell, M., Chinchilla, N., Navarro, M. and Tobar, M. (2003) ‘Encountering Latin American and Caribbean feminisms’, Signs, 28(2):537–579. Amnesty International (2013) ‘Chile: 40 years on from Pinochet’s coup, impunity must end’, Amnesty International News, 10 September 2013. www.amnesty.org/en/news/chile-40-years-pinochet-s-coup-impunitymust-end-2013-09-10 Anderson, B. (1999) ‘Overseas domestic workers in the European union: invisible women’, in J. Henshall Momsen (ed.) Gender, migration and domestic service, Routledge, London, 117–133. Arsenault, C. (2011) ‘In Juarez, women just disappear: Al Jazeera visits the border city where more than 800 women have been murdered in a wave of gender violence’, Aljazeera, 8 March 2011. www.aljazeera.com/ indepth/features/2011/03/201138142312445430.html Barbaret, R. (2014) Women, crime and criminal justice, Routledge: London and New York. Briceno-Leon, R. and Zubillaga, V. (2002) ‘Violence and globalisation in Latin America, Current Sociology, 50(1):19–36. Briceno-Leon, R., Villaveces, A. and Concha-Eastman, A. (2008) ‘Understanding the uneven distribution of the incidence of homicide in Latin America’, International Journal of Epidemiology, 37:751–757. Cain, M. (2000) ‘Orientalism, Occidentalism and the Sociology of Crime’, British Journal of Criminology, 40(2):239–260. Carmody, M. and Carrington, K. (2000) ‘Preventing sexual violence?’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 33:34–361. Connell, R. W. (1998) ‘Masculinities and globalisation’, Men and Masculinities, 1(1):3–23. Crenzel, E. (2008) ‘The National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons: contributions to transitional justice’, International Journal of Transitional Justice, 2(2):173–191. Derne, S. (2002) ‘Globalization and reconstitution of local gender arrangements’, Men and Masculinities 5(2):144–164. Feijoo, M., Nari, M. and Fierro, L. 1996, ‘Women in Argentina during the 1960s’, Latin American Perspectives, 23(1):7–26. Fregoso, R. and Bejarano, C. (eds.) (2010) Terrorising women: feminicides in the Americas, Duke University Press: Durham, NC. Greene, A. (2013) ‘U2 honor the “Mothers of the Disappeared” in Chile’, Rolling Stone, 5 November 2013. www.rollingstone.com/music/ videos/flashback-u2-honor-the-mothers-of-the-disappeared-in-chile20131105 Hautzinger, S. (2002) ‘Criminalising Male Violence in Brazil’s Women’s Police Stations’, Journal of Gender Studies, 11 (3), 233–251.

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Henne, K. and Troshynski, E. (2013) ‘Mapping the margins of intersectionality: criminological possibilities in a transnational world’, Theoretical Criminology, 17(4):455–473. Jaquette, J. (2009) ‘Feminist activism in a changing political context’, in J. Jaquette (ed.) Feminist agendas and democracy in Latin America, Duke University Press [E-Book], 208–217. http://qut.eblib.com.au.ezp01. library.qut.edu.au/patron/FullRecord.aspx?p=1171726 Livingston, J. (2004) ‘Murder in Juarez: gender, sexual violence and the global assembly line’, Frontiers, 25(1):59–76. MacManus, V. (2013) ‘We are not victims, we are protagonists of this history’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 1–18. DOI:10.1080/14616742. 2013.817847 Mohanty, C. (2000) ‘Cartographies of struggle: third world women and the politics of feminism’, in P. Essed and D. Goldberg (eds.) Race critical theories: text and context, Blackwell Publishing: Oxford, 195–219. Mohanty, C. (2004) Feminism without borders: decolonizing theory, practicing solidarity, Duke University Press: Durham, NC. Moreno-Fontes Chammartin, G. (2005) ‘Domestic workers: little protection for the underpaid’, Migration Information Source, Migration Policy Institute: Washington. www.migrationinformation.org/Feature/display.cfm? ID=300 Pappas-DeLuca, K. (1999) ‘Transcending gendered boundaries: migration for domestic labour in Chile’, in J. Henshall Momsen (ed.) Gender, migration and domestic service, Routledge: London, 98–113. Radcliffe, S. (1999) ‘Race and domestic service: Migration and identity in Ecuador’, in J. Henshall Momsen (ed.) Gender, migration and domestic service, Routledge: London, 83–97. Rodriguez, T., Montane, D. with Paulitzer, L. (2007) The daughters of Juarez: a true story of serial murder south of the border, Atria Books: New York. Taylor, D. (1997) Disappearing acts: spectacles of gender and nationalism in Argentina’s ‘Dirty War’, Duke University Press: Durham, NC. Thayer, M. (2010) Making transnational feminism, Routledge: New York. United Nations Women (2014a) ‘Women in Politics: 2014’, United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. www.ipu. org/pdf/publications/wmnmap14_en.pdf United Nations Women (2014b) ‘About UN Women’, United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. www. unwomen.org/en/about-us/about-un-women United Nations Women (2014c) ‘Mayan women build integrated pathway for violence survivors in Mexico’, 3 March 2014. www.unwomen.org/ en/news/stories/2014/3/mayan-women-build-integrated-pathway-forviolence-survivors-in-mexico#sthash.2G8VGMlv.dpuf

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United Nations Women (2014d) ‘Statement by UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka on the outcome of the 58th session of the Commission on the Status of Women’, 22 March 2014. www. unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2014/3/executive-director-statementon-csw58-outcome United Nations Women (2014e) ‘Americas and the Carribean’, United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. www.unwomen.org/en/where-we-are/americas-and-the-caribbean Wright, M. (2005) ‘Paradoxes, protests, and the Mujeres de Negro of northern Mexico’, Gender, Place, and Culture, 12(3):177–192.

5 MASCULINITY MATTERS Super-capitalism, men and violence

Introduction This chapter analyses the interplay between globalisation, masculinities and violence. It argues that the high rates of violence, self-harm, suicide and injury among men living or working in the socio-spatial frontiers of global capitalism cannot simply be reduced to individualised expressions of their deviance or psycho-pathological deficit. The argument advanced also rejects outright essentialist representations of men as essentially dangerous. Instead it argues that some patterns of violence among men are incubated in psychosocial contexts that are also partly the product of the anomic spaces of super-capitalism. These are spaces where self-sustaining communities and forms of social democratic norms of governance are largely absent or marginalised (borrowing from Elliot Currie 2013). These are also social and organisational spaces where the valorisation of the self is primarily as an economic conduit for global forces. This issue is approached through a comparison of two case studies. The first, drawing on field research undertaken in a remote region of Australia, is a case study of violence between rival groups of men in communities at the forefront of generating resource extraction for global economies. The second, drawing on secondary research, is a

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case study of masculinity and violence in the anomic spaces of the Latin America, where hundreds of young men are killed by others in territorial disputes over drug markets. From the local the analysis works outward to encompass the wider, structural forces driving change in these communities and shaping personal and local troubles, in a similar way as C. Wright Mills envisaged the workings of the ‘sociological imagination’.

Socio-demography of violence in frontier Australian landscapes For readers unfamiliar with the Australian landscape and demography, it is important to describe some distinctive features that shape the context in which violence occurs in rural settings. While Australia is a multicultural country with one quarter of its population born overseas, there is a ‘cultural chasm’ between the country and capital cities as most migrants settle in capital cities (Marshall and Carrington 2008). Rural towns tend to be more culturally homogeneous than cities as less than 10 per cent of the population in rural areas is born overseas, compared to cities, where up to 40 per cent of the metropolitan population is born overseas. Hence men in rural and remote areas are either of white Angloceltic stock, or black Indigenous kin, with very few men of other alternate ethnic origins. While 68 per cent of the population live in major metropolitan centres, the reverse is the case for Indigenous Australians, 68 per cent of whom live outside cities (Table 5.1). According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), in remote and very remote areas, there are substantially greater numbers of non-Indigenous men compared to the number of non-Indigenous women (AIHW 2007:9–10). By contrast there is little gender disparity in the sex ratio of males to females in the Indigenous population in remote and very remote areas (AIHW 2007:10). More than half of the rural population who live in remote or very remote Australia are classified as ‘most disadvantaged’ (Table 5.1). Men outside cities are also more likely to live in lone households, and to have lower income and lower educational attainment, and fewer enter tertiary education (AIHW 2010:7). A much larger proportion of the regional and remote populations are

TABLE 5.1 Selected socio-demographic characteristics by remoteness structure

Row Characteristic (Percentage) 1 2

3

4 5

6

7

8

9 10

11

National population Regional population who are Indigenous Indigenous population living in each area Male Adults employed in agriculture, fishing, forestry Proportion classified as highest socioeconomic status Proportion classified as lowest socioeconomic status Young people starting tertiary study Adults currently married Life expectancy of nonindigenous men 2006 Life expectancy of all men (including indigenous) 2006

Major Inner Outer Remote Very Australia centre regional regional remote 68

20

9

2

1

100

1

3

5

13

42

2

32

22

22

9

15

100

49 1

49 11

51 22

52 28

53 22

49 100

56

22

17

17

13

45

27

46

62

57

77

35

39

26

23

12

10

33

50

50

48

45

44

50

81

78

78

79

78

78

80

79

78

77

72

78

Source: Rows 1–9 AIHW (2010:8); Rows 10 and 11 AIHW (2010:32)

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employed in agriculture, forestry or mining than those who live in major centres. The presence of these highly masculinised industries probably accounts for the gender disparity and predominance of men among rural populations. Male death rates outside cities are considerably higher compared to those of men who live in cities. In very remote areas, the male death rate is 78 per cent higher (AIHW 2010:26). Deaths due to liver disease (commonly associated with alcoholism), land transport deaths (associated with poor rural road conditions, and the mix of road trains and heavy vehicles moving along ill-maintained transport corridors), suicide and prostate cancer are more common among men outside cities (AIHW 2010:26). Significantly more men (about a third more) who live outside cities drink alcohol at levels defined as risky (AIHW 2010:49). Male death rates are 114 per cent higher for motor vehicle mortality, 90 per cent higher for other transport, 31 per cent higher for assault, 33 per cent higher for suicide and 38 per cent higher for other external injuries or causes (AIHW 2010:27). While male Indigenous mortality rates are higher overall, mortality rates were consistently higher for both non-Indigenous and Indigenous men living in rural and remote regions, compared to men living in cities. The data is clear – men (white and black) who live in rural and remote Australia die younger and at much higher rates than men in cities, for preventable causes, such as assault, liver disease, suicide, injury and motor vehicle accidents. It’s risky business being a bloke on the Australia frontier. Men also comprise the majority of homicide victims in Australia. The Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) provides trend analysis on homicide data once a decade. Male-on-male lethal violence consistently dominates the trend data on homicide in Australia. The latest AIC trend analysis of the last decade notes that the overall rate has declined, from around 2 per 100,000 to 1.2 per 100,000, consistent with a longer term decline in homicide rates (Morgan and McAtamney 2013:5). Victim analysis indicates that 68 per cent of homicide victims were male and 32 per cent female, the majority known to each other, with stranger homicides accounting for only 13 per cent of the total (Morgan and McAtamney 2013:6). The overrepresentation of men as offenders and victims in homicide data is consistent

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with international crime trends (Morgan and McAtamney 2013:17). In relation to domestic-related homicidal violence, 61 per cent of victims were female and 39 per cent male (Morgan and McAtamney 2013:18). Again this is consistent with international homicide trends and a large body of research on domestic violence (DeKeseredy 2011). The majority of homicides (61 per cent) occur on residential premises (Morgan and McAtamney 2013:11). Women are more likely to be killed by a partner in a domestic argument, while men are more likely to be killed by another man, usually a friend or acquaintance (Morgan and McAtamney 2013:18). Alcohol-related arguments precipitated almost half the homicides, and were the apparent motive in a third of homicides that occurred between acquaintances and strangers, the majority of which were between men (Morgan and McAtamney 2013:16). These AIC researchers have also undertaken analysis of alcoholrelated violence. Their analysis found that male victims of homicide are ‘significantly more likely than females victims to have consumed alcohol, rates of victimisation are highest among young men in rural areas, and most alcohol-related homicides occur in or around pubs and clubs or on the street’ (Morgan and McAtamney 2009:2). A large proportion of those unleashing alcohol-related violence have also been victims, and much alcohol-related violence between men tends to be spontaneous (Morgan and McAtamney 2009:2). The broader statistical context of male-on-male alcohol-related violence, as well as the higher rates of mortality and alcohol-related violence among men in rural Australia, is now triangulated with qualitative data drawing on a case study of frontier masculinities and violence.

Frontier masculinities, violence and the anomic spaces of mining According to US academic economist Robert Reich, the age of democratic capitalism has given way to the age of ‘super-capitalism’, a phase in which economic power invades every domain of life, empowering people as investors and consumers whilst weakening forms of collective life, public institutions and citizenship. As most countries,

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including those formerly belonging to the communist world, have become integrated into global capitalism, inequalities have widened, democracy has weakened and private economic power threatens to eclipse the public good (Reich 2008:4). The resource sector is presently operating at the frontier of super-capitalism’s transformative reach over not only Australia’s economy, society, politics and intellectual life, but also economies in South America, Asia, Canada, Africa and the Pacific. Post-industrial mining regimes take the logic of super-capitalism to an extreme (Carrington et al. forthcoming). Demand from growing Asian economies thirsty for nonrenewable resources has led to the rapid expansion of mining across the globe. The scale of the present boom coupled with the competitiveness in the global resources sector is changing the very nature of globalised mining operations with big impacts on the social structuring of work, communal and family life. Ruggerio and South argue that neo-liberal discourses rationalise ‘harm against humans and the environment’ as the inevitable outcome of economic growth, such that effectively ‘the entire planet is given to those who are most capable of exploiting it’ (Ruggerio and South 2013:13). Examples include oil despoliation of the environment and the oceans (such as the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico) and other criminogenic connections between oil and crime such as smuggling, oil theft and the corruption of officials (Ruggerio and South 2013:15). Increasing global resource extraction has led to environmental degradation and dispossession of traditional owners from their lands and livelihoods in places like Sudan, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Brazil, Laos and Mozambique (on Mozambique, see Human Rights Watch 2011). The global mining corporations involved have no long-term commitment to any state or society. Strategic investment decisions are often taken a hemisphere away from the operations and societies affected, but their power overwhelms the voices and interests of local communities, whether in Africa, Mexico or Australia. Although power imbalances, lack of regulation and transparency and their malign effects are more extreme in the ‘developing’ world, these problems are manifest wherever corporate miners operate. To deal with such conflicts, some have urged the establishment of an International Environment Court, to operate under United Nations Conventions in the same way as the

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International Criminal Court (White 2013a). Others have suggested Australia sign the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), strengthen regulation of the industry and independently monitor the conditions attached to mine approvals (Cleary 2012). While mining has long been recognised as an agent of environmental harm (White 2013b), and a threat to Indigenous traditional land ownership, less recognised are its harmful effects on localised patterns of violence, work and community life in mining towns. The operation of global power is riddled with contradictions and vulnerabilities that carry heterogeneous and sometimes unpredictable effects (Thayer 2010:4). Transnational social movements such as Greenpeace, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and a range of NGOs supported by the United Nations have been growing in number and influence. Localised forms of resistance such as Mining Communities United (MCU) in Queensland and Lock the Gate (a broad alliance of landholders and environmentalists) have emerged to fight the adverse consequences of open cut mining and coal seam gas industry in Australia (Carrington et al. forthcoming). There are multiple expressions of resistance to mining from a diverse range of groups; from farmers, environmentalists, wildlife societies, residents of small, vulnerable rural towns, horse breeding associations, winegrowers, commercial fishermen and others new to the ranks of protest against the postindustrial model of rapid, unconstrained development represented by the big corporate miners. In the not-so-distant past the construction of purpose-built mining towns in rural Australia bound companies and workers together to form a socially cohesive industry, even if it was characterised by intermittent industrial conflict (Murray and Peetz 2010). All that has changed as mining companies have adopted a post-industrial strategy in respect of all aspects of their mining operations. In a short time the mining sector has gone from being one of the most highly unionised and regulated in Australia to one now heavily reliant on contractors, precarious employment practices and industry self-regulation (Murray and Peetz 2010; Carrington et al. 2011). These changes affect individual workers but they also have major consequences for families and the social structure, associational life and social capital of mining communities. The term ‘post-industrial’ captures these qualitative

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shifts and their attendant ramifications for the structures of economy, work, family, community and governance, involving transition from relative stability and predictability in these domains of life to increasing uncertainty, insecurity and risk. Under post-industrial mining regimes, non-resident, contract workforces are now routinely used not only for construction and maintenance but also for routine mining operations. Elsewhere we have estimated that there were around 348,500 workers (including mining-allied workers) in the resources sector in 2012, of whom about 65 per cent are non-resident workers (NRW) (McIntosh and Carrington 2014). The advantages to industry and government of employing non-resident workforces include avoiding costs of construction and maintenance of purpose-built towns, reducing labour and production costs and reducing industrial disputes (BHP Billiton 2009; Kinhill Engineers 1991; Storey 2001; 2008; Storey and Shrimpton 1991). Commute operations of this kind originated in the Gulf of Mexico in the 1950s in the off-shore oil sector, but are now common in the resource-rich regions of the world, such as Brazil, PNG and Australia (Storey 2001:135). This workforce is predominately male and typically blue-collar. They work block-roster twelve-hour shifts 24/7. The shift to employing non-resident workers has coincided with the intensification of the production process, the growth of precarious work practices, the growth of contract labour at the expense of traditional employment relationships and efforts to minimise the intrusion of extraneous, non-economic factors on productivity, such as the human solidarities and commitments arising from family, community, trade union membership and so on. There are handsome economic rewards for non-resident workers (truck drivers can earn $150,000 per annum) but one could hardly devise a work regime more hostile to sustainable family and community life. The routine separation from family, support and informal social controls and sense of belonging to a community can have seriously anomic impacts – among them suicide, family breakdown and violence, alcohol and substance abuse, and fatigue-related deaths and injuries (Carrington and Pereira 2011). Research into social impacts of post-industrial mining regimes on mining communities, although limited, has been increasing both in Australia (Carrington et al. 2010; Carrington et al. 2011; Carrington

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et al. 2012; Carrington and Pereira 2011; Cheshire 2010; Lockie et al. 2009; Murray and Peetz 2010; Petkova et al. 2009; White 2013b) and elsewhere, including the United States and Canada (Doukas et al. 2008). In 2012 the Australian Parliament undertook an inquiry (Windsor Inquiry) into the impacts of the increasing reliance on NRW on regional Australia. It was chaired by Tony Windsor, MP. The Windsor Inquiry (2013) received over two hundred submissions, a large number expressing concern about social disorder and violence associated with NRW and Fly-In Fly-Out (FIFO) workforces. Our research team tendered a lengthy submission, based on team research on frontier masculinities and violence in Australian mining communities, of which I was the lead chief investigator (see Carrington et al. 2010; Carrington et al. 2011; Carrington and Hogg 2011; Scott et al. 2012). The industry too is largely unregulated – subject mainly to ‘do it yourself ’ forms of self-regulation whereby environmental- and social-impact statements are left to companies with growing corps of freelance consultants in their pocket. There is also a paucity of independent, transparent monitoring of mining industry practices by state regulatory agencies (Carrington 2013). Although social impact statements have provided a form of monitoring of Queensland mining industry practices, they were abolished following the election of the Newman government. Private corporations seeking to maximise their share price and their competitive position on the global stage cannot be expected, or relied upon, to act as socially responsible corporate citizens. They lack the expertise, as much as the incentive, to do so. In social democracies it is the role of government to safeguard the public interest and compel adherence to it. Yet Australian states have essentially been bought out by the resources sector, greedy for mining royalties, abdicating their responsibility to properly regulate these industries and to compel compliance with laws and standards that safeguard the long-term public interest (Cleary 2012). Insofar as new mines are being developed in or near existing communities it is typically the case that few of the benefits accrue to those communities that are lumbered with a whole new set of social and economic burdens (Carrington and Pereira 2011). The effective local population can massively increase overnight as a predominantly male,

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transient non-resident labour force moves in on the fringe of town. The burden on local services soars along with housing costs and other local costs of living. Imagined communal solidarities become deeply fractured by social conflicts and divisions that arise between locals and non-resident workforces. Conflicts arise over impacts on quality of life (including housing affordability, infrastructure, services and levels of violence and disorder) and the injustices of models of government service provision that do not count transient populations. Yet nonresident workforces use local services, roads and amenities and have a particular drain on emergency and medical services. The increasing reliance on non-resident workforces, shrinking permanent resident workforces and the related ‘fly-over’ effects of the boom threaten the sustainability of some mining towns. They become less attractive places to live owing to a combination of soaring living costs and eroded community amenities (Carrington and Pereira 2011). None of this is surprising. Maintenance of the traditions, employment relationships and communal solidarities is antithetical to the logic of post-industrial mining regimes and their prevailing modes of economic calculation; they are global, pertain to the short-term only and are ideally purified of any non-economic contaminants (Carrington et al. forthcoming). Some of the adverse impacts of post-industrial mining regimes, associated with frontier masculinities and alcoholrelated violence, are considered below.

Frontier masculinities, mining and alcohol-related violence This section draws on research undertaken with colleagues.1 Among our informants from mining communities, concerns raised about public acts of violence, especially male-on-male assaults around pubs, emerged as a key theme. Our research does not conclude that all men’s camps experience these types of problems or that all non-resident workers participate in alcohol-fuelled violence (see Carrington et al. 2011). There is widespread variation in the condition of these camps; some look like eco-retreats offering a raft of entertainments. Others are hastily and sometimes illegally erected structures, surrounded by barbed wire, patrolled by private security

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guards with dogs and look more like desert prisons than camps. Some have even been converted into immigration detention centres in the Australian desert as a strategy for deterring would-be asylum seekers. Like other camp dwellers such as refugees (Agamben 1998), the non-resident worker is suspended in a transitional zone of nonbelonging – situated in an anomic space outside communities of justice and security. Their frontier existence is temporary and fragile. Non-resident workforces are typically isolated from place-based family and community life for lengthy periods of time, during which they are suspended from social norms and excluded from local communal solidarities, being the emblem of the destructiveness of mining development. While on roster, non-resident workers are usually accommodated in specially constructed work camps, typically demountable dwellings or ‘dongas’ uniformly arranged in compounds with a common mess, laundry and entertainment facilities, usually little more than a wet mess. These might be located within a town, adjacent to a town, a few kilometres outside of town, or in a more remote, isolated location. The camps are total institutions in that they provide residents with all their amenities and services, including cooking, washing, transportation and recreation and even sexual servicing by mobile non-resident sex workers. Not surprisingly, the housing of thousands of men in anomic work camps with little else to do off roster than consume alcohol can have profoundly anomic psychosocial impacts. Sometimes this can and does erupt as male-on-male alcohol-fuelled violence (see Carrington et al. 2012). Anomie here is used deliberately as a psychosocial concept (as a deregulated social space and associated state of psychological alienation – of being driven by individual self-interest that operates outside normal bounds of social regulation). The camp dwellers are governed through daily regimes of extended block roster shifts, of ‘hard work and hard play’. The work camps are usually patrolled by private security officers, heightening the prospect that any disturbances will remain hidden from public view. What follows is a first-hand account from a private security guard of one such disturbance, from a camp in a more remote part of the region, not one of the camps around town.

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On the night of Saturday . . . the camp at X . . . erupted into near chaos. It began with drinkers from the wet mess area using a fire hose in order to spray others and spilling out into the area where the residents are accommodated. I believe they were horsing around and were extremely drunk at the time. Others were coming and going from the wet mess area, to and from the accommodation area yelling . . . I was approached by an angry man claiming residents were banging on doors, breaking into rooms and in one case tipped a bed upside down and placed toilet paper around and over a hand basin in the bath room . . . Security Guard, Statement provided to author, 2011, reproduced with permission. There was a high risk that a lone security guard who described his occupation as ‘baby-sitting’ 245 drunks would inevitably be assaulted. When he was, he sustained two fractures including a broken arm, dislocated shoulder, head wound, lacerations and other injuries. While his injuries were severe, an ambulance was not called until the following day and only after he vomited and lapsed into unconsciousness. Nor was the incident reported to police by the camp manager, the licensee or the security firm for which he worked. He concluded: ‘It would be fair to say that I was very disappointed, gutted that no charges would be laid against X and felt let down and betrayed by the criminal justice system’. Interpersonal violence between men is one of the most under-reported of crimes. Where alcohol is involved the tendency to under-report is high (Morgan and McAtamney 2009). The case study that follows draws on primary fieldwork jointly undertaken with the research team I led, in ‘Armstrong’, a pseudonym for a remote region of Australia (classified as such due largely to its great distance from a major service centre). I called it Armstrong because it reminded me of how Armstrong, the first man who landed on the moon, may have felt in such an alien landscape, filled with dust, large craters and rough-edged rock formations jutting abruptly from the flat dusty desert scape with few signs of human civilisation. It also reminded me of the moon because some locals didn’t even drive on the road, preferring instead to drive their huge fourwheel drives or moon buggies across the desert, leaving great red

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puffs of dust billowing behind. Carloads of Indigenous people could also be seen driving, albeit nowhere near as fast, across the desert and not the highway – not because they had moon buggies or four-wheel drives. On the contrary, it was more likely that their cars weren’t registered, and drivers probably not licensed. To avoid a fine which many could ill afford, desert driving presented a viable alternative. It was a very odd experience driving on those remote roads, dodging huge road trains one moment, to be then suddenly overtaken on the left (not the right) by moon buggies preferring the desert to the road. The main township in Armstrong I called Pembleton, as it reminded me of the Edge of Darkness, a brilliant thriller about corruption, environmental vandalism and uranium mining. Pembleton, one of the main characters in the film, was complex and ambiguous. As many as eight thousand workers were accommodated in camps on the fringes of Pembleton at any one time. As most inhabitants are male they are colloquially known as ‘men’s camps’. Not surprisingly the impact on the social organisation and collective consciousness of Pembleton was enormous (see Carrington et al. 2012; Carrington et al. 2011; Carrington and Hogg 2011; Carrington et al. 2010). One of the most conspicuous features was the maleness of the population, the abundance of ‘boy toys’ (fast cars, large four-wheel drives, big boats, fishing reels, etc.) and the number of pubs. There were twentyfour licensed premises to service a population of around sixteen thousand in the region, and an additional four wet messes operating in the desert camps. The research team has previously published our analysis of how this was a town where pub(lic) masculinity was well and truly on the rise (Carrington et al. 2010). Pub(lic) masculinity refers to the way pub culture exerts a significant normalising influence over young men, especially from working-class blue-collar trades, who become incorporated into a localised culture of masculinity through their participation in drinking rituals (Campbell 2006:88; Campbell 2000:563). Given there was virtually no other social space available to non-resident workers the pub was absolutely central to negotiating the performance, construction and evaluation of men by other men in the Armstrong region. The rise in pub(lic) masculinity in mining communities has consequences for the patterning of frontier cultural conflict, where

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non-resident workers have become emblematic of the destruction of communal solidarities caused by post-industrial mining regimes. Pembleton’s cosy country pubs were radically transformed. No longer the place for a nice quiet family outing or game of pool, these pubs were now places of organised drunkenness. Courtesy buses transported hundreds of NRWs from camps to pubs on a daily basis to coincide with the end of shift. Here they were entertained by pole dancers and stood in line to be sexually serviced by ‘drive in drive out’ sex workers operating from stretch limos in the car park. These pubs had become venues for the negotiation of frontier rival masculinities where brawling and alcohol-related violence was an everyday occurrence, according to our information-rich informants, including the chief of police, magistrate, and health, emergency and medical service personnel (Carrington et al. 2010). Not much of the violence and brawling was reported. On the contrary there were powerful disincentives to report, not the least of which is that ‘real men’ don’t play the victim; publicans risk losing their liquor licence if they call the police; and NRWs or contractors risk losing their jobs if caught fighting, regardless of whether they were a victim or a perpetrator. This is why the chief of police we interviewed from Pembleton described crime statistics as ‘not worth the paper they are written on’. In our interviews, it became readily apparent that the local men, who grew up in the town and lived permanently in the area, tended to perceive themselves as more authentic than the non-resident workers. In what follows I draw on one particular lengthy interview, recorded in May 2009, that Alison McIntosh and I did with a young man who grew up in Pembleton. He was nineteen and had lived here all his life. I have called him Johnny as it aligns well with an ordinary lad with working-class credentials. The corruption of names in Australia is also a typically working-class cultural phenomena – so Murray become Muz, Barry – Baz, Warrick – Waza, Kerry – Kez and John, Johnny. Parts of the interview also involved his parents. Johnny went to school in the area, trained in the mines with his mates and currently worked in the same mining company as his father. Given the scarcity of women in the area compared to men, Johnny told us there was fierce competition over who he referred to as ‘Pembleton’s princesses’. Johnny then told us why he resented the FIFOs and contractor boys:

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When you go down to the pub with girlfriends or girly friends the contractor boys start being a bit sleazy you know and . . . that’s when it gets out of hand and that’s when most of the trouble starts. They’re sitting there saying: ‘Show us your tits’ and stuff like that to the chicks and then you go: ‘Hey mate settle down’. And they’re drunk and they go: ‘Oh yeah? What are you going to do?’ And then it’s on. Booze and brawling between blokes in these frontier settings is normalised in the anomic spaces of mining frontiers, where deep social divisions and rivalries between groups of men pre-exist, as they did in Pembleton. Johnny described the deep-seated divisions this way: Last few months it’s been getting a bit out of hand mainly with the FIFO fellas . . . Bit of an us and them sort of thing . . . they come in town and trash the place, they run amock, they act they fools, they don’t care . . . Most of the fights are started by them, they come in lookin’ for trouble, hey yeah . . . You were hard pressed not to go to a party where fights didn’t break out . . . It was pretty much the norm. If a fight didn’t happen you were like: Wow that was strange. In these frontier settings, rivalry between men, like Johnny, who consider themselves the authentic bearers of frontier masculinity, and outsiders, regarded as imposters, creates the psychosocial context where male-on-male violence can and does spontaneously erupt. Take, for example, Johnny’s description of how a fight just suddenly erupted at the ‘local’ between him, his mates and ‘FIFOs’. We were involved in a pretty big altercation a little while ago . . . me and probably fifteen or twenty of me mates . . . It started off, we were all just in the bar having a good time; the contractors started to get a bit rowdy . . . started to play fight with each other, roll around all over the place . . . I was in the middle of a game of pool and looked outside and a mate of mine and one these contract boys was pushing and

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shoving . . . I thought oh crap, so I went outside to break it up, then all these contractor’s mates came outside saying ‘you want trouble come on then’. Then it was all on . . . then my mate and the bloke started fighting then his mates jumped in and then we jumped in and then yeah it was a bloodbath basically. In frontier mining communities, like Pembleton, undergoing rapid socio-demographic redefinition, the local ‘wet mess’ (a colloquial name for a pub or place where alcohol is consumed) becomes a ‘zone of exception’, that operates outside normative forms of social control where brawling and alcohol-related violence are commonplace (Carrington et al. 2010). FIFOs are the classic ‘outsiders’ (Becker 1966; Elias and Scotson 1994). They are emblematic of the social dislocation, disorder and loss being experienced by residents who feel themselves overpowered by post-industrial mining regimes (Carrington et al. 2012). These regimes take neo-liberal logic to an extreme, one perhaps encapsulated in the figure of the FIFO worker – contracted, non-unionised, with generous pay packet, compressed work roster, fragile job security and truncated family and community life (Carrington et al. 2011). It is clear from Johnny’s comments that brawling with the contractor boys (another term for FIFO) was not only routine but totally justifiable. Here is what he said next: The guy who got knocked out – he’s a contractor – but apparently the guy who hit him was one of the locals . . . They were bit concerned there was going to be an uprising . . . because that’s what’s happened before in the past when there’s been a fight between the contractors and the locals and then it’s just escalated as more contractors have come in and gone to the pub with their mates and got in trouble and then its escalated . . . I know a while ago some of the locals ended up down at the single men’s camp – fighting all of them – people got their arms broken and stuff like that . . . Any young local man in Pembleton could be a Johnny, and few could escape being a Johnny if they wished to retain their social status among the local lads. The masculine rituals of violence into which the Johnnys of Pembleton are drawn are not biologically reducible

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motivations to enact violence, rage or hatred. This kind of masculine violence is deeply sociological in its character and origins, though it can have fraught psychosocial ramifications to which I return. Another man who also lived locally and worked in the mines whom we interviewed commented: You’ve got to put it in perspective, where we are. There’re a lot of single men around. I mean, there’re three thousand men over at one of the single men’s camps alone. They only get one day off a week, sometimes only one day off every thirteen [days]. So they’re going to go out and they’re going to party or do something. Most times they’re going to be very drunk, very silly and they’re grogged up and they do cause trouble. A lot of times they come in here – because they’re fly-in fly-out – they create trouble here but they’d never do it at home. But they’re off the leash and think oh yeah, let’s party hard, let’s cause a lot of trouble, get in a plane, fly home and forget about it. But the damage’s been done to the town . . . (Local Miner and Long Time Resident, interviewed May 2009) FIFOs were not only outsiders, but not real men. They were nefarious influences from the city come to the bush to destroy their town, their families and move in on their Pembleton princesses, in scarce supply. Hence, the authenticity of the masculine credentials of male non-resident workers is under constant threat, putting them on a knife edge in encounters with local men. It is in this tinder-box context that what most might regard as trivial acts, such as eyeing off another bloke’s girl, shoving a mate or intruding on a pool game, spilling a beer or pushing in line, can become symbolic of the wider spatial invasion by non-resident workers, as Johnny explains: If there was trouble brewing, the glares across the bar, as soon as the police aren’t around, bang it would be on . . . It’s very much us and them; they sit there, you don’t look at them or talk to them and the only words really exchanged are “fuck you, let’s fight . . . ” Fucking FIFOs, it’s them. (Johnny, Interviewed May 2009)

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While proud of his performance and reputation as a fighter, Johnny surprisingly revealed he doesn’t start fights, doesn’t like fighting and even had an ‘amazing fear of fighting’. I used to have an amazing fear of fighting sort of thing when I was younger, early teenager . . . I mean, I’ve got a bit of an anxiety disorder and stuff like that, like I’m on medication for it. But um yeah, one of my big fears when I was a kid was fighting. As soon as someone walked passed and looked at me, I’d be sitting there thinking shit they want to fight me . . . whereas now it’s gotten to the stage, a fight’s on . . . ; it’s just another part of life. I’ve had that much exposure to it, I’ve become – what’s the word – desensitised to it. Johnny is caught in a ‘picture of drift’ (Matza 1964:50), compelled but not necessarily committed to brawling as a way of establishing and maintaining his masculine credentials. It was his way of performing masculinity, and asserting his local territorial rights to belong in Pembleton. In this sense the exercise of violence is not always an exercise of desire or power, as Hautzinger (2003) argues, but perhaps a reaction to a sense of a loss of power, which she refers to as threatened masculinities. As her argument relates to masculinity and violence in Latin America, I return to a fuller analysis of this important research later.

Anxious and threatened masculinities There is a growing body of literature on how men’s violence spontaneously erupts in response to what appear to be trivial matters, but are interpreted as impugning male honour and pride (Tomsen and Crofts 2012). Tomsen and Crofts point out, ‘These insults may appear to be trivial or meaningless as a motivation for violence, yet the protection of self-esteem and keeping face among many men is of fundamental importance in shaping the social circumstances of such violence’ (Tomsen and Crofts 2012:424). They analysed four controversial cases where men have killed other men during violent altercations, two in Queensland and two in Western Australia,

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but were acquitted of murder and manslaughter, using the ‘accident’ defence. In Western Australia Shawn Perella and Neil Collette were among hundreds at a local pub in Coolbellup, a suburb of Perth, watching a boxing match, when Collette lent a mobile phone to Perella’s girlfriend. Perella lashed out in rage and ‘king hit’ Collette, killing him accidentally (Tomsen and Crofts 2012:432). Perella was convicted of grievous bodily harm using the accident defence that he did not reasonably intend to kill his victim with one punch. As in the other cases analysed by Tomsen and Crofts (2012) the victim’s state of intoxication was seen as having contributed to his own death. In a Queensland case, Nigel Lee was killed by Ryan Moody at a taxi rank when fighting broke out between the two exchanging blows. Moody ‘karate-kicked’ Lee once in the face with such force it broke his nose. Lee later died of ‘aspiration’ by not being able to cough up the blood that was asphyxiating him (Tomsen and Crofts 2012:430). The medical evidence tendered during the trial indicated that the victim’s level of intoxication was such that it hindered normal coughing reflexes, contributing to his own death. The jury acquitted Moody of manslaughter (Tomsen and Crofts 2012:430). Tony Jefferson’s analysis of Darren, a man with a long history of aggression, partner abuse and child abuse draws attention to both the psychosocial context of male violence, as well as the social factors. Darren had learned how to hate, and how to express his hate, through rage at his mother, a disappointing ‘container’ who repeatedly abused him, rage at his father, an alcoholic who repeatedly abused his mother, and rage at his partner and her children, who he repeatedly abused and felt he could not control (Jefferson 2013:7–11). When a male police officer turned up at Darren’s home and scolded his abusive conduct toward his partner, Darren went into another rage. The attack on his ego and identity is unbearable and ‘at this point, the only thing holding the ego together, the only way of avoiding fragmentation, is pure hatred: I hate therefore I am’ (Jefferson 2013:10). When challenged by this male police officer Darren’s humiliation was such that it prompted this outburst: ‘Never mind the tit on your head [a reference to his helmet presumably], I think you got a tit on your flaming face you tool’ (Darren cited in Jefferson 2013:12). ‘Tool’ is a reference to a dick or phallus. Darren humiliates the male police

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officer by likening him and parts of his body to women’s body parts – tits. So Darren’s sexist violence is not just an expression of his hatred, which he has learnt, but also an everyday example of a social world that to him normalised that sexism and the violence in his life-world (Jefferson 2013:13). The same can be said for Johnny, the young man we interviewed, and others like him from Pembleton. Their resentment toward FIFOs and contractor boys was learnt, not something innate. Their participation in ritual fights with FIFOs at the pub is understood in a psychosocial and geo-political context where local men felt threatened and anxious. They felt they had no control over the shifts in post-industrial mining regimes that privileged non-unionised, individual contractors and FIFOs over resident workers who invaded their landscapes. This sociological setting is the source of Johnny’s bitter resentment toward FIFOs and justification for the violence he and his mates inflicted upon them. Here’s how another local man and miner described the tinder-box atmosphere and sense of ‘invasion’: A lot of the trouble started when the FIFO came . . . because the pubs nearly shut down . . . then all of a sudden the boom happened and the local pub is like it used to be when I got here twenty-five years ago; six to eight deep at the bar because of the contractors; and that’s how the trouble started to come in and also I suppose a lot of people feel like it’s an invasion. All these contractors flocking to the pub and start trouble. So it doesn’t take much to throw a match on it. (Local Miner, Interviewed May 2009) In a socio-cultural context of the threat of invasion in male-tomale violence, pub brawling and disorder constitute visible symbols of the anomic spaces of the mining frontier. Hence male-on-male violence ‘and its link to doing masculinity is temporally dynamic’ (Carlsson 2013:686). Male-on-male violence in these contexts is linked to social structure and normativity that impact on individual men’s lives (Carlsson 2013:686). These stories of men, masculinity and frontier violence represent only one example of the links between global forces, super-capitalism, masculinity and social production of

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violence. There are many more to be retold. In this chapter I retell just one more, a long way from Australia’s frontiers, but also from the global south, of violence among men in Latin America.

Machismo and violence in Latin America Homicide rates in Latin America are some of the highest in the world (Briceno-Leon, Villaveces and Concha-Eastman 2008:752). Roberto Briceno-Leon and Veronica Zubillaga (2002) have studied the reasons for the steep rises in homicidal violence in Latin America over the last two decades. They take a sociological and epidemiological approach to the issue, arguing that global transformations have escalated the spread of illegal economies in weapons and drugs, weakening the rule of law and leading to significant increases in homicide rates. They identify five interrelated issues. First, they argue that changes in the drug economy have created a whole new set of sub-contractors who distributed drugs at a local level. As drug syndicates became more like international corporations they outsourced the local supply to young men paid in kind – by drugs, not money. In return they sold the illicit drugs within their territory and made lucrative incomes (Briceno-Leon and Zubillaga 2002:23). Second, related to this, there emerged a new actor – the young man from the marginalised urban environments of Latino cities who could now earn respect and a lucrative income from peddling drugs. The ‘territoriality of adolescents became extremely important’ to the rivalries and reprisals over the control of local markets and related homicides (Briceno-Leon and Zubillaga 2002:24). Third, the proliferation of firearms throughout Latin America, where 80 per cent of homicides are committed by a firearm, has no doubt increased the lethality of territorial violence (Briceno-Leon and Zubillaga 2002:25). The gun has become a phallic symbol, a marker of success, power and status among young, unemployed, marginalised Latino men. Fourth, they argue, the urban cities of Latin America have become gripped by fear of violence, violence on transport and in public and especially after dark. They suggest that the night-time inner-city economies where the drug trade operates become no-go zones for police – anomic spaces where the rule of law is suspended till dawn (Briceno-Leon

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and Zubillaga 2002:31), undermining the sociality of public spaces of Latin American cities (Briceno-Leon and Zubillaga 2002:32). Lastly they argue that in this context of rising homicidal violence there is a growing popular mood for reform, such as increased prison sentences, the death penalty, extra-judicial force and action by the police and paramilitary (Briceno-Leon and Zubillaga 2002:32). The under-resourced, easily corrupted criminal justice systems are seemingly incapable of delivering justice. Most do not report crimes, for it is useless to do so, even serious crimes. In Colombia, for instance, they point out there were around forty-five thousand inmates and 120,000 outstanding arrest warrants – requiring fifty new prisons to be built should these convicted offenders be caught (Briceno-Leon and Zubillaga 2002:33). In this context there is growing grassroots popular support for vigilantism, and increasing reliance on local gangs of young men who protect the neighbourhood. In more wealthy neighbourhoods, they argue that there is growing popular support for extra-judicial policing, the unlawful use of force, torture and even ‘extermination’ squads in response to fear of growing violence and victimisation. All this leads Briceno-Leon and Zubillaga to conclude that ‘The growing urban violence is undermining the rule of law in Latin America, and propagating a low-intensity war in which thousands of Latin Americans die every year’ (Briceno-Leon and Zubillaga 2002:34). Hence ‘violence is associated with young men who live in poor areas, join in gangs to defend their territories and for whom violent action is a resource with which to obtain an acknowledged identity’ (Briceno-Leon and Zubillaga 2002:27). Briceno-Leon and Zubillaga argue that ‘globalization is democratic and equitable in spreading expectations (about quality of life, consumption patterns, style and so on) but it is inequitable in providing the means to satisfy them’ (Briceno-Leon and Zubillaga 2002:28). There are thirty-five million young people between thirteen and nineteen in Latin America with expectations for a better life, yet violence is the modus operandi for satisfying these expectations. In their interviews with young men imprisoned for homicide, it was revealed that some killed for as little as a pair of designer jeans or Nike shoes. Some of this cohort of violent men had themselves being victimised and harassed by older men

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when they were young. While young men remain the principle perpetrators and victims of homicide in Latin America (Briceno-Leon and Zubillaga 2002:29), as the previous chapter illustrated, thousands of young women are also victims of male violence, with over a one thousand killed in the Mexican city of Juarez alone. Hautzinger studied male violence in Brazil throughout the 1990s. She was particularly interested in the formation of all-female police stations (Delgacias de Policia dos Direitos da Mulher) as a response to male violence against women (Hautzinger 2010:224). The theoretical implications of her work – that feminism did not anticipate that female police officers would be unsympathetic to female victims of male violence, was discussed in chapter 4. What is relevant to this chapter is Hautzinger’s argument that globalising cultural forces have destabilised traditional Latino constructs of gender. She points out that men’s prerogatives are increasingly questioned, delegitimised and destabilised by women’s increasingly inclusion in the civic body, the democratising states of Latin America, alongside women’s demands for more labour equality, opportunities for economic independence, sexual assertiveness, consumption and so forth. In turn these sociocultural historical dynamics have created a crisis in masculinity for machismo Latino men and profoundly reshaped their responses to violence. Latino men, who feel emasculated and turn to violence, strike back as women no longer defer to their dominance or patriarchal command. Hautzinger theorises the performance of violence in this context as an expression of a threatened masculinity. She argues that male violence in this context is contestatory – or compensatory. It is an expression of shifting power dynamics, where threatened men are losing and not necessarily gaining power and control (Hautzinger 2003:93). Her argument does not excuse or apologise men’s violence. She refers to Tinsman’s study of Chile, which compared the reasons for men’s violence against wives under the Allende’s socialism (1964–1974) to that under Pinoche’s military rule (1974–1998). In the first period male violence was about maintaining control of the household and the deference of their wives, and in the second period reasons for male violence had shifted to men responding to women’s greater sexual agency and earning power (Tinsman cited in Hautizinger 2003:92). Her point is that the shifting dynamics of

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socio-historical changes lead to different forms of male violence – to ‘foiled machos resorting to violence as a desperate, compensatory measure than dominating patriarchs maintaining power and control’ (Hautzinger 2003:98).

Implications for theorising masculinity and violence Explanations for the ‘maleness’ of crime and delinquency remain contentious. The contention revolves around several explanations; biological accounts which stress the importance of ‘dangerous masculinity’ as an explanation of criminality; sociological accounts which stress the importance of environmental context and social influences on male delinquent subcultures; and feminist accounts which stress the significance of hyper-masculinity as a predictor of male delinquency and criminality. For the most part criminology has eschewed the question of the maleness of crime. Feminist critics have long identified the greatest flaw of criminology as its failure to theorise the relation between gender and crime (Smart 1976:178; Cohen and Harvey 2006:225; Naffine 1997). Criminological explanations for the sex differences in crime rates universally conclude that young men are more violent, commit more crime and come into more contact with the criminal justice system (Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990:144). However ‘these conclusions offer little insight into questions of why this is the case’ (Cohen and Harvey 2006:226). The stress on lack of self-control, atypical physicality and personality, genetics and biology in these accounts leads to conceptualisations of male offending as ‘presocial’ behaviour linked to ‘dangerous’ cohorts of men, from a certain class, family and social backgrounds, naturalising boys’ crimes as something they are simply ‘drawn to’ (Tomsen 2007:94). Such an overarching negative conception of masculinity as ‘dangerous’ is not only misleading (see Connell 1995; Jefferson 1997; Messerschmidt 1993), but also leads to a number of other serious methodological and conceptual difficulties (Collier 1998:177). Most significantly such an approach fails to take into account the diversity of cross-cultural and trans-historical variation in masculinities (Collier 1998:6–33), of the kind described in this chapter.

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For example the context in which male-on-male violence erupts in frontier mining communities is vastly different to the cultural and geo-political context of male-on-male violence between rival drug gangs of Latin America, in Mexico and Colombia in particular. The conflation of sex with gender easily lapses into a dichotomous explanation of crime and delinquency which emphasises assumed pre-existing differentiations between male and female (Messerschmidt 2005). The intra-sex dissimilarities and the inter-sex similarities in patterns of delinquent behaviour tend to be overlooked in favour of a singular unifying (and largely negative) conception of masculinity. Hence, as Messerschmidt (2005) argues, it is important to find more complex explanations which focus on gender diversity and not just gender difference. Borrowing heavily from Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity, the basic argument presented by Messerschmidt to account for the masculinity of crime and delinquency is that much of what comprises the bulk of recorded and undetected criminal behaviour are expressions of hyper-masculinity – aggression, drunkenness, encroachment on the public space of others, driving offences, domestic violence, rape, assault and violence. Messerschmidt (1993) argues that American masculinity is built around material values of financial independence and success and that when these are unavailable (due to poverty or unemployment for instance) boys are drawn into crime as a resource for achieving their masculine identity (Messerschmidt 1993:82). Other criminologists have drawn inspiration from Messerschmidt, combining masculinity theory and class analysis to provide an explanation for the dominance of young men drawn into the justice system. They argue that working-class boys have higher rates of involvement in violent crime because as a marginalised masculinity, they need to rely on physical domination (not material domination) to express their masculinity (Cunneen and White 2007:216). They also argue that street violence is associated with the celebratory violence of working-class men affected by economic disadvantage and group marginalisation (Cunneen and White 2007:216). According to these conceptual models the commission of crime and violence is one way of ‘doing masculinity’ and accomplishing a social status where

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other resources, such as money and class prestige, are unavailable due to the social structural constraints of inequality. There has been considerable debate about the continuing usefulness of Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinities (Connell 2002; Jefferson 2002; Hall 2002; Connell and Messerschmidt 2005; Beasley 2008), namely that it is ‘insufficiently focused and overly monolithic’ (Beasley 2008:94). There has also been much criticism of Connell assigning international businessmen to the top of the hierarchy of the gender order (Beasley 2008:93). Notwithstanding interpretations of Connell’s work, she used ruling-class men in boardrooms just as an example of how men with power need not resort to violence, for their power is rarely contested. The case study of Johnny, masculinity and alcohol-related violence in mining communities illustrates how the localised patterns of violence and associated performances of masculinity are shaped in divergent ways by the anomic spaces of super-capitalism. Transnational businessmen are rarely present in these spaces, but the power they exercise in making decisions about escalating the use of non-resident workforces has repercussions powerfully felt at a local level. The most significant of these decisions, and perhaps calculated to disempower the strength of the mining unions, is that they produce rivalries and social divisions between FIFO men and resident men, which sometimes find expression in male-on-male violence. Messerschmidt’s theorisation of crime as a way of men and boys ‘doing masculinity’ has also been criticised as an oversimplification of the complexity of the masculine subject (Jefferson 2013). Most significantly this way of theorising masculinity fails to take into account the diversity of cross-cultural, geo-spatial and trans-historical variations in masculinity (see Collier 1998:6–33). The transcultural and geo-spatial variations in patterns of masculinity and violence, two of which were discussed in this chapter, have attracted little attention. Tony Jefferson argues that male subjectivity is fractured, fluid, temporal and quite diverse, and not at all monolithic. Jefferson and Gadd have developed a theoretical approach that rejects totalising assumptions which equate violence with masculinity and takes into account both the inner worlds of anxiety and vulnerability alongside outer worlds of power and discourse (Gadd and Jefferson 2007:83). While

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the pressures of masculinity, power and excitement are present in the commission of violent crimes such as serial killing, these elements are, according to Gadd and Jefferson, also present in lawful behaviours like football (Gadd and Jefferson 2007:87). This critical insight is what initially steered me in the direction of looking for subterranean convergences between the specific manifestation of male-on-male violence in frontier communities and the processes of globalisation involved in resource extraction (See Carrington et al. 2010). By adopting an anti-reductionist approach to masculinity that avoids speaking of masculinity in terms of sets of objectified traits or essentialist characteristics, which some men have and others do not have, masculinity can be conceptualised in terms of tactics and performances played out in the context of broader strategic imperatives in particular geo-political and cultural contexts. As such, it is misconceived to look for a totalising rationality or hierarchy behind masculinity. Masculinity is neither the product of invisible structures nor an individual will or drive. Instead, masculinity, as Jefferson and Gadd argue, is not a singular identity or subject position, but a complex and diverse historically grounded psychosocial product of dynamic social relations, played out in diverse spaces and temporal contexts (Gadd and Jefferson 2007). Rather than being an object to be maintained or recovered, masculinity is a performance. Men who come from major cities to work in remote locations participate in frontier cultures of masculinity and violence, as the case study of Pembleton aptly illustrates. They drift in and out of these anomic contexts, and their patterns of conduct change as they are drawn into contestatory violence with other men. To borrow from Matza, this ‘picture of drift’ (Matza 1964:50) is entirely consistent with the proposition that men’s emotions, actions and conduct are powerfully shaped by social context (Connell 2000). These men are not always violent but may be drawn into a psychosocial context, as Johnny was, even against his will, where trivial intrusions can be interpreted as symptomatic of wider destructiveness of global mining on local solidarities. Where men’s place, status or territory is threatened or fragile, violence can become a way of re-enforcing boundaries, exercising power, asserting male honour and re-establishing social status with other groups of men, as was

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the case with men in Latin America feeling threatened by wide-scale social change and women’s demands for civic equality (Hautzinger 2003). Where male power is firmly entrenched there is little need to resort to physical force to uphold that dominance (Hautzinger 2003:102). The managers of global resource companies for instance do not ‘need to be openly violent because the means of violence are institutionalised in seemingly neutral, rational business practices’ (Acker 2004:31). Hence violence is not necessarily an expression of patriarchal power, but an expression of shifting power dynamics – of some men losing and not necessary gaining power and control (Hautzinger 2003:93). Anand (2007) similarly draws a link between threatened masculinities, nationalism and violence in India. She argues that communal violence by nationalist Hindus against Muslim men stereotyped ‘as dangerous, fanatic, jihadi and oversexed other’ (Anand 2007:266) is partly justified as a reaction of Hindu men threatened by perceptions of the sexual virility of Muslim men, who can have up to four wives and twenty-five children! Hindu men by comparison are represented as docile, compliant, non-violent, virtuous, but emasculated and effeminized by such constructions (Anand 2007:260). Violence may be a symbol of anxious, precarious and threatened masculinities, as was the case with Johnny, or these Hindu men. Male-on-male violence can also be the lethal assertion of a newfound phallic power of the gun, as it was with the young male drug lords that rule the public spaces of Latino cities at night (Briceno-Leon and Zubillaga 2002). More recent, and largely poststructuralist inspired, approaches to studying masculinity have explored how violence relates to different types of masculinity including protest masculinity; monologic and dialogic masculinities; threatened and queer masculinities; racial and ethnic minority masculinities; and rural masculinities (Carrington and Scott 2008; Cohen and Harvey 2006; Collier 1998; Gadd and Jefferson 2007; Jefferson 1996; Messerschmidt 2007; Tomsen 2007; Tomsen and Crofts 2012). This approach broadly underpins the theoretical scaffolding of my research interest in male-on-male violence in frontier geo-political spaces of super-capitalism. My theoretical approach has long been guided by scepticism about taken-for-granted universalising assumptions underpinning much criminological and feminist

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research that lumps men and violence into a singular category. In grappling with the particularity of how socio-spatial dynamics drive and shape male-on-male violence in particular socio-geographic locations, my aim has been to dislodge theorisations of masculinity and violence from their universalistic construction as expressions of pathology linked to an innate feature of masculinity and to reposition masculinity and violence as a matter of cultural and geo-political context. The chapter which follows likewise attempts to dislodge interpretations of female violence from universalistic constructions of femininity as essentially the ‘passive’ sex, incapable of using force, torture or even acts of terrorism.

Note I acknowledge permissions granted by Sage, the British Journal of Criminology and the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology to reuse some material previously published in those journals in this chapter. 1. I acknowledge a debt to my research team – Russell Hogg, Alison McIntosh and John Scott – and the ARC, which funded this research. ARC Discovery Project DP0878476. While the research was collectively gathered I take responsibility for the analysis in this chapter. Early versions of parts of this chapter have been published elsewhere in jointly authored publications and reproduced with permission.

References Acker, J. (2004) ‘Gender, capitalism and globalisation’, Critical Criminology, 30:17–41. Agamben, G. (1998) Homo sacer: sovereign power and bare life, Daniel HellerRoazen (trans.), Stanford University Press: California. AIHW (2007) Rural, regional and remote health: a study on mortality, Rural Health Series No. 8, Cat. No. PHE 95, 2nd ed., AIHW: Canberra. AIHW (2010) A snapshot of men’s health in regional and remote Australia, AIHW: Canberra. Anand, D. (2007) ‘Anxious sexualities: masculinity, nationalism and violence’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 9:257–269. Beasley, C. (2008) ‘Rethinking hegemonic masculinity in a globalizing world’, Men and Masculinities, 11(1):86–103. Becker, H. (1966) Outsiders: studies in the sociology of deviance, Free Press: New York.

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BHP Billiton (2009), Olympic dam expansion – draft environmental impact statement, BHP Billiton: Melbourne. Briceno-Leon, R. and Zubillaga, V. (2002) ‘Violence and globalisation in Latin America’, Current Sociology, 50(1):19–36. Briceno-Leon, R., Villaveces, A. and Concha-Eastman, A. (2008) ‘Understanding the uneven distribution of the incidence of homicide in Latin America’, International Journal of Epidemiology, 37:751–757. Campbell, H. (2000) ‘The glass phallus: pub(lic) masculinity and drinking in rural New Zealand’, Rural Sociology, 65(4):562–581. Campbell, H. (2006), ‘Real men, real locals and real workers: realizing masculinity in small town New Zealand’, in H. Campbell, M. Bell and M. Finney (eds.) Country boys: masculinity and rural life, Pennsylvania State University Press: University Park, 87–104. Carlsson, C. (2013) ‘Masculinities, persistence and desistance’, Criminology, 51(3):661–689. Carrington, K. (2013) ‘Corporate risk, mining, and work camps’, in K. Carrington, M. Ball, E. O’Brien and J. Tauri (eds.) Crime, justice and social democracy: international perspectives, Palgrave Macmillan: Hampshire, 295–314. Carrington, K. and Hogg, R. (2011) ‘Benefits and burdens of the mining boom for rural communities’, Human Rights Defender, UNSW Law Faculty: Kensington. Carrington, K. and Pereira, M. (2011) ‘Assessing the impact of resource development on rural communities’, Rural Society, 21(1):2–20. Carrington, K. and Scott, J. (2008) ‘Masculinity, rurality and violence’, British Journal of Criminology, 48:641–666. Carrington, K., Hogg, R. and McIntosh, A. (2011) ‘The resource boom’s underbelly: the criminological impact of mining development’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 44(3):335–354. Carrington, K., Hogg, R., McIntosh, A. and Scott, J. (2012) ‘Crime talk, FIFO workers and cultural conflict on the mining boom frontier’, Australian Humanities Review, 53:1–14. Carrington, K., Hogg, R. and McIntosh, A. (forthcoming) ‘The hidden injuries of mining: frontier cultural conflict’, in A. Brisman, N. South and R. White (eds.) Environmental crime and social conflict: contemporary and emerging issues. Ashgate: Farnham Surrey. Carrington, K., McIntosh, A. and Scott, J. (2010) ‘Globalization, frontier masculinities and violence: booze, blokes and brawls’, British Journal of Criminology, 50:393–413. Cheshire, L. (2010) ‘A corporate responsibility? The constitution of fly-in, fly-out mining companies as governance partners in remote, mine– affected localities’, Journal of Rural Studies, 26(1):12–20.

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Cleary, P. (2012) Minefield: the dark side of the mining boom, Black Inc.: Collingwood, Victoria. Cohen, J. and Harvey, P. (2006) ‘Misconceptions of gender: sex, masculinity and the measurement of crime’, The Journal of Men’s Studies, 14(2):223–233. Collier, R. (1998), Masculinities, crime and criminology, Sage: London. Connell, R. W. (1995) Masculinities, Allen & Unwin: Sydney. Connell, R. W. (2000) The men and the boys, Allen & Unwin: Sydney. Connell, R. W. (2002) ‘On hegemonic masculinity and violence: response to Jefferson and Hall’, Theoretical Criminology, 6(1):89–99. Connell, R. W. and Messerschmidt, J. (2005) ‘Hegemonic masculinity: rethinking the concept’, Gender and Society, 19:829–859. Cunneen, C. and White, R. (2007) Juvenile justice: youth and crime in Australia, 2nd ed., Oxford University Press: Melbourne. Currie, E. (2013) ‘The sustaining society’, in K. Carrington, M. Ball, E. O’Brien and J. Tauri (eds.) Crime, justice and social democracy: international perspectives, Palgrave Macmillan: Hampshire. DeKeseredy, W.S. (2011) Violence against women. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Doukas, A., Cretney, A. and Vadgama, J. (2008) Boom to bust: social and cultural impacts of the mining cycle, Pembina Institute: Calgary, Canada Elias, N. and Scotson, J. (1994) The established and the outsiders: a sociological enquiry into community problems, Sage: London. Gadd, D. and Jefferson, T. (2007), Psychosocial criminology, Sage: Los Angeles. Gottfredson, M. and Hirschi, T. (1990) A general theory of crime, Stanford University Press: Stanford. Hall, S. (2002) ‘Daubing the drudges of fury: men, violence and the piety of the “Hegemonic Masculinity” thesis’, Theoretical Criminology, 6(1):35–61. Hautzinger, S. (2003) ‘Researching men’s violence: personal reflections on ethnographic data’, Men and Masculinities, 6(1):93–106. Hauztinger, S. (2010) ‘Criminalising male violence in Brazil’s women’s police stations: from flawed essentialism to imagined communities’, Journal of Gender Studies, 11(3):243–251. Human Rights Watch (2011) ‘Gold’s costly dividend: human rights impacts of Papua New Guinea’s Porgera gold mine’. www.hrw.org/world-report/ 2013/publications/95776 Jefferson, T. (1996) Introduction, special issue: ‘Masculinities, social relations and crime’, British Journal of Criminology, 36(3):337–347. Jefferson, T. (1997) ‘Masculinities and crime’, in M. Maguire, R. Morgan and R. Reiner (eds.) The oxford handbook of criminology, 2nd ed., Clarendon Press: Oxford, 535–558. Jefferson, T. (2002) ‘For a psychosocial criminology’, in K. Carrington and R. Hogg (eds.) Critical criminology, Willan: Collumpton, 145–167.

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Jefferson, T. (2013) ‘Masculinity, sexuality and hate-motivated violence: the case of Darren’, International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 2(3):3–14. Kinhill Engineers (1991) Remote mining projects fly-in fly-out study. Perth, Western Australia: Report prepared for the Department of State Development. Lockie, S., Franettovich M, Petkova-Timmer V, Rolfe, J. and Ivanova, G. (2009) ‘Coal mining and the resource community cycle: a longitudinal assessment of the social impacts of the Coppabella coal mine’, Environmental Impact Assessment Review, 29:330–339. Marshall, N. and Carrington, K. (2008) ‘Regional migration and social capital’, Rural Society: The Journal of Research into Rural and Regional Social Issues, 18(2):117–130. Matza, D. (1964) Delinquency and drift, John Wiley: New York. McIntosh, A. and Carrington, K. (2014) ‘Challenging mining workforce practices: implications for frontline rural communities’, in R. Dufty-Jones and J. Connell (eds.) Rural change in Australia: population, economy, environment, Ashgate: London, 122–150. Messerschmidt, J. (1993) Masculinity and crime: critique and reconceptualization of theory, Rowman and Littlefield: Lanham, MD. Messerschmidt, J. (2005) ‘Men, masculinities and crime’, in M. Kimmel, J. Hearn and R. W. Connell (eds.) Handbook of studies on men and masculinities, Sage: London, 196–212. Messerschmidt, J. (2007) ‘Masculinities and crime: beyond a dualist criminology’, in C. Renzetti, L. Goodstein and S. Miller (eds.) Rethinking gender, crime and justice, Oxford University Press: Oxford. Morgan, A. and McAtamney, A. (2009) Key issues in alcohol-related violence, research in practice: summary paper no 4, December 2009, Australian Institute of Criminology: Canberra. Morgan, A. and McAtamney, A. (2013) Homicide in Australia 2008–10, Australian Institute of Criminology: Canberra. Murray, G. and Peetz, D. (2010) Women of the coal rushes, University of New South Wales Press: Sydney. Naffine, N. (1997) Feminism & criminology, Allen & Unwin: Sydney. Petkova, V., Lockie, S., Rolfe, J. and Ivanova, G. (2009) ‘Mining developments and social impacts on communities: Bowen Basin case studies’, Rural Society, 19:211–228. Reich, R. (2008) Supercapitalism – the transformation of business, democracy, and everyday life, Scribe: Melbourne. Ruggerio, V. and South, N. (2013) ‘Toxic State-corporate crimes, neoliberalism and green criminology: the hazards and legacies of oil, chemical and mineral industries’, International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 2(2):12–26.

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Scott, J., Carrington, K. and McIntosh, A. (2012) ‘Established-Outsider relations and fear of crime in rural towns’, Sociologia Ruralis, 52(2):147–169. Smart, C. (1976) Women, crime and criminology, Routledge & Kegan Paul: London. Storey, K. (2001) ‘Fly-in, fly-out and fly-over: mining and regional development in Western Australia’, Australian Geographer, 32(2):133–148. Storey, K. (2008) ‘The evolution of commute work in Canada and Australia’, in F. Stammler and G. Eilmsteiner-Saxinger (eds.) Biography, Shift-Labour and Socialization in a Northern Industrial City – The Far North, Particularities of Labour and Human Socialization: Proceedings of the International Conference, 4–6 December 2008: Novy Urengoy, Russia, 23–32. Storey, K. and Shrimpton, M. (1991) ‘Fly-in mining: pluses and minuses of long-distance commuting’, Mining Review, 15:27–35. Thayer, M. (2010) Making transnational feminism, Routledge: New York. Tomsen, S. (2008) ‘Masculinities, crime and criminalisation’, in T. Anthony and C. Cunneen (eds.) The critical criminology companion, Federation Press: Sydney, 94–104. Tomsen, S. and Crofts, T. (2012) ‘Social and cultural meanings of legal responses to homicide among men: masculine honour, sexual advances and accidents’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 45(3):423–437. White, R. (2013a) ‘Environmental crime and problem solving courts’, Crime, Law and Social Change, 59(3):267–278. White, R. (2013b) ‘Resource extraction leaves something behind: environmental justice and mining’, International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 2(1):50–64. Windsor Inquiry (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Regional Australia) (2013) Cancer of the bush or salvation for our cities? Fly-in, fly-out and drive-in, drive-out workforce practices in regional Australia, Commonwealth of Australia: Canberra.

6 FEMALE VIOLENCE, TORTURE AND TERRORISM Is feminism spoiling girls?

Introduction Female violence challenges deeply ingrained gender assumptions held by many – among them feminists, lawyers, criminologists, media commentators, parents and policy makers. Violent women transgress normative representations of femininity – as the nurturing passive sex. Criminological theory has a long history of essentialising violence as a characteristic associated primarily with boys, overlooking the capacity for the female sex to participate in and inflict violence. Feminist scholars too have tended to duck the thorny issue of female violence, preferring instead to construct violent women as victims. It is understandable that feminists have had particular difficulty coming to grips with female violence over the last forty years, partly for the reason that feminism was, and sometimes still is, wrongly held responsible for the recorded rises in female crime and violence. Feminists have also been blamed for spoiling the American military, luring men to participate in atrocities, war crimes and the torture of prisoners. Implicitly feminism is sometimes blamed for encouraging women to become terrorists, in seeking equity with men. This chapter overviews the empirical evidence that the rises in young women’s violence as well as the rises in women’s participation

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in terrorist activities are global phenomena. They are not necessarily rooted to any particular religion, ethnicity or social background. The chapter canvasses possible theories to explain recorded rises of girls’ violence in the more affluent countries across the northern and southern hemispheres. The first relates to shifting cultural constructions which celebrate the violent femme and normalise ‘ladette’ culture. The second relates to the impact of new forms of social online networking that create a parallel universe that rewards and incites girls’ fights in the real world. The chapter then canvasses the reasons for the rise in women’s participation in torture, and terrorist activity, especially suicide bombing. This chapter argues that if feminism wants to have a voice in the public, cultural, political and criminological debates about heightened, albeit often exaggerated, social concerns about growing female violence, torture and terrorism, then new directions in theorising female violence are required. This chapter attempts, albeit no doubt controversially, to engage in these debates, and to suggest some ways of interpreting acts of female violence, torture and terrorism.

Global rises in female violence Much is known about male delinquency, as young men have long dominated the statistics for arrest, violence and crime (Cunneen and White 2007). Far less is known about girls who commit violent offences. The comparatively small body of research on girls and crime assumes that their offences are mostly sexualised and non-violent (Carrington 1993; Alder and Worrall 2004; Sharpe 2012). Yet the data on sex and juvenile violent offending shows a pattern across the US, NSW, Canada and the UK that female violent offenders are growing at a much faster rate than male violent offenders (Arnull and Eagle 2009; Carrington 2013; Lauristen et al. 2009). While males still dominate crime statistics as offenders and prisoners, a body of international and national trend data points to a consistent narrowing of the gender gap for officially reported crime and violence in countries like the US, Canada, the UK and Australia. In the US, for instance, crime trend data from 2000 to 2009 show nearly an 18 per cent increase in arrests of females under the age of

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eighteen for assaults, compared to just a 0.2 per cent increase for similarly aged males (US Department of Justice 2010). During this time frame there were significantly higher increases in arrests of young females for drug abuse violations and driving under the influence compared to males. Arrests of females under the age of eighteen for disorderly conduct increased by 8 per cent, while the arrests of males in this age group decreased by 8 per cent over the same time frame. The US Department of Justice Study Group on girls and violence compared the rising rates of girls’ crime with victimisation and selfreport data and also found reported violence for girls was rising faster than for boys, although the extent varied according to which measure was used. In England and Wales, a major study of juvenile female offending between 2000 and 2005 found that ‘the number of young female offenders has risen by approximately 18 per cent over the past five financial years’, and that the number of violent offences for juvenile females more than doubled over the same period (Arnull and Eagle 2009:40, 47). The data upon which this report was generated has been criticised for inflating girls’ violent offences. Gilly Sharpe argues that shifts in the way the National Crime Reporting Standard operated from 2002 led to the recording of more petty offences, artificially inflating minor infringements and assaults committed by girls (Sharpe 2012:33). She concludes that the steep rises in girls’ delinquency recorded in the UK’s Criminal Statistics was the outcome of shifting modes of criminalisation and not the deterioration of girl’s behaviour (Sharpe 2012:34). Nevertheless, Sharpe quotes data that shows violence recorded for girls in England increased 78 per cent in the three-year period between 2003 and 2006 (Youth Justice Board, cited in Sharpe 2012:33). In Australia, while boys still outnumber girls under Australian juvenile justice supervision,1 the gender gap is narrowing. Taking Australia’s largest jurisdiction as an example, across a fifty-two-year period of trend data (1960–2012), the ratio of young women to young men appearing before the NSW Children’s Courts for criminal matters (finalised court appearances) narrowed from around one in fourteen in 1960 to around one in four in 2012 (see Figure 6.1). While changes in data definitions and counting rules over such a long

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Female criminal

1960 1962 1964 1966 1968 1970 1972 1974 1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012

18000 16000 14000 12000 10000 8000 6000 4000 2000 0

FIGURE 6.1 Finalised court appearances criminal offences by sex, NSW Children’s Courts 1960–2012

Source: NSW Children’s Court Data 1960–2012, published in Carrington (2013) Note: Data quality issues affect the trend data due to changes in counting rules that invariably occur over such a long time frame.

time pose data quality issues, nevertheless the trend is so consistent it cannot be simply attributed to statistical artefact. Crime data for girls’ violence has also been rising over the last two decades. Acts intended to cause injury (violent offences) accounted for around 36.5 per cent of all the matters for which young females appeared before the children’s courts in NSW in 2012, compared to just 13.8 per cent in 1989 (NSW Criminal Court Data 1989–2012: see Figure 6.2). Earlier data is not comparable due to changes in the definition and recording of violent offences. By comparison, over the same time frame, the proportion of violent-related offences for which juvenile males appeared before the NSW Children’s Courts rose less dramatically, from 10.7 per cent in 1989 to 22.2 per cent in 2012 (NSW Criminal Court Data 1989–2012: see Figure 6.2). Another ten-year study (1999–2010) for the same jurisdiction, undertaken by the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics, came to the same conclusion that violence was rising faster for girls than boys. This study, which uses administrative by-product data

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Male

40.0 35.0 30.0 25.0 20.0 15.0 10.0 0.0

1989 1990 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

5.0

Proportion of violent offences by sex, NSW Children’s Court 1989–2012

FIGURE 6.2

Violent offences are defined as acts intended to cause injury. Counting Rule: finalized court appearance of most serious offence. Source: NSW Criminal Court Statistics 1989–2012, published in Carrington (2013)

based on reports to the police, found that the number of juvenile female offenders increased by 36 per cent, compared to an 8 per cent increase in male juvenile offenders over the same ten-year time frame (Holmes 2010:6). Among the top ten offences for girls, shoplifting was the highest, accounting for 21 per cent of those offences which attracted police attention. The second highest ranking offence recorded by police was non-domestic violent assaults, accounting for 10.9 per cent of juvenile female offenders compared to 7.1 per cent of male juvenile offenders (Holmes 2010:6). There is no doubt that officially recorded rates of violence for girls based on reports to the police have been increasing in countries like the US, the UK, Canada and Australia for some time. This trend appears to be triangulated by victimisation data that shows young women are assaulted predominantly by their friends or peers during early adolescence (House of Representatives Inquiry into Youth Violence 2010:20–21) and by qualitative studies of girls’ violence (Jones 2008; Miller 2004; Sharpe 2012:89).

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However, there is little agreement as to why these rates are rising (Alder and Worrall 2004; Carrington 2006; Carrington and Pereira 2009; Reitsma-Street 2000; Chesney-Lind 1999). The debate is evident in two contrasting papers published in Criminology, one of the world’s leading journals in this discipline. While official reports of crime indicate that the gender gap has narrowed over the last two decades, Steffensmeier and his colleagues (2005) argue that this is due largely to several net-widening policy shifts that led to increases in the arrest of girls for behaviour that, in the past, was either not policed or overlooked. By comparison, their analysis shows that a similar trend is not evident in longitudinal self-report data. In contrast, Lauristen and her colleagues (2009) argue that the narrowing of the gender gap is real. Their longitudinal analysis covering the period from 1973 to 2005 compares patterns in National Crime Victimization Survey data, based on self-reports, with those in the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) that are based on police arrest data. They conclude that ‘female-to-male offending rate ratios for aggravated assault, robbery, and simple assault have increased over time and that the narrowing of the gender gaps is very similar to patterns in UCR arrest data’ (Lauristen et al. 2009:361). While acknowledging that the narrowing of the gender gap, especially during the 1990s, was due largely to decreases in male offending rates rather than large increases in female offending rates, they concluded that the issue is real and warrants ‘serious attention in future research’ (Lauristen et al. 2009:361). A key issue in this debate is whether statistical increases in female offences are generated by less serious offences being brought into the system or changes in policy and policing that disproportionately impact upon girls (Muncer et al. 2001; Acoca 2004; Alder and Worrall 2004; Carrington 2006; Brown et al. 2007; Arnull and Eagle 2009; Sharpe 2012). Sceptics point out that the large percentage rises are partly the product of small numbers and partly an effect of decreasing numbers of boys coming to the attention of the police and courts. In sum, explanations for the rising rates of female violence remain contentious (Alder and Worrall 2004; Carrington and Pereira 2009; Sharpe 2012). Are these patterns the product of new forms of social control, changing methods of recording information, changes

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in styles of policing and policy, increases in girls’ violence or changes in attitudes to female offending? The following wrestles with these questions while attempting to critically assess the explanations typically offered to account for rises in girls’ violence. The main focus is on explaining increases in female violence, as this has attracted the most critical public and scholarly attention.

Shifting modes of social control The argument which appears to have most currency among feminist and criminological scholars is that girls are not becoming more violent; rather, shifting modes of social control are having a net-widening effect on offences defined as violent (Chesney-Lind and Shelden 2004; Luke 2008; Steffensmeier et al. 2005; Alder and Worrall 2004; Sharpe 2012). Similarly, Alder and Worrall argue that definitions of girls’ violence are culturally constructed, and statistical increases in female juvenile violence may be partly accounted for by girls’ increased visibility in public spaces, a widening of behaviour deemed unacceptable and distorted analyses of statistical data (Alder and Worrall 2004:10). This theory discursively repositions female violence in a context of less serious, social and relational aggression that occurs mostly in the context of girls’ peer networks (Alder and Worrall 2004; Chesney-Lind and Irwin 2008). The statistical rises in girls’ violence are then attributed mostly to shifts in methods of policing. Referred to as ‘upcrimming’, this mode of social control entails the criminalisation of less serious forms of girls’ ‘disorder’, such as girls who occupy public space, who express their sexuality, or who are boisterous or rebellious (Alder and Worrall 2004:11). According to this explanation, girls’ violence is generally thought to be less serious on the scale of aggression compared to boys but, importantly, there are lower thresholds for intervening when girls engage in aggressive conduct compared to boys (Chesney-Lind 1999; Beikoff 1996; Alder and Worrall 2004). Hence girls’ violence may illicit a greater interventionist social reaction or, rather, overreaction. In a recent book, Offending Girls, Gilly Sharpe suggests that the obsession with the new ‘violent female offender’ has become the

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substitute for historical policy concerns with wayward girls and sexual delinquency (Sharpe 2012:2). She argues that a raft of new more punitive policing and policy responses to youth crime in England has had a disproportionately criminalising impact on girls’ behaviour, inflating the population of ‘violent’ female offenders (Sharpe 2012:24). There is little doubt that the sexualisation of girls’ deviance was central to historical constructions of and responses to female adolescent delinquency in the last half of the twentieth century (Carrington 1993, 2006; Chesney-Lind 1974). However, since the removal of status offences which sexualised female delinquency, a tapestry of other factors has emerged which could be enhancing the prospects of female violence, such as the growth of girls’ participation in drug economies,2 the slight rise in their participation in body-contact sports such as martial arts and football,3 and their increasing involvement in street-based youth subcultures more generally.4 The post-war era during the cultural revolution of the 1960s and 1970s witnessed an explosion in youth subcultures (Hall and Jefferson 1975). During this period, youth culture became a metaphor for modernity, a symbol for trouble, a signifier for social change, chaos and disruption, and the loss of certainty (Hebdige 1979; Stratton 1992). Moral panics associated with post-war youth cultures diverted much adverse attention toward these youthful leisure activities (Bessant 1991; Cohen 1980; Poynting et al. 2004). This increased visibility brought increasing numbers of young people (mostly boys) into conflict with the law, usually for petty delinquencies that arose in the context of their participation in street-based youth subcultures (Hall and Jefferson 1975; White 1991). Not surprisingly, this was the time when official rates of delinquency were peaking for boys in Australia and other parts of the globe. During the 1960s and 1970s, girls were largely excluded from the central activities of most working-class youth subcultures such as drug use, motorbike riding, football hooliganism, surfing, street fighting, skateboarding or rollerblading (McRobbie and Gerber 1991; Carrington 1993). A growing body of social research, however, suggests that since the 1980s and into the twenty-first century, the

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qualitative participation of young women in gangs and youth subcultures has changed (Maher 1997; Campbell 1981; Burman et al. 2001; Miller 2004; Mullins and Miller 2008). This body of international research based on empirical studies in Scotland, England, Australia and America illustrates that young women are now more likely to actively participate in the focal concerns of street-based youth subcultures vulnerable to criminalisation, youth gangs involved in selling and consuming drugs, grifting, thieving and petty crime, distinguishing them from their female adolescent counterparts of earlier decades, who mostly hung out in the privacy of the bedroom with their girlfriends (McRobbie and Gerber 1991). From the 1980s onwards, girls have increasingly been participating in the types of crime and violence that occurs in gangs and between gang members, and being criminalised for that participation. This goes some way to explaining the rises in girls’ crime and violence, particularly during the last two decades of the twentieth century. There is also no doubt that the growth in girls’ violence is to some extent an artefact of shifting modes of governance and policing – especially the shift from sexualising to criminalising girls’ delinquencies over the last three decades (Carrington and Pereira 2009; Gelsthorpe 1989; Gelsthorpe and Worrall 2009; Sharpe 2012). New forms of scrutiny, ways of recording and reporting crime data, and changes in attitudes to girls’ offending account for some of the increases of violence recorded for young women. How much is unknown. However, the impact of shifting modes of governance occurred primarily with the removal of status or welfare offences in the 1980s and 1990s (Carrington 2006), not over the last twenty years – the period during which rises in officially recorded girls’ violence have been most pronounced (see Figure 6.2). Over this period, two socio-cultural shifts have occurred that in theory could be impacting on rising rates of girls’ violence. The first relates to shifting social expectations and cultural constructions which celebrate the violent femme and normalise ‘ladette’ culture. The second relates to the impact of new forms of social online networking that normalise, reward and incite girls’ fights. Again, how much is unknown and no causal links are asserted here, however theoretically, the links between these shifts and the upward trends in female violence warrant scrutiny.

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Masculinised femininity: ladette culture and the celebration of the violent femme Heightened anxiety about the behaviour of young women has shifted over the last few decades from sexual promiscuity to the ‘violent, aggressive bad girl’ (Brown and Tappan 2008:48; Sharpe 2012:4; for examples see these newspaper stories: Fewster 2010; Castello 2010; Noone and McDougall 2010). Ladette behaviour is typically associated with working-class masculinity such as acting tough, excessive smoking, swearing, fighting, drinking, being disruptive at school, being rude to teachers and being open about sex (Jackson 2006). Ladette behaviour also tends to be represented in the popular media as ‘girls moving into the world of violence that once belonged to boys’ (Brown et al. 2007; Muncer et al. 2001; Jones 2008; Batchelor 2009). Girls’ apparent switch from feminine behaviour to a masculinised anti-social, confrontational style is often linked to new, aggressive cultural images of women portrayed in films and on television (Muncer et al. 2001:35), such as in movies like Mean Girls and the reality TV show From Ladette to Lady. The new violent femme is also glorified in action films like Lara Croft Tomb Raider, its sequel and a vast array of associated video games. Images of these new violent femmes are highly eroticised, being simultaneously seductive and sadistic. Sceptics argue that the new violent femme or ladette is not much more than a cultural and media construction (Brown and Tappan 2008; Brown et al. 2007; Muncer et al. 2001). It is not simply whether girls are really becoming more violent but also how girls’ violence and aggression is culturally represented, mediated and performed; and how these constructions might then shape contemporary adolescent feminine identity and practice (Brown and Tappan 2008:51). Brown and Tappan suggest that these shows redefine femininity, promoting a ‘mean girl’ image to adolescents to portray aggression as a desirable female character trait (Brown and Tappan 2008:49). They argue that girls’ appropriation of behaviour such as fighting, which has traditionally been reserved for boys, does not mean girls are becoming like boys. Rather, Brown and Tappan argue that girls’ appropriation of aggression and violent behaviour permits girls to re-create feminine identities that simultaneously challenge and reproduce

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their subordinate position in relation to boys (Brown and Tappan 2008:55–56). There have been a few attempts to understand how violence features in the consciousness of young women and how it is utilised in their everyday lives (Burman et al. 2001). A number of studies have challenged normative gender assumptions of girls’ aggression as relational, manipulative and covert, arguing that girls can also be physically aggressive and fight in violent ways (Artz 2004; Jones 2008; Boyer 2008; Ness 2004; Batchelor 2009). For example, Jones’ US study of violence among black inner-city girls and women illustrated how violence is part of the code of the street that offers strategies for survival that cross perceived gender lines. In contrast to young men’s violence, which tends to be linked to displays of masculinity, girls’ use of violence was not linked to any defining characteristics of being a woman but, rather, was a means to an end (Jones 2008:78). Yet girls’ violence has traditionally been ignored or trivialised as ‘just girls being bitchy’ while boys’ participation in indirect or relational aggression has remained largely unexamined (Spears et al. 2008; Tomada and Schneider 1997; Bjorkqvist et al. 1992). This gendered polarisation of girls’ relational aggression and boys’ physical violence overlooks the participation of girls in fights for survival, power, pleasure, respect and status (Jones 2008; Brown and Tappan 2008; Boyer 2008), as well as the way girls are increasingly using the internet to broadcast their physical fights with other girls – an issue to which I now turn.

Girls’ violence, cyberspace and online social networking Young people growing up in the twenty-first century are the first generation to intermingle online communication with face-to-face social exchange to create a new kind of social interaction. The implications of the intermingling of these parallel worlds are yet to be fully appreciated or understood. There is increasing evidence, however, that social online networking has created new possibilities as well as new risks for young women. Just as there has been a failure to grasp

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theoretically the profound impacts and harms of cyberspace on real worldly experiences of sexual victimisation (Powell and Henry 2013), equally there has been an oversight of the impact of online social networking on girls’ real worldly experiences of violence. This section attempts to wrestle with this issue. It does not attempt to draw a simplistic causal correlation between online social networking and rises in girls’ violence, but nor does it dismiss the prospect. According to a recent online survey of 1,037 thirteen- to seventeen-year-olds in America, nine out of ten use social networking; three out of four have a social network profile; one in five has a Twitter account (Common Sense Media 2012:9); and eight out of ten have a mobile phone (Common Sense Media 2012:20). While the majority reported that social networking was mostly a positive experience, girls especially responded that they felt anxious about photos of themselves being posted onto the internet and nearly one third said they wished they lived in a world without Facebook. Interestingly, neither this survey nor the Youth Internet Safety Survey, which has been conducted twice in the US, asked about girls’ use of the internet to promote or inflict harm to other girls. Like the studies of youth violence more generally, which assume that mainly boys engage in physical fighting, girls’ use of the internet to broadcast fights, fan conflict, promote, incite and reward girl-on-girl violence has been scoped out of these teen internet surveys. One of the by-products of the massive uptake of social networking is that this technology has enabled the extension of bullying into cyberspace, beyond the school ground, to penetrate the home and places of sanctuary (Patchin and Hinduja 2006:155; Youth Affairs Council of Victoria 2009; Rigby and Griffith 2009). A Canadian study found around 60 per cent of the victims of cyberbullying were girls and that female cyberbullying is often directed at other girls (Li 2007). An American study by Kowalski et al. (2008) found that girls were twice as likely as boys to be both the victims and the perpetrators of cyberbullying (Mason 2008:327). This may be attributed to the fact that girls’ uptake of online social networking is significantly higher than boys, and girls are more likely to post personal information online than boys (Chang et al. 2008).

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The posting of personal information can be misused to issue insults that inflame conflict between girls (Daly 2008; Mullins and Miller 2008; Jones 2008). One way to interpret this is to argue that girls’ online bullying is just another form of typically gendered relational aggression such as bitchiness, manipulation and exclusion (Bowie 2007; Brown et al. 2007; Williams and Guerra 2007; Simmons 2002). In the context of cyber violence, this may translate into sending threatening messages via text and email, online bullying via chat rooms and manipulating and excluding others (Li 2007; Smith et al. 2008; Crick and Grotpeter 1995). All too easily these studies of girls and cyberbullying tend to slip into a gender binary that largely assumes girls are bitchy and manipulative, and boys are physical and aggressive. The use of the internet to inflame and reward girls’ physical fighting in a parallel world is completely overshadowed by a focus on their participation in covert forms of cyberbullying such as threatening text messages, name calling and exclusion (Trach et al. 2010; Rivers and Noret 2009). Consequently, there is a scarcity of research on how social networking can fan conflict in the parallel real worlds of young women, and how girls might engage in internet, Facebook and YouTube sites to promote, incite and normalise girls’ violence. While many girls use the internet in positive ways and to form friendships or promote solidarity, thousands of girls around the world use the internet to broadcast their physical fights with other girls. The data in Table 6.1 show consistently higher Google search results for girls’ fights compared to boys’ fights. The same Google search repeated in 2009 and 2013 illustrates they are growing significantly if not exponentially. The descriptive results of this exercise, while not making any claims to scientificity – as no one has really worked out how to systematically study the social use of the internet yet – are nevertheless revealing. As some YouTube fights are staged fights rather than actual violent attacks involving victims, these figures cannot be interpreted as accurate representations of real-life incidents of girls’ violence. It is estimated that there are around six-hundred thousand distinctive YouTube clips of girls’ fights (Larkin 2013). Nevertheless, the fact that girls’ fights, whether staged or real, vastly exceed boys’ fights on all search terms suggests at the very least a higher spectator value for girls’ fights. While seriously under-researched, the one study that addresses the issue

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TABLE 6.1 Google search results: fight sites by sex

Search word

Girls in millions 2009

Girls fighting tips Girls fighting at school Girls fighting youtube.com Girls fight Video Girl fighting girl

Search word

2013

Boys in millions 2009

2013

41.6

48.8

Boys fighting tips

0

31.7

37.4

142.0

8.9

90.3

24.1

102.0

2.9

36.9

73.3 70.7

567.0 153.0

Boys fighting at school Boys fighting youtube.com Boys fight video Boy fighting over girl

31.5 38.3

267.0 785.0

Source: Google searches accessed 22 September 2009 and 20 March 2013

suggests that the bragging rights for circulating fights through mobile phones to friends and peers, or uploading to YouTube, is the chief motivation for this type of violence (Spears et al. 2008). Some of these internet sites directly incite violence by asking viewers to rate ‘chick fight’ videos, to pass onto friends and to post their own. This fuels girlon-girl violence by providing a normative online environment that encourages and rewards girls’ violence. Girls who participate in these fights and upload to YouTube are active instigators of violence in the context of everyday life (Burman et al. 2001; Batchelor 2009). Hence it would be difficult to deny some interrelationship between girls’ uptake of social online networking with rising rates of girls’ violence in their parallel real worlds, although how much is yet to be fully appreciated, studied or confirmed. There is no definitive answer to the extent to which the recorded rises in violence for girls are attributable to the socio-cultural rise of the violent femme, or the normalising influence of online social networking technologies that reward girls’ violence. While speculative, the new permissibility of cyberspace – another anomic space created by globalisation – is largely unregulated by parents, social control agencies and other authorities. In cyberspace everyday informal social controls of place-based communities are suspended. These

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spaces operate as a new normalising domain which, at the very least, cultivates girls’ aggression on- and offline and rewards girl-on-girl fights that take place in their parallel real worlds. This has coincided with consistent and sharp rises recorded for girls’ violence in precisely those affluent countries across the northern and southern hemispheres with high uptakes in social networking among girls and increasing popularisation of violent femmes in consumer culture. While not attributing the rises in girls’ violence to these two relatively recent socio-cultural phenomena, it would be premature to dismiss them as mere coincidence either. These are issues that require significant new research. That research needs to be framed by a feminist theory of female violence, to which I return at the end of this chapter. What follows are two more controversial examples of female violence that have attracted little attention by feminist scholars.

Female torturers In 2005 Private Lynndie England was convicted and sentenced to three years prison and dishonourably discharged from the US Army. She was one of three women – along with Sabrina Harman and Megan Ambuhl – charged with torturing, mistreating and assaulting prisoners detained in Abu Ghraib prison. Charles Graner, her lover and superior at the time, was also charged, convicted and sentenced to ten years jail for his involvement in the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Private First Class Lynndie England will long be remembered as the young, laddish-looking female soldier, sexually humiliating Iraqi inmates of Abu Ghraib prison. One of the dehumanising photographs depicts Private England in an embrace with Graner, staring at a perverse triangle of naked men piled on top of each other. In another photo, with a cigarette dangling from one side of her mouth, like a gangster, she looks on approvingly and points her finger at a prisoner’s penis as he is forced to masturbate. In another photo Private England engages in sexual humiliation by dragging a naked man around by the neck with a dog leash. He resists by pulling back on the leash but is clearly overpowered by her dominance. What is it about these images, the context in which they were taken as trophies and the social reaction to them that caused international uproar and embarrassment, and pointed the finger at feminism?

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Harp and Struckman’s 2010 discourse analysis of the forty-nine news media articles that initially framed the story illustrates how the media metanarratives singled out Private England as the embarrassment of a nation. The sub-politics of this narrative were that women did not belong in the US military and especially not in the front line. Women in the military transgress the dichotomous representations of white American women as housewives or mothers, or women otherwise employed in labour related to their domesticity and their gender. Harp and Struckman argue that ‘England’s gender became a more prominent aspect of the story than the actual abuse and torture because it was an image that could not be reconciled’ (Harp and Struckman 2010:12). This metanarrative was framed by the repeated circulation of the photos. Tucker and Triantafyllos argue that the individualising gaze of the media on Private England and these few rogue prison guards had the effect of allowing Americans to distance themselves from the racialisation, dehumanisation and violence of the war on terror (Tucker and Triantafyllos 2008:83). As Rogers puts it, Private England, the lover of the torturer, was constructed ‘as the hated symbol whose enigmatic quality and lack of feminine identification evokes the confusion in us all over precisely what it might mean to be a desirable subject in these times of anti-terror’ (Rogers 2011:77). Private England’s defence attorneys attributed her participation in the demeaning rituals of torture involving powerless prisoners to the influence of her then boyfriend and superior Graner, another prison guard (Kaufman-Osborn 2005:616). She was represented as an instrument entirely of his will, lacking any agency of her own. In one sense, Private England represents the stereotypical victim of a brutal and masculine military hierarchy; yet, somewhat ironically, feminism was singled out by conservative commentators as the root cause of the unsavoury affair. Phyllis Schlafly, conservative activist and author of Feminist Fantasies, assigned the blame to who she called ‘Clintonista feminazis’ for feminising the American military. In an extraordinary attack on feminism, Schlafly wrote: The pictures are stark illustrations of the gender experimentation that has been going on in the U.S. military . . . That goal means masculinizing women and feminizing men . . . The pictures show that some women have become mighty mean,

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but feminists can’t erase eternal differences . . . The result is a breakdown of military discipline and a dramatic coarsening of women and of men’s treatment of women . . . I suspect that the picture of the woman soldier with a noose around the Iraqi man’s neck will soon show up on the bulletin boards of women’s studies centers and feminist college professors. That picture is the radical feminists’ ultimate fantasy of how they dream of treating men. Less radical feminists will quietly cheer the picture as showing career-opportunity proof that women can be just as tough as men. (Schlafly 2004) But Phyllis Schlafly’s anti-feminist rhetoric is far from convincing. This is a far-right caricature of feminist voices, a strategy of denial, decoy and deflection. However, few if any feminist voices came to the defence of Private England, leaving a discursive space for antifeminist ideology to reign and for feminism to take the rap. There was more than gender politics involved, however. The recent release of the documents now widely referred to as the Torture Memos investigation (Constitution Project’s Task Force on Detainee Treatment 2013) support Private England’s defence that she was following the orders of superiors. The entry of women into the military served as a convenient decoy in the face of international embarrassment for the Bush administration. Feminism was wrongly blamed and England’s responsibility for the atrocities of torture was exaggerated out of all proportion, leaving obscured the role of the CIA and other trained counter-intelligence interrogators in the commission of systematic torture of terror suspects. A non-partisan investigation by the Constitution Project recently concluded ‘that it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture’ (Constitution Project’s Task Force on Detainee Treatment 2013:9). The prison guards at Abu Ghraib were working in a geo-political context where the softening up of high-value terror suspects using sexual humiliation before interrogation was an accepted normative practice in the war on terror. Other female soldiers were involved in the torture of terror suspects but Private England was singled out. Why? Was it the images captured

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of a laddish-looking young woman from a disadvantaged rural background celebrating acts of sexual humiliation, violence and torture that rendered her susceptible to so much censure? Like the girls who capture their fights and load them onto YouTube in a performative act of celebration, the images of Private England as a violent femme coincide with the cultural constructions that attribute female violence largely to the legacy of feminism. While this does not erase England’s agency or that of the other prison guards involved in the torture of terror suspects, it does dislodge any reasonable interpretation that she was simply an instrument of her then lover’s will to inflict torture, a convenient narrative that took root in popular culture. A feminist theory of female violence would acknowledge the multiple axes of power, as well as the gender politics, in which these events unfolded. But a feminist theory would also acknowledge that Private England – a boyish girl – was the enigmatic agent of state torture (Rogers 2011:87), although not completely without will. Private England certainly appeared to be a willing participant. A feminist analysis of the subsequent witch hunt and lynching of Private Lynndie England would acknowledge her agency and participation in these acts of violence, but argue that the normalisation of the atrocities of war was the real politic behind elevating her responsibility for torturing the prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Her gender was used as a weapon of war in the sexual humiliation of Arab male prisoners. This is reprehensible but feminism can hardly be held accountable. Referring explicitly to the involvement of female soldiers in the Abu Ghraib torture of prisoners, Claire Renzetti commented, ‘In studying state crime, therefore, feminist criminologists must study women as perpetrators as well as victims’ (Renzetti 1999:95). It is to perpetrators of terrorism that I now turn.

Women as terrorists Women are swelling the ranks of organisations classified as terrorist. While accurate numbers remain elusive since 9/11, women comprise around 30 to 60 per cent of suicide bombers (Bloom, 2011:244). In Iraq between 2003 and 2009, there were 174 female suicide bombers (Bloom, 2011:216). The increasing use of female suicide bombers in

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Iraq, Pakistan, Lebanon, Israel and Afghanistan is now regarded by the US Army Intelligence as representing a significant shift in terrorist tactics over the last five years (US Army 2011). Female suicide bombers are more effective and have advantages in hiding weapons and avoiding suspicion (Bloom 2011:21). Women are less often searched and stopped or suspected as being potential terrorists, hence their growing popularity among extremist religious and secular terrorist groups. According to Sjoberg and Gentry (2011) ‘women have increasingly taken active roles in carrying out suicide bombings, hijacking airplanes, and taking hostages in such places as Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Lebanon, and Chechnya’. In Iraq in 2009 Samira Ahmed Jassim, whose husband was killed in a terrorist operation, and whose son was a convicted terrorist, was arrested for recruiting around eighty female suicide bombers, twenty-eight of whom died carrying suicide bombings (Chulov 2009). According to one news story, she confessed on video that she first arranged for the women to be raped, and then offered martyrdom for their dishonour by becoming suicide bombers (Mail Foreign Service 2009). Others accused of dishonour (such as not being able to bear children, or being abandoned by their husband) would be likewise offered redemption as suicide bombers. One young woman accused of dishonour said that Jassem (nicknamed the mother of believers) told her she would ‘redeem her family and herself if she blew herself up among the infidels’ (Chulov 2009). In August 2008 a young female suicide bomber was arrested in Iraq wearing a suicide vest packed with explosives. Apparently she had been drugged and claimed the suicide vest had been attached to her against her will (US Army 2011). The motivations of female suicide bombers are complex and not all of these women are by any means victims. Nor do they come from a single religion, ethnic origin or country. Not all are Islamist. The use of female suicide bombers in secular organisations also appears to be increasing. US Army intelligence has estimated that from 2008 female suicide bombers comprised 76 per cent of Kurdistan Workers Party, 66 per cent in the Chechen independence movement, 45 per cent of the Syrian Socialist National Party and 25 per cent of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka (US Army 2011).

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There has been little research about women’s involvement in terrorism, possibly for all the same reasons as there has been little research about female violence. It is outside constructions of passive femininity which assume problematically that most violence, including terrorist violence, is committed by men. In one of very few studies of female terrorists, Bloom (2011) begins her book with an overview of female involvement in anarchist struggles at the turn of twentieth century through to the socialist red brigades of the 1960s and ’70s. To this historical research, she complemented interviews with women who had been involved in terrorist activities with the Irish Republican Army (IRA); the Sri Lanka Tamil Tigers; Al-Qaeda and Hamas; and Jematt Islamiyya in Indonesia (Bloom 2011). On the basis of her case studies she argues that women’s involvement in terrorist struggles is multilayered and complex. Some women involved in terrorism and suicide attacks, like the Black Widows from Chechnya, are obviously motivated for personal reasons to avenge the killing of their husbands, but this is not their only motive. This fear was behind the Russian search for four suspected female bombers in the led-up to the 2014 Sochi Olympics. Among the suspects was a twenty-three-year-old woman called Ruzanna Ibragimova or ‘Salima’, whose husband was killed in the Chechnya struggle for independence. Half of the suicide bombers in Russia are now thought to be female (Discovery News 2014). Other female terrorists are clearly motivated for the same reasons as male terrorists, such as a commitment to a political struggle as with the IRA or the Tamil Tigers. Others are driven by commitment to jihad and terrorist extremism. The growing involvement of women in a diverse range of terrorist activities and groups is explored below.

Women of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam The Sri Lankan government’s defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Eelam (LTTE) in 2009 marked a major turning point in a thirty-year territorial war which left between eighty thousand and one-hundred thousand people dead (Bandarage 2010). During the war there were numerous cases involving the torture, rape and murder of Tamil girls and women, and evidence of the government’s involvement in these atrocities. A well-known case is that of beauty queen Premawathie

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Manamperi, who was tortured, raped and murdered by state forces in 1971 after she was suspected of being an insurgent for the Sri Lankan People’s Liberation Front. Women’s activist groups have worked to bring charges against the perpetrators in this and other cases, including the detention, gang rape and killing of Tamil schoolgirl Kirshanthi Koomaraswamy in 1996 (Bandarage 2010). According to De Alwis and Hyndman (2002) the LTTE tied UN humanitarian assistance and food rations to military training and forced parents to allow recruitment of their girls for fighting the cause, rather than sending them to school. Others, however, claim that the LTTE’s recruitment of girls and women was primarily a pragmatic response to the need for more fighters (Alison 2003). According to Alison (2003:39) many women chose to join the LTTE because they desired freedom, self-determination, land rights for Tamils in Sri Lanka. Women were encouraged by the Tamil leader to take arms as ‘women warriors’ (Wang 2011). Numerous girls and women subsequently died in the final battle between the Sri Lankan government armed forces and the LTTE (Bandarage 2010). Rebel militant groups such as Hezbollah and the LTTE have been recruiting women suicide bombers since the 1980s. The LTTE is said to have invented the suicide bomb belt, and between 1987 and 2009 around 30 to 40 per cent of all suicide missions were carried out by women (Wang 2011). The most publicised case is that of Thenmuli Rajaratnam (Dhanu), the woman who killed the Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi during his attendance at an election campaign event (Pape and Feldman 2010; Bandarage 2010). According to Pape (2005), on 21 May 1991 Dhanu, a woman in her late twenties, hid a girdle of grenades beneath her gown, presented a garland to Rajiv Gandhi and exploded instantly, killing them both. Dhanu belonged to the female suicide bomber unit of the LTTE, ‘Black Tigresses’. After her death she became a heroine to the women of Sri Lanka’s Hindu Tamil minority. Pregnant women and women posing as pregnant have proved to be especially useful as suicide bombers because they are usually overlooked by security (Bandarage 2010; Bloom 2011). It is standard practice for monetary rewards to be given to the families of female LTTE suicide bombers, and female suicide has been linked

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to martyrdom, sacrifice and immortality (Bandarage 2010). Tiger women were said to strongly identify with the militant organisation with its sacrifice of self and others as its objective. Female soldiers were known for their brutal treatment of Sinhalese males and also non-LTTE Tamil women (Bandarage 2010). Other than nationalist fervour, it has been suggested that women were motivated to join the LTTE by a communal perception of suffering, oppression and injustice. This is usually due to anger over the deaths of family at the hands of the military or police, displacement from homelands or anger at being raped by the Sri Lankan army (Alison 2003; Rajan 2011). According to Pape (2005) Dhanu’s motivation as a suicide bomber probably came directly from a desire for revenge, for being gang raped and for her four brothers being killed by the army. Revenge was also the main motivation for LTTE soldier Arulmathy, who was nineteen when she joined the LTTE in 2003. She joined up voluntarily, motivated by anger about violence and killings of Tamil people by the Sinhalese army. Three years later, surrounded by the Sinhalese army, seventy-five women in her female unit committed suicide with their grenades. Only Arulmathy and one other woman escaped, however; defeated, she finally surrendered in 2009 (Chamberlain 2009).

Palestinian women terrorists One of the first (and probably the best-known) female terrorists was Palestinian liberation fighter Leila Khaled of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Leila Khaled hijacked her first plane in 1969, then over several years underwent six cosmetic surgeries so she could continue to carry out hijackings. These surgeries were performed purely as a commitment to the cause, allegedly without general anaesthetic. No one was ever killed during Leila Khaled’s hijacking activities (Guardian 2001; Jajeh 2013). The first known female Palestinian suicide bomber was twentyseven-year-old Wafa Idris, who strapped ten kilos of explosives to her body, killing herself and two Israelis in a Jerusalem street in 2002. This incident was followed by nine other Palestinian female suicide bombings and several dozen other failed attempts. According to Kimhi and Even (2004) and Bloom (2011) motivations for suicide

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bombing are complex and involve psychological, social, religious and political factors. Many Palestinian suicide bombers belong to secular organisations, are not radical Islamists, but have a desire for revenge and national liberation. Many are also frustrated at the peace process, angry at the Israeli occupation and are not afraid to die in the struggle for a Palestinian state. Teoria Hamori, a twenty-six-year-old women who hoped to become a ‘shahida’ (female martyr) by blowing herself up and killing dozens of Israelis, is an example of a frustrated suicide bomber who was captured and sentenced to six years in prison (Kimhi and Even 2004). Unfortunately I did not succeed in committing the attack. I am sorry that I did not die. I failed, and, for me, this is a significant failure . . . Since I was a baby, all I have seen is war, dead people, hatred, and blood . . . and Palestinian children who are being killed . . . I told myself . . . I will give my body for the Palestinian cause. (cited in Kimhi and Even 2004)

Representations of women terrorists and bombers: victims or monsters? There is debate about whether women who become involved in terrorist organisations and activities are willing or manipulated into becoming suicide bombers. According to Rajan (2011) accounts of women bombers that represent them simply as victims rather than agents objectifies them. For example, some accounts of LTTE women have claimed that they were coerced into suicide attacks after being kidnapped and drugged by male rebels. Rajan (2011:166) argues that this narrative resonates with colonial projections of third-world women as victims of oppressed cultures and communities. Others have argued that women’s participation in the LTTE liberated them from traditional structures of womanhood and, more broadly, allowed them to transgress feminine gender roles (Jordan and Denov 2007). However, UN Under-Secretary-General and Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict Radhika Coomaraswamy (2003) disagrees. She argues that terrorist activity is not liberating for

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women, but rather is a victory for patriarchal authority, violence and aggression. Bloom (2011) also makes the point that women sometimes engage in terrorist activities against their will. This is true even in cases that appear as straightforward, as the case of Samira Ahmed Jassim, arrested in Iraq for recruiting eighty female suicide bombers for Al-Qaeda. She had lost her husband and had a son in jail convicted of terrorism, hence her motivations for becoming involved in recruiting female suicide bombers might be a mix of personal, political and religious. Women bombers and terrorists are often regarded as more terrifying than men, perhaps because of their smiling visual images carrying weapons, their violent statements and the carnage they cause (Rajan 2011:62–64). Male bombers are almost always framed in terms of political motivations, but women terrorists and rebels are frequently characterised as deviant, mad and aberrant, and their actions frequently depoliticised. For example, Leila Khaled constantly had her motivations depoliticised through regular sexualised media reports. Despite her commitment to a higher Palestinian cause, her stated willingness to die and her refusal to put any private interests ahead of her cause, her attractiveness and sexuality were regularly emphasised in the media accounts (Guardian 2001; Jajeh 2013). This depoliticisation reduces women’s terrorist actions such as suicide bombing to a deviant condition, and erases their active willingness to engage in warfare as political actors fighting for a cause (Rajan 2011; Naaman 2007). Despite evidence that some, if not the majority of, Tamil and Palestinian women are willing to die for a political cause, Rajan (2011:62) argues that the image of the militant third-world woman challenges Western stereotypes of non-Western women as passive and submissive. It is not surprising, therefore, that the media frequently represents women bombers as mentally incompetent, even as numerous women present unflinching resolve and logic in executing suicide attacks and assassination missions. US Army intelligence has estimated that in 2011 female suicide bombers were responsible for 65 per cent of assassinations (US Army 2011). Similarly, Naaman (2007) argues that media representations of women terrorists and bombers frequently rely on traditional feminine qualities to analyse possible explanations for their violent actions.

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Personal explanations dominate these gendered accounts, for example speculation that the woman was unhappy due to a broken marriage or an inability to bear children. The case studies of women bombers examined by Bloom (2011) illustrate that the motivations of female terrorists are diverse, multilayered and complex. At one extreme, some female suicide bombers are clearly active agents engaged in political, terrorist and religious struggles; at the other extreme, female suicide bombers can be victims being punished for honour crimes. Women’s deviance or inability to satisfy gender norms within Islamist societies, such as divorce, dishonour or childlessness, does make them especially vulnerable to being recruited into terrorist activity. Being dishonoured assigns these women to a hopeless future. Nevertheless, many, it seems, still exercise some choice as to whether or not to blow themselves up.

The case for a feminist theory of female violence Feminism was, and still is, wrongly held responsible for the recorded rises in female crime and violence in popular culture. In this context, reports of rising rates of female crime and violence have tended to be met with widespread scepticism from feminist scholars (Alder and Worrall 2004; Chesney-Lind and Irwin 2008), understandably defensive given myths that simplistically blame equal opportunity, girl power or the rise of women’s liberation or feminism as the primary cause. The origins of this myth-making began in the 1970s with the controversial ‘sisters in crime’ thesis that argued that, as women became more equal to men, so would the frequency and character of women’s crime, violence and aggression (Adler 1975; Simon 1975). During the 1980s the argument was refined to suggest that young women were increasingly displaying overt aggression, partly because women’s liberation had allowed them greater economic and sexual freedom and dismantled some of the limitations and informal social controls on traditional sex roles (Campbell 1981). We have seen above how more recently the ladette thesis implicitly, if not explicitly, constructs feminism as responsible for the masculinisation of femininity and rises in girls behaving badly. The major flaw in the argument that feminism leads to increased female crime and violence is that studies

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of female offending persistently reveal that few embrace women’s liberation (Campbell 1981; Chesney-Lind and Sheldon 2004). As Carol Smart once famously remarked, ‘It is unlikely that advocates of the women’s movement are to be found among delinquent girls and criminal women’ (Smart 1976:74). Females who behave violently may be familiar with ‘F’ words but feminism is not generally one of them. Female violence challenges deeply ingrained assumptions held by feminists, lawyers, criminologists, media commentators, parents and policy makers. Criminological theory has a long history of essentialising violence as a capacity associated primarily with boys, overlooking the capacity for the female sex to participate in and inflict violence. So it is hardly surprising that feminist criminologists too have overlooked female violent offenders – assuming women are mostly victims and not perpetrators of violence (Morrissey 2002:125–126). Female violence also challenges long-held feminist understandings of femininity as the non-violent sex, compared to the overwhelming masculinity of violence. Hence, feminist scholars have been reluctant to ‘own the problem of women’s use of violence’ (Renzetti 1999:51), preferring to reposition female violence in a context of less serious, social and relational aggression that occurs mostly in the context of girls negotiating peer networks as previously mentioned (Chesney-Lind and Irwin 2008; Alder and Worrall 2004; Chesney-Lind and Pasco 2012), or as women using violence in self defence against violent partners. There are some exceptions such as Morrissey’s analysis of the violent crimes of Catherine Bernie and Valmae Beck (2002)5 and Hester’s analysis of female perpetrators of domestic violence against male partners (2012). However, there is something troubling about rationalising most instances of female violence as the product of social control, vulnerability or victimisation of some kind.6 Increases recorded for girls’ violence in countries like Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States have been hotly contested. One view is these rising rates of violence are an artefact of new forms of policy, policing, criminalisation and social control over young women. Another view is that young women may indeed have become more violent as they have increasingly participated in youth subcultural activities involving gangs and drugs, and cyber-cultural

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activities that incite and reward girls’ violence. Any comprehensive explanation will need to address how a complex interplay of cultural, social, behavioural and policy responses contribute to these rises. This chapter has argued that there is no singular cause, explanation or theory that accounts for the rises in female violence, and that many of the simple explanations circulating in popular culture are driven by an anti-feminist ideology. By concentrating on females as victims of violence and very rarely as perpetrators, feminist criminology has left a discursive space for anti-feminist sentiment to reign. There is a limit to the denial of women’s capacity to inflict violence and participate in conduct which many feminists would rather assign to men. According to Allen (1998), depictions of the violent woman as the victim rather than the perpetrator, or some blurring of both, stem from a refusal to allow the female sex to appear morally or personally culpable. Legal, academic and public discourses may attempt to reconcile this tension by constructing the violent woman as ‘mad’, ‘bad’, ‘evil’ or ‘victimised’ (Peter 2006; Allen 1998; Morrissey 2002). Feminism has a tendency, therefore, to reinforce the victim construct by repositioning the violent woman’s actions within a context of diminished responsibility (Allen 1998). The denial of the existence of ‘real’ female violent offenders is the product of outdated gender essentialism and feminist idealism about the passivity of femininity (Allen 1998). Consequently, female offenders who are wilful participants in acts of violence tend to be absent from feminist analysis; instead, they are described as media beat-ups, social constructs, girls acting like boys, or victims of net-widening policies that ‘upcrim’ girls’ aggressive behaviour. While the contexts in which violence occurs may have gendered dimensions, abandoning essentialist theories that construct violence according to a gendered binary means that, when women commit violence, they cannot be said to be acting just like men. In other words, in non-essentialist frameworks, there is nothing inherently feminine or masculine about violence. Theories that blame feminism, like the ladette thesis, which draws on a theory about masculinisation of femininity, or the sisters in crime thesis, which assumes women are behaving more like men, are thus de-robed of their explanatory power.

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One of the key achievements of feminist criminology has been to direct critical attention to the fact that men’s violence far outweighs that for which women and girls are responsible. What is still largely missing from feminist criminology, however, is a sophisticated theory of female violence that considers the context, the politics, the power relations, the gender dynamics and the intersectionality of specific instances of female violence. The main shortcoming of not having a sophisticated feminist theory of female violence is that it leaves uncontested anti-feminist explanations that circulate widely in popular culture when instances involving female violence become public issues – as the case of Lynndie England illustrates – or when rises in female violent crime rates become registered in public consciousness and popularised as ‘girls behaving like boys’ – or when women become suicide bombers and terrorists. Fuelled by anti-feminist backlash politics, feminism was, and still is in many instances, wrongly scapegoated for occurrences and increases in female violence and for women’s participation in violent atrocities. A central challenge for future feminist research, then, is how to more convincingly explain the historical shifts in gendered patterns of violence, rather than simply deny, rationalise or erase them. Claire Renzetti, internationally leading scholar and editor of Violence Against Women, sketched the outline of a feminist theory of violence (Renzetti 2013:95). According to this outline, feminist theories of violence need to be contextualised rather than abstract and essentialist. They need to address the specificity of contexts in which women use violence, how it varies and what it means. This will require a whole new series of qualitative research projects taking women’s experiences of violence as offenders as a starting point. The analyses have to be intersectional and not privilege gender alone. Renzetti also argues that a feminist theory of female violence needs to be generated through collaborative research between academics, practitioners and violent women, so as to capture these varying perspectives and voices. Lastly, Renzetti argues that feminists must finally own the problem of women’s violence (Renzetti 1999:51). For feminism to be relevant in the public, cultural, political and criminological debates about heightened, albeit often exaggerated, social concerns relating to growing female violence, an effective and influential strategy must overcome the silence.

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Notes Parts of this chapter were previously published under Creative Commons copyright that gives authors the right to retain copyright and reproduce. I acknowledge that parts have been published in International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 2(2):2013. 1. ‘In 2010–11, young men were around twice as likely as young women to be proceeded against by police, more than three times as likely to be proven guilty in the Children’s Court, four times as likely to experience community-based supervision and five times as likely to be in detention’ (AIHW 2012). 2. In the 1990s, scholars argued that young women were increasingly engaged in drug-related violence as a result of their increased involvement in the illicit drug economy (Maher 1997). 3. According to the ABS data, overall, 70 per cent of boys and 56 per cent of girls participate in sport, but there are significant gender differences in the patterns of participation. Between 2003 and 2009, girls participation rate in martial arts had grown slightly from 3.6 per cent to 3.7 per cent compared to 6.2 per cent to 7.5 per cent for boys; and, for Australian Rules football, from 0.7 per cent to 0.9 per cent for girls compared to 13.6 per cent to 16 per cent for boys (ABS Sports and Physical Recreation: Statistical Overview, Australia 2011 41560.0). Interestingly between 2003 and 2009, the participation of girls in skateboarding and rollerblading increased from 16.9 per cent to 42.4 per cent compared to 28.5 per cent to 58.9 per cent for boys (ABS 2011 Cat 41560.0). There were some differences in counting rules that account for some of the change. 4. Some researchers have argued that, as girls moved their subcultures from the privacy of their bedroom to the public world of the street, they too would come to the attention of police in the same way as boys for their increased participation in delinquent youth subcultures (McRobbie and Garber 1991). More recent research on girls’ participation in gangs and youth subcultures confirms that girls in these gangs do indeed participate actively in violence between members mostly (Mullins and Miller 2008). 5. Morrissey argues that the violent women of interest to feminist sociolegal theorists tend to fall into one of two categories: either victims (such as women who kill partners but are victims of battered wife syndrome); or women who act out violent feminist revenge fantasies against men, such as ‘lesbian vampire killer’ Tracey Wigginton (Morrissey 2002). Hence violent women who are sadists, rapists and murderers or otherwise wilful participants in violence, especially against other younger women, tend to be absent from feminist discourse and analysis, such as in the cases of Catherine Birnie and Valmae Beck, two Australian women convicted of rape and murder of young women who they had abducted with their male partners. Morrissey argues that these cases test the limit of feminist theory (Morrissey 2002). 6. In a similar vein, Peter’s (2006) study of women who sexually abuse their daughters argues that maternal sexual abuse has been located outside

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understandings of femininity and motherhood (Peter 2006). This leads to simplistic portrayals of the crime which distort the seriousness and contexts of the female sexual abuse, leaving victims invisible and lacking in credibility, recognition and support from public and professional agencies (Peter 2006:284). While some violent women (and men for that matter) may have experienced violent victimisation and social or economic disadvantages, women can simultaneously be victims and victimisers (Allen 1998; Peter 2006).

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Powell, A. and Henry, N. (2013) ‘Embodied harms: gender, shame and technology facilitated violence in cyberspace’, Paper presented at the Crime, Justice and Social Democracy 2nd International Conference, 8–11 July. Brisbane: QUT Centre for Crime and Justice. Poynting, S., Noble, G., Tabar, P. and Collins, J. (2004) Bin Laden in the Suburbs, Federation Press: Sydney. Reitsma-Street, M. (2000) ‘Juvenile delinquency Canada’, in N. Hahn Rafter (ed.) Encyclopaedia of Women and Crime, Oryx Press: Phoenix, 132–134. Rajan, V. G. (2011) Women suicide bombers: narratives of violence, Taylor and Francis [E-Book]. Renzetti, C. (1999) ‘The challenge to feminism of women’s use of violence in interpersonal relationships’, in S. Lamb (ed.) New versions of victims, New York University Press: New York, 42–56. Renzetti, C. (2013) Feminist criminology. London: Routledge. Rigby, K. and Griffith, C. (2009) Applying the method of shared concern in Australian schools: an evaluative study, Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations: Canberra. www.deewr.gov.au/Schooling/National SafeSchools/Documents/covertBullyReports/MethodOFSharedConcern Rivers, I. and Noret, N. (2009) ‘“I h8 u”: findings from a five-year study of text and email bullying’, British Educational Research Journal, 36(4):643–671. Rogers, J. (2011) ‘The pure subject of torture: or, Lynddie England does not exist’, Australian Feminist Law Journal, 35:74–87. Schlafly, P. (2004) ‘Feminist dream of military equality becomes nightmare in Iraq’, Town Hall Blog. http://townhall.com/columnists/phyllisschlafly/ 2004/05/17/feminist_dream_of_military_equality_becomes_nightmare_ in_iraq/page/full/ Sharpe, G. (2012) Offending girls: young women and youth justice, Routledge: London. Simmons, R. (2002) Odd girl out: the hidden culture of aggression in girls, Schwartz Publishing: Melbourne. Simon, R. (1975) Women and crime, DC Heath: Lexington. Sjoberg, L. and Gentry, C. (2011) Women, gender and terrorism, Studies in Security and International Affairs, University of Georgia Press: London. Smart, C. (1976) Women, crime and criminology: a feminist critique, Routledge and Kegan Paul: London. Smith, P., Mahvavi, J., Carvalho, M., Fisher, S., Russell, S. and Tippet, N. (2008) ‘Cyberbullying: its nature and impact in secondary school pupils’, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 49(4):376–385. Spears, B., Slee, P., Owens, L. and Johnson, B. (2008) Behind the scenes: insights into the human dimension of covert bullying, Hawke Research Institute for Sustainable Societies Centre for the Analysis of Educational Futures in

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Partnership with the Coalition to Decrease Bullying, Harassment and Violence in South Australian Schools. Adelaide, Australia. Steffensmeier, D., Schwartz, J., Zhong, H. and Ackerman, J. (2005) ‘An assessment of recent trends in girls’ violence using diverse longitudinal sources: Is the gender gap closing?’, Criminology 43(2):355–405. Stratton, J. (1992) The young ones: working class culture, consumption and the category of youth, Black Swan Press: Perth. Tomada, G. and Schneider, B. (1997) ‘Relational aggression, gender, and peer acceptance: invariance across culture, stability over time, and concordance among informants’, Developmental Psychology, 33(4):601–609. Trach, J., Hymel, S. Waterhouse, T. and Neale, K. (2010) ‘Bystander responses to school bullying: a cross-sectional investigation of grade and sex differences’, Canadian Journal of School Psychology, 25(1):114–130. Tucker, B. and Triantafyllos, S. (2008) ‘Lynndie England, Abu Ghraib, and the new imperialism’, Canadian Review of American Studies, 38(1):83–99. United States Army (2011) ‘Female suicide bombers report’, US Army TRADOC Intelligence Support Activity, 27 January 2011. http://public intelligence.net/ufouo-u-s-army-female-suicide-bombers-report US Department of Justice (2010) FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Statistics. Washington, DC: Federal Bureau of Investigation. Wang, P. (2011) ‘Women in the LTTE: birds of freedom or cogs in the wheel?’, Journal of Politics and law, 4(1):100–108. White, R. (1991) No space of their own, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. Williams, K. and Guerra, N. (2007) ‘Prevalence and predictors of internet bullying’, Journal of Adolescent Health 41(6):14–21. Youth Affairs Council of Victoria (2009) Sticks and stones and mobile phones: bullying in the new millennium, Outcomes of a forum on bullying and young people in Victoria. Youth Affairs Council of Victoria: Melbourne.

7 NEW DIRECTIONS IN TRANSNATIONAL FEMINIST CRIMINOLOGY

Blaming feminism ‘Feminists should start leaving the world alone’ replied one blogger to a discussion about the French government’s decision to ban the burqa (Kambara 2009). Not so. The world needs feminism more than ever to address systemic culturally shaped and diverse forms of injustice experienced by females across the globe, many of them children, as the cases examined in this book illustrate. Yet there has been a concerted backlash against feminism and an outright rejection of feminist criminological research that men’s violence against women is still a major problem across the globe. It is as if feminism is the world’s punching bag by extremists and apologists everywhere (on the left and right of politics, the global south and the global north, and across the religious spectrum from Catholics to Islamists). Traditional fundamentalist Muslim muftis hate feminism and regard it as wielding evil ‘Western’ influences over a generation of Muslim women demanding equality, education, the right to vote and drive and equal rights under Shari’ah law. Islamic extremists have shot Muslim women for demanding gender equality, punished women for not wearing the veil and killed their human rights supporters as well (male and female). Muslim girls like Nujood, from Yemen, forced to

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marry at ten and repeatedly raped thereafter (Ali and Minoui 2010), and Malala, from Pakistan, shot aged fifteen by the Taliban for promoting girls’ equal right to education (Yousafzai 2013), did not use the voice of feminism to protest about their grotesque violations. Nor have they sought to be rescued by Western feminists, who have by and large not even heard their voices. Those who came to Nujood’s rescue were male and female human rights activists and judges from Yemen, who would identify with Islamic beliefs, but not the kind of Islam that justifies forced marriage of female child brides in the name of Islam. Feminism has even been blamed for turning Malala into a ‘global’ martyr, who the Taliban still want to shoot for her sins against Islam (Gul 2013). Contrary to the caricature that feminism has spoilt women of Hindi, Muslim or Christian faith, this is just not true. It too is a backlash discourse, a convenient justification for conflating every quest for gender and global justice as the ruination of the female sex wrought by feminism. Catholic, Hindu or Islamic religiosity and cultural customs are used as ideological tools to mask and defend patriarchy and the domination of women while justifying systemic and even atrocious violations of girls’ and women’s rights. Muslim women activists from Pakistan and the Middle East argue that the mistreatment of women is against Shari’ah law and the teachings of Islam. Catholic women activists from Latin America similarly argue that the defence of gender inequality based on Christian scriptures is also a misinterpretation of the Bible. Hindu feminist activists of India likewise protest against the customs of caste and the systemic violence perpetrated against female ‘untouchables’. These are not the voices of western feminists acting as ventriloquists for the US or Israel. These are the authentic voices of women experiencing and protesting against the ‘ugly’ terror of their own lives! The backlash does not stop here. Within the domestic space of countries such as the UK, the US, Canada and Australia the hysteria about the growth in female crime continues to wrongly blame feminism for spoiling girls. Right-wing ideologues from America have blamed feminism for the demise of military standards and the sadistic sexualised torture of Arab prisoners held in Abu Ghraib prison. Phyllis Schafley, conservative activist and author of Feminist Fantasies,

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blamed ‘Clintonista feminazis’ for feminising male and masculinising female soldiers who then took to torturing American detainees (Schlafly 2004). According to this public discourse, it was feminism that drove the young boyish-looking Private Lynddie England to torture suspects and constructed her as a dysfunctional, cruel, sadistic woman, while paradoxically a victim of her male then partner. Yet the role of American intelligence was mostly completely omitted from accounts of Private England’s actions and those of her colleagues. She was a convenient scapegoat who took the fall for an American intelligence operation that routinely used sexual humiliation and torture on Arab terrorist suspects (Constitution Project’s Task Force on Detainee Treatment 2013). Increases in girls’ violence and the ladette conduct are also falsely represented as growing social problems attributed to the legacy of feminism. In the UK press, Germaine Greer has the dubious honour of being described as ‘the first ladette’ and then unfairly berated for the ‘destruction of feminine modesty and decency’ and condemned for producing ‘an entire generation of loose-knickered lady louts’ (Letts 2009). I have argued in this book that there is no simple or singular explanation for the recorded rises in female violence. The problem is that many simple explanations abound in popular culture that are anti-feminist and ideologically driven yet feminism has been too silent about the female violent offender, instead preferring to research female victims of violence as their main cause celebre.

What feminism can learn from women’s struggles in the global south and Middle East One of the main limitations of feminist criminology has been its narrow focus on domestic issues, and its succumbing to the boundaries of the criminology, the nation state and the domestic legal and criminal justice frameworks. There is much that feminist scholars in criminology can learn from the struggles for justice from the women of the global south. Chapters 3 and 4 of this book contrasted the struggles for gender and justice in Latin America and the Islamist states of the Middle East and Asia, and Hindu states in South Asia, India especially. The conclusion to be drawn is not that religiosity

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(Christian, Hindu or Muslim) is solely to be blamed for the systemic inequalities against women in those countries. Religious beliefs are however invoked to justify the unjustifiable gendered inequities and atrocities. Chief among these atrocities include: genital mutilation; female infanticide (systemic killing of female babies); honour crimes and killings; sati (the cremation of living widows); dowry deaths and domestic violence; female child marriage, forced labour, migration or trafficking of women into domestic or sexual service; and the torture and assassination of women who protest against cultural, political and religious gendered inequities. In response to the anticipated objection that feminist critiques of Islamist states construct Muslim men as a monolithic monstrous, barbaric, dangerous and homogenous group of men, I reiterate the following points. Muslim feminists also object to this atrocious treatment of women and the misuse of Islamic beliefs to justify the ‘ugly’ and ‘unacceptable’ subjugation of women (Ahmed 1982). Those who engage in and normalise the systemic violation of women’s rights are barbaric, regardless of their religious or spiritual affiliations. The Pakistan Council of Islamist Ideology (CII) have described as unIslamic proposals to be put before the Pakistan Parliament by a group of the Women’s Parliamentary caucus to increase the age of marriage to eighteen, to define domestic violence as a crime and to protect women’s reproductive and family rights (International News 2014). The CII object because these changes would prevent Muslim men from marrying off daughters at any age they like (Ali 2014). The Islamic marriage contract of Nikah allows for marriage of girls at any age, and according to the Islamic custom of Ruksati marriage can take place at puberty. The CII is seeking to remove restrictions of the age of marriage as they argue it is ‘un-Islamic’. This is paedophilia justified in the name of Islam. The CII also defend polygamy, a Muslim man’s right to have four wives and to beat them. This is domestic violence justified in the name of Islam. Yet Muslim women can only have one husband and are punished, sometimes by death, for alleged sexual sins or adultery. They can only enjoy limited rights to divorce, to leave abusive husbands or to own property, vote, drive, work or even appear in public without a male relative. It would be gravely mistaken to assume all Muslim men participate in or support these

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gendered practices, as some have supported feminist campaigns and movements in Turkey, Yemen and Egypt (Ahmed 1982:158). Malala’s father is another example of a staunch defender of gender equity for Islamic girls. There is considerable variation among Islamist states in the treatment of women and attitudes to gender. The problem is when Islam is interpreted through localised patriarchal cultures and customs which vary enormously across the Muslim world. Cultural relativism, in any part of globe that justifies human rights violations or systemic violence, is mistaken. It is abhorrent for Catholic priests to prey upon altar boys or girls languishing in Christian orphanages, as the growing number of inquiries into sexual abuse in the Christian church have revealed (Death 2013). By the same token it is repugnant for Islamist cultures to violate the rights of women in the name of the prophet Mohammad who took a wife aged nine. While Islamaphobia – the cultural syndrome that attributes negative traits to all who practice a Muslim faith – is misguided (Tufail and Poynting 2013), so too is wilful blindness and ignorance of the forced marriages of young girls, honour killings of women and institutionalised inequality between men and women justified in the name of Islam (Sasson 2012:vii). Latin America women’s struggles for justice against military rule, and a profoundly conservative Christian Catholic religiosity, in some respects mirrors women’s struggles under Hindu or Islamic extremism. It was local authentic Chicana feminists who protested against the atrocious femicides of young women, mostly maquiladora workers, raped, tortured and left for dead in the desert outside the city of Juarez, Mexico, and the years of inept and corrupt officials who callously blamed the victims, allowing the perpetrators impunity. The young female maquiladora workers were easy targets of femicide, stigmatised as outsiders, who violated the social and gendered norms of a maschismo Latino culture where the ideal woman is constructed in the image of the Virgin Mary. The women’s movements that pursued campaigns for justice for these slain women were similarly stigmatised as ‘public women’ and likened to prostitutes. While some argue that Latina women’s movements (such as the grandmothers and mothers of the disappeared, the daughters of Juarez and so on) have reinforced traditional roles and stereotypes in their struggles, I argued

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that this was an effective strategy and that they continued to play active roles in the building of democratic states in Latin America. There is a lot that Western feminists and movements can learn from their struggles for justice. The women’s movements in Latin America are diverse and strong and women’s participation in the political sphere is among the highest in the world, and higher than women’s participation in politics in United States and Australia. They are effective networkers, campaigners and organisers. Through the formation of organic solidarities and annual meetings, Los Encuentros, Latina American women have fought long and hard struggles for gender equity and justice. I have argued that Latin American feminism resembles transnational feminist intersectionality in action. Again Latin American feminist movements didn’t ask for Western feminists to rescue them, and few would have heard anyway, due to language barriers. The women’s movements of Latin America have used the discourses of feminism, as well as the strategies of feminism, that the personal is political, to politicise everyday life. They have been effective in their diverse struggles, with Latino machismo, military juntas, Catholicism, despotic rulers, leftist guerrillas, corrupt officials and drug cartels, acquiring funds for female only police stations, refuges for women experiencing domestic violence and support for women’s legal organisations to support the victims of male violence.

Knowledge gaps and new directions for research The data on sex and juvenile violent offending show a pattern that female violent offenders are growing at a much faster rate than male violent offenders of most ‘Westernised’ countries (Arnull and Eagle 2009; Carrington 2013; Lauristen et al. 2009), most notably over the last two decades. There is substantial, but not conclusive, evidence that socio-cultural shifts in the way gender is negotiated by young women in the twenty-first century are part of the explanation for rises in female violence, but much more research is needed to confirm this. The first relates to shifting cultural constructions which celebrate the violent femme and normalise ‘ladette’ culture. The second relates to the impact of new forms of social online networking that reward and

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incite girls’ fights and girls’ violence. There are 102 million Google search hits for girl fights on YouTube alone, and over six-hundred thousand girl-fight sites (Carrington 2013:69). The impact of girls’ social networking on the forms of female youth violence is a new and little-understood phenomenon worthy of far more research. Settling the debate is important, not just to allow feminism to move on from being defensive, but because this research has significant implications for agencies responsible for enhancing cyber security of an online world where girl-on-girl violence is actively encouraged and rewarded. Our knowledge gaps in comprehending the impact of crimes committed using or involving the parallel world of cyberspace are gargantuan. Few have grasped the impact of how this generation of young women, the first to grow up in parallel worlds of cyberspace and reality, are coping with it. There is much more research for feminist criminologists to do on these issues. As a priority there is a need to devise new methods and tools for studying the sociality of cyberspace and its impact on social relationships and the social ordering of the life-worlds of young people. Somewhat ironically, the internet itself, along with the enhanced global flows of knowledge it transmits, may offer a key solution. Online methods (surveys that capture quantitative as well as qualitative data) have become less rigid, more liquid, practical, and affordable, democratising and trans-nationalising research possibilities. Because online methods are cheap they open up possibilities for feminists with limited funding to conduct this kind of research. While globalisation produces inequalities, anomic spaces, and enhances the opportunities for transnational crimes, and for new crimes like sexting, girl-on-girl violence and cyberstalking, the technologies of globalisation have opened many new opportunities for transnational feminist intersectional studies of crime and social control. These globalising technologies have also created opportunities for social change to end forced marriage, genital cutting, gender inequity and violence against women. The success of Twitter to bring international pressure to bear on gendered violence is heartening. The #bringbackourgirls Twitter campaign following the abduction of over 200 girls by a Nigerian Islamist extremist group, is just one such example.

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Globalisation has created other anomic social settings where male violence flourishes. Though men and boys are responsible for the majority of crimes of violence, and when it comes to domestic violence and sexual violence women are the vast majority of victims, male-on-male violence is still a significant problem. Chapter 5 explored patterns of male-on-male violence and argued that the anomic spaces of super-capitalism (Latin American cities in Mexico and Colombia, where drug cartels and corruption reign, and the mining camps in remote parts of Australia) normalise male-on-male violence. Masculinity is implicated in these practices and deeply inscribed in the patterns of alcohol- and drug-fuelled violence, but the context is shaped by decisions and practices of a largely unregulated global capitalism, where anomic conditions and lawlessness reign. Feminist criminology has been in my view too hesitant to critically explore violence in contexts other than where men are the perpetrators and women the victims. This has left a discursive space where men’s studies, and masculinist accounts of feminist’s preoccupation with men as essentially violent, have dominated the literature on male-on-male violence. New work in queer criminology that problematises the construction of men as essentially dangerous and examines how heteronormativity plays out in violence against men who are queer or different, is a welcomed addition to this debate (Ball 2013, 2014). But there needs to be more research by feminist criminologists who take seriously the contexts in which men might be victims as well as perpetrators of other men’s violence. Chapter 5 represents only the beginning of such an approach, but I am convinced there are many more research projects such as these worthy of study. There are now more female assassins in the world than men, which may shock many. However women have always played active roles in political organisations engaged in violent struggle, such as the African National Congress, the Irish Republican Army, and the communist Red Brigades. Women are now the fastest growing cohort swelling the ranks of contemporary terrorist organisations (Bloom 2011). In countries like Russia and Iraq women now even outnumber men as suicide bombers, and according to US Army intelligence, they are more efficient, on average blowing up more civilian casualties than male suicide bombers. Importantly female terrorists do not come

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from any single or distinctive place, religion or ethnicity and their motivations are multilayered. There is evidence that some female suicide bombers, recruited by Islamist extremist organisations like Al-Qaeda, may be the victims of honour crimes – duped or drugged into carrying out suicide missions as a way of redeeming their dishonour and seeking martyrdom. There is also a growing corpus of female suicide bombers seemingly motivated by the same extremist religious and political zeal as the men of terrorist organisations. These women are not victims. They are active agents in choosing to use mass violence and terrorist tactics for whatever political cause it is they are part of, whether it be religious or secular. These forms of violence are not essentially gendered, but the explanation for their involvement is often gendered; for example that the growing number of secular female suicide bombers are simply seeking revenge for the killing of their husbands or sons in armed struggle, such as the Black Widows of Chechnya. Whether or not they are seeking revenge, these women are also political agents committed to armed struggle for independence. New directions in theorising female violence, torture and terrorism are necessary if feminism is to be relevant to the public, cultural, political and criminological debates about heightened, albeit often exaggerated, social concerns about growing female violence and terrorism. Feminist criminology, understandably defensive, has in my view shirked the challenging issue of female torture, terrorism and female violence, leaving a discursive space for feminist backlash ideologues, of which there is no shortage, to spout their utter rubbish about feminists ruining the military, ruining girls, ruining the nation, indeed ruining the globe. The problem is that criminology, including much feminist criminology, has assumed that violence is essentially a masculine trait. It is not. It is time that criminologists (including feminist criminologists) accept that women can be as violent as men in some contexts, though there is much more research needed on why women resort to violence, why women are swelling the ranks of terrorist organisations and in what contexts. The theoretical scaffolding of this book has been driven by a ‘criminological imagination’ to think the unthinkable, to represent the unrepresentable, and to imagine a socially just world where ‘the

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ordering of things can always be otherwise’ (Carlen 2010:345). This book illustrates how globalisation creates both opportunities and challenges for transnational feminist intersectionality. On the downside, global capitalism has eroded the sustainability of many local communities, confiscated traditional lands, accelerated the forced migration of women and feminisation of poverty and created a plethora of anomic spaces where violence reigns. However globalisation also enhances the prospects for a transnational feminist intersectionality, as well as a transcultural feminist dialogue across nation state boundaries, through such agencies as UN Women and Los Encuentros. Intersectionality is as much a political praxis as it is a corrective methodological tool to the masculinist, Anglophone and metropolitan biases of more traditional place-based criminological research that confines its subjects within national domestic borders. Intersectionality, in moving beyond identity politics, is a strategy where nothing has to be othered and nothing has to be privileged. This approach does not succumb to the postcolonial methodologies and assumptions embedded in criminological paradigms, but rather equips researchers using intersectional frameworks with tools and methods to expose how ‘interlocking systems of power operate . . . on notions of crime and deviance’ (Henne and Troshynski 2013:457). I urge the upcoming generation of scholars, activists and feminist criminologists to use this framework and go forth outside your comfort zone to extend our knowledge of feminism and global justice.

References Ahmed, L. (1982) ‘Feminism and feminist movements in the Middle East, a preliminary exploration: Turkey, Egypt, Algeria, People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen’, Women’s Studies International Forum, 5(2):153–168. Ali, K. (2014) ‘Pakistani laws prohibiting underage marriage un-Islamic: CII’, Dawn.com, 11 March 2014. www.dawn.com/news/1092468/ pakistani-laws-prohibiting-underage-m Ali, N. and Minoui, D. (2010) I am Nujood, age 10 and divorced, Broadway Books: New York. Arnull, E. and Eagle, S. (2009) Girls and offending – patterns, perceptions and interventions, Youth Justice Board for England and Wales, Home Office: London.

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Ball, M. (2013) ‘Heteronormativity, homonormativity, and violence’, in K. Carrington, M. Ball, E. O’Brien and J. Tauri (eds.) Crime, justice and social democracy: international perspectives, Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke: Hampshire, 186–199. Ball, M. (2014) ‘Queer criminology, critique, and the “art of not being governed”’, Critical Criminology, 22(1):21–34. Bloom. M. (2011) Bombshell: women and terrorism. University of Pennsylvania, Philadephia Press. Carlen, P. (2010) A criminological imagination: essays on justice, punishment and discourse, Ashgate: Surrey, England. Carrington, K. (2013) ‘Girls’ violence: the case for a feminist theory of female violence’, International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 2(2):63–79. Constitution Project’s Task Force on Detainee Treatment (2013) The report of the Constitution Project’s Task Force on Detainee Treatment, The Constitution Project Working Group: Washington. http://detaineetaskforce.org/read Death, J. (2013) They didn’t believe me: adult survivors’ perspectives of child sexual abuse by personnel in Christian institutions, Crime and Justice Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology: Brisbane. Gul, P. (2013) ‘Taliban warn shops against selling Malala’s book’, Dawn.com, 10 November 2013. www.dawn.com/news/1048940/taliban-warn-shopsagainst-selling-malalas-book Henne, K. and Troshynski, E. (2013) ‘Mapping the margins of intersectionality: criminological possibilities in a transnational world’, Theoretical Criminology, 17(4):455–473. International News (2014). ‘Women MPs to introduce new bills on women’s rights’, The International News, 8 April 2014, www.thenews.com. pk/Todays-News-5–243162-Women-MPs-to-introduce-new-bills-onwomen-rights Kambara, K. (2009) ‘Sarkozy, feminism and the burqa’, Thick Culture, 24 June 2009. http://thesocietypages.org/thickculture/2009/06/24/sarkozyfeminism-the-burqa/ Lauritsen, J., Heimer, K. and Lynch, J. (2009) ‘Trends in the gender gap in violent offending: new evidence from the national crime victimization survey’, Criminology, 47:361–399. Letts, Q. (2009) ‘The first ladette: how Germaine Greer’s legacy is an entire generation of loose-knickered lady louts’, Daily Mail, 10 November 2009. www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1226464/The-First-Ladette-HowGermaine-Greers-legacy-entire-generation-loose-knickered-lady-louts. html#ixzz2Uf0PK1kZ Sasson, J. (2012) Princess: a true story of life behind the veil in Saudi Arabia, Windsor-Brooke Books: Atlanta.

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Schlafly, P. (2004) Feminist dream of military equality becomes nightmare in Iraq. Townhall.com, 17 May. Available at http://townhall.com/columnists/ phyllisschlafly/2004/05/17/feminist_dream_of_military_equality_ becomes_nightmare_in_iraq/page/full/ (accessed 12 May 2013). Tufail, W. and Poynting, S. (2013) ‘A common outlawness: criminalisation of Muslim minorities in the UK and Australia’, International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 2(3):43–54. Yousafzai, M. (with Lamb, C.) (2013) I am Malala: the girl who stood up for education and was shot by the Taliban, Little Brown and Co.: New York.

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INDEX

Page numbers for figures, tables, and notes are in italics. abduction 76 abolitionist feminism 37–8 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women’s Task Force on Violence 26 Aboriginal women 25 abortion, sex-selective 43 Abu Ghraib prison 148–51, 171–2 acid attacks 50–1, 59 activism 22, 32 adalah 51 Afghanistan 44, 47, 152 Africa 39–40, 44, 106 African National Congress 177 AIC (Australian Institute of Criminology) 104–5 AIHW (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare) 25, 102–3 alcohol-related violence 105–18 Alder, C. 140 Alfonsin, R. 87–8 Ali, N. 47–9 Ali, S. 45 Alison, M. 154 Allende, S. 123–4 Allen, H. 160 all-female police stations 91, 123–4

All India Progressive Women’s Association 57 Almeida, C. 64 Al-Qaeda 153, 157, 178 Altaf, H. 63–4 Alvarez, S. 88–9, 96–7 Ambuhl, M. 148 American masculinity 125 Amnesty International 32, 85, 107 Anand, D. 128 AnanthPur, K. 58 Anderson, S. 43 Anglophone biases 12, 20, 179 anomie 111 anti-colonial struggle 41–2 anti-feminist ideology 150, 161, 170–2 anxious and threatened masculinity 118–24, 128–9 Argentina 10, 83–91 armed resistance movements 86 arranged marriages 55–6 Arulmathy 155 Asia 10, 12, 22, 32–75, 172; female genital mutilation (FGM) in 40; gendered nature of violence in 26; intimate-partner violence

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in 34; super-capitalism in 106; women’s struggle for justice in 33–4 assault 86, 135–6 Australia 177; criminology in 9–12; cultural chasm in 102–3; forced marriage in 46–7; homicide rates in 104–5; intimate-partner violence in 105; male death rates in 104; mining in 106–18, 177; narrowing gender gap for crime and violence in 136–8; rates of violence per capita in 11; rural towns in 102–5; sex ratio in 102; socio-demographic characteristics by remoteness structure in 103; super-capitalism in 106 Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology 129 Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) 104–5 Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) 25, 102–3 Australian Parliament 109 Australian Research Council’s Discovery Project DP0878476 129 Avaaz 21–2, 32 Awra 49 Bahrain 35–6 Baidar, M. 62 Bangladesh 33–4, 45, 51 Bangladesh National Party 33 Barberet, R. 8–9, 12, 20–1 Bates, M. 56 Becker, H. 9 Beck, V. 159, 162 Bejarano, C. 96 Bernstein, E. 37 Bessant, J. 13 Bhattacharya, T. 56–7 Birnie, C. 159, 162 Black Tigresses 154 Black Widows 153, 178 Bloom, M. 153–8

Bolivia 85 Brazil 85, 106, 123–4 Briceno-Leon, R. 121–3 #bringbackourgirls Twitter campaign 176 British Journal of Criminology 129 Brown, L. 143–4 bullying 145–6 burqu, politics of 59–60 Canada 10, 106 capitalism 67, 81, 96, 101–33, 177–9 capitalist neo-colonialism 39 Casa Amiga 84 Catholicism 76, 88–9, 171, 174 Central Africa: forced marriage in 44 Centre for Crime and Justice (CJRC) 10 Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (Centre for Legal and Social Studies, or CELS) 87–8 Chavez, E. 84 Chechen independence movement 152–3 Chechnya 153 Chicago School 8–11 Chicana feminists 174–5 chick fight videos 147 Chihuahua province, Mexico 78–9 Chihuahua State Human Rights Commission 19 children, trafficking of 35 Chile 85, 90–1, 123–4 Christianity 40, 174 Chuang, J. 37–8 Cicourel, A. 9 CII (Council of Islamic Ideology) 65, 173–4 CJRC (Centre for Crime and Justice) 10 classism 36–7 ‘Clintonista feminazis’ 149, 172 Collette, N. 119 Colombia 78, 122, 177 colonias 80

Index

colonisation 20–2, 41–2, 78–9 Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas (National Commission on the Disappearances of Persons [CONADEP]) 87–8 Commission for the Solidarity and Defence of Human Rights, The (La Comision de Solidaridad y Defensa de los Derechos Humanos) 97 Commission on the Status of Women 93 communal violence 128 Community Relations Commission of New South Wales 47 CONADEP (National Commission on the Disappearances of Persons (Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas) 87–8 Congress Party (India) 66 Connell, R. 10, 125–6; Southern Theory 8 Constitution Project 150 contract employment 107–8 contractor boys 109, 114–20 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women 95 Coolbellup, Australia 119 Coomaraswamy, R. 156–7 corruption 78, 106, 122, 177 Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) 65, 173–4 Crenzel, E. 88 Criminal Statistics (United Kingdom) 136 criminological theory 7, 97, 124, 178–9; critical 9–12; as essentialising violence 134; female violence and 159; as monocultural 8–9; see also feminist criminology Criminology 139 critical theory 9–12 Crofts, T. 118–19

185

cultural feminism 90 cultural relativism 41–3, 50, 59–60, 174 cyberbullying 145–6 Dalit movements 65–7 Daly, K. 13 dangerous masculinity 124 DAW (Division for the Advancement of Women) 93 Dawn 63–4 De Alwis, M. 154 Death, J. 26 Decade for Women 93 Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women 93 delegadas 92 delinquency 11, 124–9, 135, 141 deviance theories 9 Dhanu 154–5 dharma principle 53 dialogic masculinities 128–9 difference feminism 86–7 differential consciousness 18–19 dirty wars 84–9 disappearances 78, 85–6 disorderly conduct 136 dispossession 106 diversity 96–7 Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW) 93 domesticity 37 domestic violence see intimatepartner violence domestic workers 35–7, 79 dongas 111 dowries 40–1 dowry deaths 55–6 Dragiewicz, M. 13 drive in drive out sex workers 114 drug abuse and driving under the influence violations 136 drug trade 81, 121, 177 drug wars 78 Durkheim, E. 8–11, 11

186

Index

Ecumenical Movement for Human Rights (Movimiento Ecumenico por los Derechos Humanos) 87–8 Edge of Darkness 113 egalitarian feminism 86–7 Egypt 34, 39, 44 Egyptian Feminist Union 60 8th of March, The (El 8 de Marzo) 97 EITI (Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative) 107 El 8 de Marzo (The 8th of March) 97 El Fondo National de Mujeres (The National Organisation of Women) 97 El Saadawi, N. 60 El Salvador 85, 90 England 136 England, K. 37 England, L. 148–51, 161, 172 environmental degradation 106 Escula de Mecanica de la Armada (Naval School of Mechanics) 88 Espositio, J. 59–60 essentialism 15–20, 36–7, 90–2, 101, 134 Estudios de Genero (Gender Studies Group) 97 ethnic minority masculinities 128–9 ethnomethodological research 9 Even, S. 155–6 Exoda por la Vida (Exodus for Life) 97 exploitation 34–9 extermination squads 122 Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) 107 Facebook 145–6 factory workers 80 Familiaries de Detenidos y Desparecidos Razones Politicas (Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared) 87–8 Fazlullah, M. 62–3

Federal Police (Australia) 46 Feldman, J. 154 female circumcision controversy 41–2 female delinquency 141 female genital mutilation (FGM) 39–43 female infanticide 43 female untouchables 171 female violence 134–69; criminological theory and 159; female assassins 177; female terrorism 135, 151–8, 177–8; female torturers 135, 148–51; perceived as legacy of feminism 134, 151, 158–61; rates of 135–140, 175–6; see also girls’ violence femicide 76, 96 Feminine Branch of the Peronist Party 84 femininity 86, 134, 153; masculinised 143–4, 160, 172 feminisation of poverty 96 feminism 13; abolitionist 37–8; antifeminist ideology and 150, 161, 170–2; Chicana 174–5; cultural 90; difference 86–7; domestic labour and 36–7; egalitarian 86–7; female genital mutilation (FGM) and 41–3; female violence as perceived legacy of 134, 151, 158–61; hyper-masculinity and 124; Islamic extremism, critiques of 59–60, 173–4; multiracial 17; Muslim 59–60, 173–4; sati and 54–5; Schlafly on 149–50, 171–2; third way 90; transnational 22, 90–1; women’s movements in Latin America and 20–1, 76–7, 86–9; Yousafzai and 63–4 feminist criminology 7–9, 124; backlash against 170–2; female violence and 159–61, 178; globalising 20–2; metropolitan theories and 12–22; rescue

Index

industry and 37–9; transnational 170–81; violence against women and 24–6 Feminist Criminology (Renzetti) 20 feminist essentialism 92 Feminist Fantasies (Schlafly) 149 feminist intersectionality 89–97, 179 femocratisation 90–1 FGM (female genital mutilation) 39–43 fight sites 146, 147, 176 Fly-In Fly-Out (FIFO) workforces 109, 114–20 forced labour 34–9 forced marriage 43–50 Forced Marriage Unit (FMU; United Kingdom) 45 Fregoso, R. 96 frontier masculinities 105–18, 127–9 fundamentalism 60, 88–9 Gadd, D. 126–7 Gamboa, F. 94 Gandhi, R. 154 Gandhi, S. 66 gangs 11, 122, 142 Gelsthorpe, L. 12, 16 gender diversity vs. gender difference 125–6 gendered crime and violence 13, 19–20, 26, 81 gendered relational aggression 146 gender inequalities 33–4, 39, 96 Gender Studies Group (Estudios de Genero) 97 genocide 42–3 Gentry, C. 152 girls’ fights 135, 142–8 girls’ violence 135, 172, 176; as culturally constructed 140, 143– 4; global rise in 135–40, 159–60; social networking and 142–8 global capitalism 96, 101–33, 177–9 globalisation 122–4, 176–9; agrarian communities and 78–9; fatalistic

187

constructions of 20–1; impacts of 21; Latino constructs of gender and 123–4; masculinity and 101–33; rural women and 79–80; transnational feminist intersectionality and 96–7; United Nations Conventions and 21 global justice 21 global south 96, 172–5 global women’s movements 92–7 God of Small Things, The (Roy) 67 Gonzalez, G. 80 Gonzalez, S. 80 grandmothers’ movements 87 Graner, C. 148–9 Greenpeace 107 Greer, G. 172 Guardian, The 33–4 Guatemala 85 guerilleras 86 Gulabi Gang (Pink Sari movement) 65–7 Gulf of Mexico 107 Gupta, P. 56 Hamas 153 Hamori, T. 156 Harman, S. 148 Harp, D. 149 Hautzinger, S. 19, 91–2, 118, 123–4 HBVA (Honour Based Violence Awareness Network) 50 hegemonic feminist theory 12, 16–17 hegemonic masculinity 125–6 Heidensohn, F. 12–14, 18 Henne, K. 12, 18 Hester, M. 159 Hezbollah 154 Hinduism 32, 171–2; nationalist 128; Rokeya and 67; sati and 53–5; stereotypes about 128 historical relativism 42–3 Hogg, R. 129

188

Index

homicide rates: in Australia 104–5; in Latin America 77–9, 121–4 Honour Based Violence Awareness Network (HBVA) 50 honour crimes 50–3, 178 honour killings 174 human rights 52–3, 87–8, 95–6 Human Rights Watch 32, 44–5, 107 human trafficking 21, 25–6, 34–9 Huma, Z. 61 Hyndman, J. 154 hyper-masculinity 124–6 I am Malala (Yousafzai) 63–4 Ibragimova, R. (Salima) 153 identity politics 13, 19, 96–7, 179 Idris, W. 155 India: dowries in 55–6; female infanticide in 43; forced marriages in 44–5; gender ratio in 43; honour killings in 50; intimate-partner violence in 34, 55–6; marriage age in 45; rape in 56–8; violence in 128; women’s movements in 65–7 Indian National Congress Party 66 Indigenous Australians 25, 102 Indigenous people 11, 26, 81, 90 Indonesia 153 industry self-regulation 107–9 infanticide 43 infibulation 40 institucionalizadas 90–1 INSTRAW (International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women) 93 International Criminal Court 107 International Environment Court 106–7 International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy 162 International Labour Office 35 International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW) 93

intersectionality 17–18, 25–6, 89–97, 179 Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI; Pakistan) 61 intimate-partner violence 23–4, 34, 55–6, 105, 159, 177 Iran 44 Iraq 152, 157, 177–8 Irish Republican Army (IRA) 153, 177 ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence; Pakistan) 61 Islam: cultural relativism and 59–60; extremism and 32, 170–4, 178; female genital mutilation (FGM) and 39–40; forced marriage and 44–6, 49–50; Rokeya and 67; Shari’ah law and 59–65, 170–1; stereotypes about 128; women involved in terrorism and 158; zina and 51–3 Islamaphobia 50, 174 Israel 152, 171 Jahangir, A. 61, 65 Jassim, S. 152, 157 Jefferson, T. 119, 126–7 Jematt Islamiyya 153 Jha, P. 43 jirga 50 Johnson, H. 22–4 Jones, N. 144 Juarez, Mexico 76–82, 92, 174–5 jurgas 45 justice 21, 33–4 Kanwar, R. 54–5 KARAMAH, Women Muslim Lawyers for Human Rights 51 karma principle 53 Kenya 40–2 Khaled, L. 155–7 Khar, B. 51 kidnapping 44 Kimhi, S. 155–6 Koomaraswamy, K. 154

Index

Kowalski, R. 145 Krishnan, K. 57 Kurdistan Workers Party 152 Kushdale school 62 Kuwait 35–6 labelling theory 9 La Comision de Solidaridad y Defensa de los Derechos Humanos (The Commission for the Solidarity and Defence of Human Rights) 97 ladette culture 135, 142–4, 158–60, 172, 175–6 Ladettes 143 Laos 106 Lara Croft Tomb Raider 143 Las Mujeres Barzonists 97 Latin America 10–12, 22, 172–7; armed resistance movements in 86; Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and 95; dirty wars in 84–9; female participation in politics in 76–7; feminism in 20–1, 88–9; gendered nature of violence in 26; homicide rates in 77–9, 121–4; illegal economies in 121–2; machismo and violence in 121–4; military regimes in 76, 84–9; Optional Protocol and 95; violence against women in 76–100; women’s movements in 80–97 Lauritsen, J. 139 law, masculinity of 15 Lebanon 36, 152 Lee, N. 119 Liberation Tigers Of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) 152–7 Livingston, J. 81 Lock the Gate 107 Loomba, A. 53–4 Los Abuletas de Plaza de Mayo 87–8

189

Los Encuentros 89–97, 175, 179 Los Madres de Desaparecidos 85 LTTE (Liberation Tigers Of Tamil Eelam) 152–7 machismo 81, 121–4 MacManus, V. 87, 96 Madres de la Plaza de Mayo (Mothers from the Plaza de Mayo) 83, 86–8 Malala see Yousafzai, M. male delinquency 135 male subjectivity 126–7 Manamperi, P. 153–4 maquiladora free trade zone (Mexico) 78–82, 174–5 marginalised masculinity 125–6 marriage 43–50, 55–6, 173–4 maschista values 91–2 masculine conceptualisation 15 masculinised femininity 143–4, 160, 172 masculinity: American 125; anti-reductionist approach to 127; anxious and threatened 118–24, 128–9; dangerous 124; frontier 105–18, 127–9; hegemonic 125–6; hyper- 124–6; of law 15; marginalised 125–6; poststructuralist theory and 128–9; pub(lic) 113–14; supercapitalism and 101–33; violence and 124–9; working-class 143 Masharraf, P. 61 Matza, D. 9, 127 Mau Mau uprising 41–2 Maya communities 94 McIntosh, A. 114, 129 MCU (Mining Communities United) 107 Mean Girls 143 Messerschmidt, J. 125–6 metropolitan theories 7–22, 179 Mexico 177; homicide rates in 78; maquiladora free trade zone in 78–82, 174–5; North American

190

Index

Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and 78–9; rape in 76; United Nations Women and 94; women’s movements in 82–4, 90 Middle East 12, 22, 32–75, 171–5; female genital mutilation (FGM) in 39–40; gendered nature of violence in 26; human trafficking and 35–7; intimate-partner violence in 34; women’s struggle for justice in 33–4 migration 20–1, 79–80 military regimes 76, 84–90 Milivojevic, S.: Sex Trafficking 38–9 Mina, J. 51–2 mining 106–18, 177 Mining Communities United (MCU) 107 Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (India) 43 Mlambo-Ngcuka, P. 95 Mogahed, D. 59–60 Mohanty, C. 16–17, 39 monocultural biases 12 monologic masculinities 128–9 Moody, R. 119 moral crusades 38 moral panics 141 Morrissey, B. 159, 162 mother image 86–7 Mothers from the Plaza de Mayo (Madres de la Plaza de Mayo) 83, 86–8 mothers’ movements 85–7 ‘Mothers of the Disappeared’ (song) 85 Movimiento Ecumenico por los Derechos Humanos (Ecumenical Movement for Human Rights) 87–8 Mozambique 106 Mujeres de Negro (Women in Black) 82–4, 97 Mujeres por Mexico (Women for Mexico) 97

multiracial feminism 17 murder 76–82, 92 Muslim feminists 59–60, 173–4 Naaman, D. 157–8 Nacional de Abogadas Feministas (The National Network of Feminist Lawyers) 97 Naffine, N. 13 NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) 78–9 National Commission (Argentina) 88 National Commission on the Disappearances of Persons (Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas [CONADEP]) 87–8 National Crime Records Bureau (India) 55–6 National Crime Reporting Standard (United Kingdom) 136 National Crime Victimization Survey (United States) 139 nationalism 86, 128 National Network of Feminist Lawyers, The (Nacional de Abogadas Feministas) 97 National Organisation of Women, The (El Fondo National de Mujeres) 97 National Youth Peace Prize (Pakistan) 64 Naval School of Mechanics (Escula de Mecanica de la Armada) 88 neither the ones or the others (ni las unas, nil as otras) 90, 96–7 neo-colonialism 39 neo-liberalism 96, 106, 116 Never Again (Nunca Mas) 88 Newman government (Australia) 109 NGOs 90–1, 93, 107 Nicaragua 85, 90 Nikah 173

Index

ni las unas, nil as otras (neither the ones or the others) 90, 96–7 ‘Ni Una Mas’ (Not One More) 83 Njambi, W. 41–3 non-Indigenous communities 11, 102 non-resident workers (NRW) 107–9, 114 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) 78–9 northern theories 8–9 Not One More (‘Ni Una Mas’) 83 NRW (non-resident workers) 107–9, 114 NSW Children’s Courts 136–7 Nujood 47–8, 170–1 Nunca Mas (Never Again) 88 Occidentalism 97 Offending Girls (Sharpe) 140–1 Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women (OSAGI) 93 oil 106 Olimpo (Olympus) (detention camp) 86 Optional Protocol 95 Other 15–16, 42, 97 Padmarag (Rokeya) 67 Pakistan 171; female suicide bombers in 152; forced marriage in 44–5; honour killings in 50; Islamic extremism in 32, 62–3; Swat Valley 62–3; women’s movement in 61–5; zina in 51–2 Pakistan Parliament 173 Palestinian women terrorists 155–7 Pal, S. 66–7 panchayats 45, 50, 58 Pandey, J. 56–7 Pape, R. 154–5 Papua New Guinea 106–7 patriarchy 16, 123–4 Perella, S. 119 Peronism 84

191

Peru 106 Peter, T. 162–3 phallocentricism 15 Philippines 35 Phoenix, J. 12 physical abuse 36 Pickering, S.: Sex Trafficking 38–9 picture of drift 118, 127–8 Pink Sari movement (Gulabi Gang) 65–7 Pinochet, A. 85, 123–4 plastic surgery 42 plurialism 90 policing, extra-judicial 122 polygamy 173–4 positivist research methods 15 postcolonial methodologies 97, 179 post-industrial mining regimes 107–10 postmodernism 18–19 poststructuralist theory 13, 18–19, 128–9 Potter, H. 12 poverty 13, 96 powerlessness 9 pregnancy, suicide bombers and 154–5 prenatal determination 43 presocial behaviours 124 Progressive Women’s Association (Pakistan) 59 prostitution 37–8 protest masculinity 128–9 psychological abuse 36 pub(lic) masculinity 113–14 public women 83–4, 174–5 Qatar 35–6 queer criminology 177 queer masculinity 128–9 race and racism 11, 36–9 racial and ethnic minority masculinities 128–9 radical theory 8–9 Rafter, N. 12–14

192

Index

Rajan, V. 156–7 Rajaratnam, T. (Dhanu) 154–5 Rana, S. 33–4 rape 56–8 Ray, B. 67 Ray, D. 43 Raza Plaza Factory 33 readings from the centre 8 Red Brigades 177 reflexivity 20 regulation 107–9 Reich, R. 105–6 relational theories see intersectionality Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared (Familiaries de Detenidos y Desparecidos Razones Politicas) 87–8 religion 39–40 religiosity 172–5 religious fundamentalist movements 60, 88–9 Renzetti, C. 12, 19–20, 151; Feminist Criminology 20; Violence Against Women 161 rescue industry 37–9 resilience 19–20 Reynosa, Mexico 78–9 right-wing ideologues 171–2 Rogers, J. 149 Rokeya: Padmarag 67 Romero, M. 36–7 Roy, A. 57–8; The God of Small Things 67 Ruggerio, V. 106 Ruksati marriage 173 rule of law 122 ruling-class men 126 rural crime 10 rural masculinities 128–9 rural women 79–80 Russia 153, 177–8 Rym 49 Sage 129 Salima 153

Samarasinghe, N. 35–6 Samath, F. 35–6 Sandoval, C. 18–19 Satharasinghe, S. 36 sati 53–5 Saudi Arabia 35, 44 Schlafly, P. 149–50, 171–2; Feminist Fantasies 149 Scott, J. 129 Segrave, M.: Sex Trafficking 38–9 self-esteem 118–19 self-harm 101 self-regulation 109 self, valorisation of 101 sertao 79 Servicio Paz y Justicia (Service for Peace and Justice) 87–8 sexism 14, 120 sex-selective abortion 43 sex trafficking 25–6, 37–9 Sex Trafficking: Segrave, Miloivojevic, and Pickering 38–9 sexual abuse 36, 174 sexual assault 86 sexual promiscuity 143 sexual violence 177 sex workers 114 Shabana 63 Shah, H. 59 shahida 156 Sha’rawi, H. 60 Shari’ah law 59–65, 170–1; see also Islam Shariff 81–2 Sharma, R. 43 Sharpe, G. 136; Offending Girls 140–1 shura 62 sisters in crime thesis 158–60 Sjoberg, L. 152 slavery 37–8 Smart, C. 159 smuggling 106 Snowden, E. 61 Sochi Olympics 153 social agency 39

Index

social control 140–2 social disorganisation theory 11 social injustices 13 social morality 8–9 social networking 142–8, 175–6 social theory 8–9 sociological imagination 102 South America 10, 106 South Asia 44–5, 172 southern theories 8 Southern Theory (Connell) 8 South, N. 106 Sozzo, M. 10 Sri Lanka 35–6, 152–5 Sri Lankan People’s Liberation Front 154 Steffensmeier, D. 139 Stiell, B. 37 Struckman, S. 149 structuralism 8–9 Sudan 106 suicide 101 suicide bombers 135, 151–8, 178 super-capitalism 39, 67, 81, 101–33, 177 Swat Valley, Pakistan 62–3 Sykes, G. 9 Syrian Socialist National Party 152 Taliban 47, 62–5, 171 Tamil Tigers (Liberation Tigers Of Tamil Eelam [LTTE]) 152–7 Tandon, S. 43 Tappan, M. 143–4 Taylor, D. 86 terrorism 135, 151–8, 177–8 Thayer, M. 20–1, 79, 90, 95 third way feminism 90 third-world women 16–17, 96, 156–7 threatened masculinity 118–24, 128–9 Tijuana, Mexico 78–9 Tinsman, H. 123–4 Tomsen, S. 118–19 torture 76, 135, 148–51

193

Torture Memos investigation 150 trafficking 21, 25–6, 34–9 transgressive knowledge 15 transnational ethnographies 96–7 transnational feminist intersectionality 7–8, 12, 25–6, 89–97, 179 Triantafyllos, S. 149 Troshynski, E. 12, 18 Tucker, B. 149 Twitter 145, 176 ul-Haq, Zia 61 UNIFEM (United Nations Development Fund for Women) 93 Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) 139 unionisation 107 United Arab Emirates 35–6 United Kingdom 45–6, 136 United Nations 66–7, 90, 93–6, 107 United Nations Commission on the Status of Women 95 United Nations Conventions 21, 106–7 United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) 93 United Nations Women 19, 32–3, 77, 93–6, 179 United States 10, 78–9, 135–6, 171–2 upcrimming 140 US Army Intelligence 152, 157, 177–8 US Department of Justice Study Group on girls and violence 136 U2 85 veiling, politics of 59–60 verbal abuse 36 victims 19–20, 80, 83 Vietnam 34 vigilantism 122 violence: alcohol-related 105–18; communal 128; female 134–69;

194

Index

gendered 13, 26, 81; gender inequalities of 96; geo-spatial patterns of 9; increase in female arrests for 136–8; in India 128; intimate-partner 23–4, 25–6; in Latin America 121–4; masculinity and 121–9; normalisation of 11, 25, 120; self-esteem and 118–19; sexual 177; shifting power dynamics and 128; supercapitalism and 101–33; see also female violence; girls’ violence; violence against women violence against women 10; in Brazil 123–4; feminist criminology and 24–6; gender inequalities of 96; in Latin America 76–100, 77–82; uneven dispersion of 22–6; United Nations and 93–6 Violence Against Women (Renzetti) 161 violent femme 135, 142–4, 147–8, 151, 175–6 Virgin Mary 81, 86, 174–5 Voces Sin Eco (Voices without Echo) 80, 97 Wales 136 Walklate, S. 12, 15, 19–20 Warner, E. 45 weapons economies 121 West Africa 44 Western feminism 17–18, 172–5 white slavery scare 37 WHO (World Health Organization) 39, 42–3, 66–7 Wigginton, T. 162 Windsor Inquiry 109

Windsor, T. 109 women 14, 44, 76–100, 114; see also violence against women Women for Mexico (Mujeres por Mexico) 97 Women in Black (Mujeres de Negro) 82–4, 97 Women’s Action Forum 61 women’s initiation 41–2 women’s movements: global 92–7; in India 65–7; in Latin America 80–97; mother image in 86–7; in Pakistan 61–5 Women’s Parliamentary Caucus of Punjab Assembly 65 Women’s Parliamentary caucus (Pakistan) 173 Wonders, N. 13–14 working-class men and boys 125–6, 143 World at School, A (Yousafzai) 64 World Health Organization (WHO) 39, 42–3, 66–7 Worrall, A. 140 Wright, M. 80–4, 97, 102 Yemen 44–50, 170–1 Yemeni Parliament 49 Younus, F. 51 Yousafzai, M. 62–5, 171, 174; I am Malala 63–4; A World at School 64 youth culture 141–2 Youth Internet Safety Survey 145 YouTube 146–7, 151, 176 Zia, A. 61 zina 50–3 Zubillaga, V. 121–3