Weaponizing Gender in Carceral Regimes: Sexual Threat and the Governance of Fear Among Palestinian Women

• In Event: Sociology of and for Palestine

Abstract

This paper argues that gender functions as a central technology of carceral governance rather than a secondary condition of women’s incarceration. Drawing on 65 structured interviews with formerly imprisoned Palestinian women, the paper examines how sexual harassment, humiliation, and reputational threat are mobilized to govern through fear, stigma, and relational punishment. Sexual harassment emerges not only as episodic abuse, but as a systematic practice whose power lies in anticipation, uncertainty, and the social consequences it activates.
The analysis is grounded in feminist theories of affect, colonial governance, and gendered repression, drawing on work by Sara Ahmed, Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, and Frances S. Hasso to conceptualize fear, morality, and women’s social roles as sites of political regulation.
The paper shows how gendered carceral practices operate before, during, and after imprisonment. Prior to incarceration, women are subjected to moral shaming and threats targeting family honor, marriageability, and social reputation. Inside prison, sexualized verbal harassment, punitive strip searches, bodily surveillance, and the manipulation of religious and moral norms produce a persistent condition of vulnerability. Crucially, the paper demonstrates that the effectiveness of these practices lies not only in what is enacted, but in what is made possible. Fear disciplines women’s bodies and speech in advance, shaping compliance, silence, and self-censorship.
The paper further argues that women are frequently positioned as instruments of relational punishment, used to pressure sons, husbands, fathers, and broader kinship networks. By theorizing weaponized gender and sexual harassment as mechanisms of governance, the paper contributes to feminist sociology and the sociology of punishment by revealing how states govern through intimacy, fear, and the social afterlives of incarceration.

Author

• Dalal B. Salem, Ibn Haldun University