Intersectionality and Violence in Politics: A Research Agenda

• In Event: Intersectionality and Violence in Politics

Abstract

Violence in politics poses a major threat to democracies around the world. Targets and bystanders include a wide range of political actors including voters, activists, aspirants, candidates, elected officials and executives. Recent research on Violence Against Women in Politics demonstrates that violence is gendered in its form and impact. While all political actors may face online or offline violence, women tend to experience different forms of violence than men (e.g. sexual harassment, rape, misogyny). Furthermore, an intersectional analysis reveal how women (inclusive of those that identify as assigned female at birth, cis-gender, transgender, demigirls, and/or gender nonconforming individuals) with varying and overlapping social identities compound their experiences with political violence. Yet, scholarship on intersectional dimensions of politics, highlights that gendered processes seldom operate in isolation, but intersect with other social positions (e.g. race, age). While some recent studies and reports indicate that violence is intersectional (e.g. young women of color experiencing more online violence than any other group), intersectionality is not integrated in theories and research designs of political violence. Centering an intersectional analysis uncovers the complexities in which some women may be to silenced, chose to self-censure, opt-out or drop-out of a group that is already underrepresented. In this paper, we present a meta-analysis that examines the following question: How does intersectionality influence the form and impact of violence? We explore this question by integrating insights of interdisciplinary work on age-, race-, ability- and sexuality based violence (broadly defined) in political science literature on violence and gender. Based on this review we present a preliminary framework for future studies of intersectionality and violence in politics.

Authors

• Nadia E. Brown, Georgetown University

• Liza Mugge, University of Amsterdam