response

T h e St ru g g l e f o r   F r e e d o m f r o m   F e a r

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1

The Struggle for Freedom from Fear

C O N T E S T I N G V I O L E N C E A G A I N S T W O M E N AT

T H E F R O N T I E R S O F G L O B A L I Z AT I O N

Alison Brysk

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1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

© Oxford University Press 2018

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Brysk, Alison, 1960– author.
Title: The struggle to end violence against women : human rights and
the dynamics of change / Alison Brysk.
Description: New York : Oxford University Press, [2018] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017061033 (print) | LCCN 2018000963 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190901530 (Updf ) | ISBN 9780190901547 (Epub) |
ISBN 9780190901523 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780190901516 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Women— Violence against. | Women’s rights. |
Sex crimes— Prevention. | Human rights.
Classification: LCC HV6250.4.W65 (ebook) | LCC HV6250.4.W65 B789 2018 (print) |
DDC 362.82/ 926— dc23
LC record available at https:// lccn.loc.gov/ 2017061033

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Paperback printed by WebCom, Inc., Canada
Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America

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Down- sky
The sun rakes its nails—

The men sit haunched,

I quicken:

Kicked by belly- hammer down the pinball flight of menace.

The sky trundles in its merchandise—

Their eyes pressed at the pane;

The straggler, I smell blood on their breath.

Trees reduce to ground cover, I count

The cars’ eyes as witnesses; I scurry

The trail lacquered between bunkers.

Heart beat behind my ears, I gain

Sanctuary, hearing him say—

I shouldn’t be out alone so late; thinking,

Each day the sun drives its nails deeper.

— 12/ 82

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vii

Contents

List of Figures ix
List of Tables xi
Acknowledgments xiii

1. Violence against Women 1

2. Constructing Human Rights 30

3. Acting Globally: The International Rights Repertoire 50

4. Mobilization: Standing Up for Women’s Security 80

5. Freedom: The Struggle for Sexual Self- Determination 108

6. The Right to Life: Femicide and Intimate Partner Violence 137

7. The Right to Bodily Integrity: The Struggle to End Sexual Violence 160

8. Ending Impunity:  and Its Limits 193

9. Expanding Rights: Gendered Public Policy 222

10. Norm Change: Pathways of Persuasion 241

11. Conclusion: The Quest for Freedom from Fear 273

B i b l i o g r a p h y   291
I n d e x   3 37

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ix

Figures

1.1 Construction of the Gender Regime 12
3.1 Dynamics of the Human Rights Regime 52
6.1 Physical Security of Women 139
10.1 The Rape Culture Hall of Shame 266

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xi

Tables

1.1 Gender Regime Clusters 13
1.2 Gender Regimes Patterns of GBV 15
1.3 Drivers of Gender Violence 22
1.4 Case Study Profiles: The Frontiers of Globalization 26
2.1 International Standards on Gender Violence 32
2.2 Pathways of Change 48
3.1 Rights Frames for Gender Violence 55
4.1 Regional Spread of Femicide Movements in Mexico 90
5.1 Human Trafficking Prevalence and Policy 124
7.1 Taxonomy of Sexual Violence 163
7.2 Patterns and Prevalence of Sexual Violence 177
11.1 Dynamics of Change at the Frontiers of Globalization 276
11.2 Reproductive Rights Access 284

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xiii

Acknowledgments

This book represents a four- year global journey that has been supported by an
amazing academic and personal network, and I  am immensely grateful for the support
of all the individuals and institutions listed here— and those between the lines. My re-
search has been supported since 2010 by the Duncan and Suzanne Mellichamp Chair in
Global Governance at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB). Over the past
decade, Oxford University Press has provided a home for my scholarship, spanning three
books. I would like to highlight the extraordinarily patient and insightful guidance my
editor Angela Chnapko has offered for this project through a lengthy and complex but
ultimately very fruitful revision process.

The research began during a 2013– 2014 Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, which was a
much- appreciated opportunity for time, space, collegial exchange, global engagement,
policy education, bibliographic enrichment, research assistance, intellectual stimulation,
and friendship. This project would not have been possible without all of the directors,
staff, fellows, and interns who accompanied my residence, feedback in working groups
and presentations, with special support from the Latin America and the Environmental
Change and Security programs. As interns, Ciro Moraes and Debbie Sutton provided
expert, dedicated, and imaginative research assistance. Ciro contributed greatly to my
knowledge of Brazil, international law, media mobilization, and men’s movements, while
Debbie drafted comprehensive analyses of US foreign policy as well as modeling an
earlier version of the regression linking inequality and urbanization to gender violence.
My cohort of visiting Fellows provided inspiration, moral support, writing feedback, and

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xiv Acknowledgments

many forms of companionship— especially Donny Meertens, Erica Marat, Amal Fadlalla,
Osman Can, Jessica Robbins, Sayuri Shimizu, and Maria Cristina Garcia.

At UC Santa Barbara, the project was greatly advanced by work and conversations
with my co- author on “When Development Is Not Enough,” insightful development
economist and stealth sociologist Aashish Mehta. I would like to recognize and appre-
ciate many years of multifaceted and extremely skilled research assistance by UCSB
Ph.D.  candidate Natasha Bennett, who contributed thoughtful analysis, topical exper-
tise, multiple reorganizations of the structure of the text, and helpful graphics, as well
as designing and administering massive information management and bibliographic sys-
tems. Various aspects of the research, charts, and text editing were also ably supported by
Jesilyn Faust, Yunuen Ocampo, and Amanda Pinheiro. Joint workshops with the Orfalea
Center for Global and International Studies and Mellichamp Chair at UCSB shaped the
frameworks for human rights analysis, and I am grateful to the dozens of participants for
thoughtful comments.

I have also been informed, supported, and inspired by the WomanStats Project, which
has provided a research network, invaluable data source, and extremely constructive feed-
back. Valerie Hudson has been a hero and role model in her own pioneering scholarship,
creating the WomanStats Project and including me in numerous panels and exchanges at
the International Studies Association, American Political Science Association, and else-
where that have shaped my work. Valentine Moghadam has been a supportive colleague
and a critical source of insight on gender regimes, global– local human rights dynamics,
and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Andrea van den Boer, Natalie
Romeri- Lewis, Catalina Monroy, and other WomanStats co- Principal Investigators have
all provided important new information and perspectives that contributed to this book.

Several other networks, institutions, and colleagues have influenced and supported
the development of this research. Many thanks for the opportunity to present and re-
ceive useful feedback on early versions of numerous chapters to colleagues and programs
at George Washington University, Tufts University, Freedom House, Deusto University
(Spain), the University of Oregon, Erasmus program at the University of Vienna,
University of New Mexico, and the Gladstein Visiting Professorship in Human Rights
at the University of Connecticut. I would also like to highlight the contribution of my
frequent collaborator and constant friend Gershon Shafir, who read and commented on
several drafts of the entire project and has enlightened me constantly with his profound
knowledge, wisdom, and analysis of rights, power, citizenship, globalization, gender—
and life itself.

Speaking of friends, family, and fellow travelers, I have been blessed with an extraordi-
nary and beloved crew who played essential roles at various steps along the way. Friends
and neighbors who have provided companionship, support, and “shelter from the storm”
include the following : in DC, my hosts and neighbors Mark McElreath and Bert Kubli;
in California, Lavanya Michel, Tatiana Nazarenko, Robert Bettinger, and Mark Austin
Thomas; in Spain, Felipe Gomez Isa and Salvador Marti; in Mexico, Ruben Dominguez;

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Alison
Cross-Out

Acknowledgments xv

and in the country of illness and the fortunate path beyond, Carol Wise, Sheri Cardo,
my daughter Ana Brysk Freeman, and the late Susan Stone. I am touched, uplifted, and
guided in all my endeavors by the love of my parents Lucy and Marcel Brysk, my daughter
Miriam Brysk Freeman, her father Mark Freeman, my siblings Sarah, Seth, Josh, and
Jordan and their families.

One out of three women in the world have been affected by violence— and I am one.
I wrote this book in part to speak truth and knowledge to that profound distortion of
power, which has touched the lives of so many of my family, friends, colleagues, and
students. But I write also in a spirit of hope and solidarity with the courage and com-
passion of good men and women I have learned about and witnessed all over the world,
and in my own circles of collaboration and care. The journey begins and ends in our
hearts, and this book is dedicated to our power to heal ourselves and build a world of
safety and freedom.

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T h e St ru g g l e f o r   F r e e d o m f r o m   F e a r

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1

1

Violence against Women

In an er a of democracy, globalization, and increasing gender equity, half of the world’s
women live in fear.1 Alongside men, women are the victims of human rights violations like
war crimes, genocide, and forced displacement. But an estimated one out of three women
in the world also suffer gender- based murder, torture, sexual violence, and assault—
perpetrated and enabled by foreign armies, their own governments, social authorities,
criminals and traffickers, and their own families. These threats to human security were
not comprehended by the original international human rights regime, or even by pre-
vious waves of mobilization for women’s civil and political rights. In 1990, Amartya Sen
wrote that “100  million women are missing” from the populations of China and India
due to sex- selective abortion. A generation later, we can say that one billion women— one
out of three worldwide— are missing from human rights.

As David Rothkopf summarizes:

There is no genocide against any people that has produced more victims than the
number of females who have lost their lives to discrimination against the birth
of girl babies (in Pakistan alone, for instance, there is a culturally encouraged
“shortage” of an estimated 6 million females), or who have died from the unwill-
ingness of societies to provide the health care women need, or who die as a re-
sult of social customs that allow fathers to kill daughters for “shaming” families,
husbands to kill wives for adultery, and men to perpetrate other horrific violence

1 In a 2014 EU survey of 42,000 women, in the most democratic, secure, and prosperous region of the world,
“half of all women avoid certain situations or places, at least sometimes, for fear of being physically or sexually
assaulted.” These fears are justified by the same survey’s finding that 33% of women in the EU have experienced
physical and/ or sexual violence in their lifetime, and an estimated 13  million women in the EU experienced
physical violence just in the year prior to the survey (European Agency for Fundamental Rights, Violence
against women: an EU- wide survey, 2014).

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2 Freedom from Fear

against women. That countless millions of women are also regularly raped, beaten,
and abused by men only compounds these atrocities. The systematic, persistent
acceptance of women’s second- class status is history’s greatest shame. And for all
our self- congratulations about how far we have come, we live in a world where
even in the most advanced countries, deep injustices against women remain.
(Rothkopf 2013)

The purpose of this book is to show how to begin to change that. From the 1993 Vienna
World Human Rights Conference onward, the global community has reframed women’s
rights as human rights. Global and local women’s movement campaigns, human rights
organizations, some governments— including that of the United States— and many
global institutions have taken notable steps to address violence, from prosecuting rape
as a war crime at the International Criminal Court to US sponsorship of a monitoring
and sanctions regime for human trafficking. While there have been notable successes in
some states’ policies, like Brazil’s landmark domestic violence law, the global prevalence
and harms of violence against women (VAW) persist, undermining women’s rights and
global human security. This book argues that human rights reform is necessary but not
sufficient to address violence, and that addressing gendered abuse requires an expansion
of rights frames, mechanisms, and responsibilities— from the new frame of femicide to
local translation of global rights talk, from gendered public policy for urban planning to
doctrines of due diligence. If we see the future of human rights as an evolving movement
toward freedom, equality, and dignity in power relations, the struggle against gender vi-
olence is key to constructing new rights repertoires for all.

1.1 One billion women are missing

The United Nations’ Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women defines
the problem of gender- based violence as follows:

(a) Physical, sexual and psychological violence occurring in the family,
including battering, sexual abuse of female children in the household,
dowry- related violence, marital rape, female genital mutilation and other
traditional practices harmful to women, non- spousal violence and violence
related to exploitation;

(b) Physical, sexual and psychological violence occurring within the
general community, including rape, sexual abuse, sexual harassment and
intimidation at work, in educational institutions and elsewhere, trafficking
in women and forced prostitution;

(c) Physical, sexual and psychological violence perpetrated or condoned by the
State, wherever it occurs.

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Violence against Women 3

This study will analyze the pattern, sources, and response to these direct physical threats
to women’s personal security. Like human rights studies that concentrate on a specific
pattern such as war crimes or racial discrimination, we will examine both the broader
power relations and the specific features of this form of abuse— VAW— but not the wider
range of women’s human rights or related issues of gender equity.2

We can track gender violence over time and across space. Women worldwide face
special risks from the beginning to the end of the life- cycle: from female feticide to fe-
male genital mutilation/ circumcision (FGM/ C) in infancy, from child abuse to honor
violence and forced marriage at puberty, from sexual assault to femicide in adolescence
and youth, forced labor and battering in adulthood, and targeted killing of witches and
widows in old age. VAW is the most pervasive unfinished business of the international
human rights regime.

In the spring of 2016, I sat in Vienna with a classroom of international master’s students
from a dozen countries and asked them: how do you experience gender violence in your
country? An economics student from Iran spoke of the frequency of domestic violence,
and women’s lack of legal recourse and exit options. Her Austrian classmates pointed out
that Austrian women do have legal protection but contingent on inconsistent police re-
moval of abusers, citing cases where returning abusers have murdered their families. Her
neighbor from Argentina recounted the shocking increase in femicide in that country,
despite legal measures and public protest. The student from Russia reported how post-
communist societies leave women extraordinarily vulnerable despite legal gender eq-
uity, with high levels of employment discrimination, financial dependency, and police
corruption that may also foster exploitative migration. Similarly, the Filipina student
explained how employment discrimination and lack of reproductive rights at home drive
Philippine women overseas despite trafficking, sexual assault, and exploitation as do-
mestic workers. Students from Mexico and Turkey spoke of increasing public rape and
killings in their countries, with slow government response despite public outcry, and the
systematic devaluation and chronic abuse of women’s lives— especially poor and migrant
women. Their classmates from Germany and Finland decried shortfalls in their coun-
tries’ response to sexual assault despite greater resources and women’s empowerment in
Europe. In March 2016, they told me, Germany debated amending the requirement to

2 Although gender- based violence may also affect men and is frequent against persons questioning or transitioning
their gender assignment, this study will concentrate on VAW simply to render manageable an initial analysis of
a core aspect of the phenomenon with an immense body of material. While this book will follow the practice of
many international bodies that discuss gender violence as primarily equivalent to VAW for simplicity, we must
simultaneously recognize the importance and interdependence of gendered violence against LGBTQI persons,
men who defy masculine roles or gender regime rules such as marital choice, male political dissidents, men who
are victimized as representatives of subordinated groups by caste or ethnicity, and male survivors of conflict
rape. While Carpenter (2006) and others have begun to explicate these types of violence in their own terms, it is
our hope that future research can attempt to extend the frameworks and findings of this study for the dynamics
of change of VAW to the broader gamut of gender- based violence.

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4 Freedom from Fear

prove “resistance” to rape, while Finland’s penalty for a rape conviction was less than the
penalty for tax evasion.

Violence against women— in households, in ethnic communities, in wartime, as
a tool of repressive governments, and against migrants— kills and maims more people
than any war, yet has been recognized only recently as a human rights problem (Hoeffler
and Fearon 2014). The World Health Organization estimates that one- third of women
in the world experience gender- based violence:  human trafficking, sexual assault, do-
mestic violence, and femicide (DeVries et  al. 2013; World Health Organization 2013).
The Geneva Small Arms Survey notes that more than 66,000 women and girls are killed
violently every year, while the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime estimates that
half of the women killed worldwide are murdered by a family member (Nowak 2012;
UNODC 2013). Recent studies of the global prevalence of rape estimate that in 2010,
7.2% of women worldwide had experienced non- partner sexual violence (Abrahams et al.
2014)— over 240 million women. Around the world, at least 150 million girls under the
age of 18 have been sexually assaulted in their lifetimes, and half were under 16 when the
abuse occurred (Commission on Population and Development 2012). The International
Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that over four million women are victims of forced
sexual exploitation, as well as millions more who are victims of other kinds of trafficking
and forced labor (International Labour Organization 2012).

Above and beyond its toll on hundreds of millions of direct victims, VAW has been
linked to numerous social costs, including international conflict, crime, underdevelop-
ment, disease, unsustainable population growth, and environmental destruction. After ex-
tensive empirical testing of wealth, democracy, and culture as drivers of conflict, Hudson
et  al. conclude:  “The very best predictor of a state’s peacefulness is its level of violence
against women” (2015, 205). Gender equity and women’s security are linked to every as-
pect of economic development (World Bank 2012). Within countries, gender violence
raises medical costs, taxes police and legal systems, and lowers worker productivity— in a
World Bank study of nine countries, 1– 2% of national income is consumed by the costs of
abuse (Duvvury et al. 2013). Rape is a major threat to global public health, since beyond
the direct health consequences of injury, partner, stranger, and conflict rape alike spread
disease. Women beaten by their partners are much more likely to become infected with
HIV/ AIDS (UN “Unite to End Violence against Women:  Fact Sheet” n.d.). Female
birth suppression is systematically linked to crime as well as trafficking and sexual assault
(Hudson and den Boer 2004). One 15- country study shows that women suffering abuse
are more likely to have an unintended pregnancy, more than twice as likely to seek an
abortion, twice as likely to have a miscarriage, and their children are almost four times as
likely to manifest low birth weight (Prebble 2013).

Contrary to the conventional wisdom, there is increasing evidence that violence may
persist despite modernization, as the United Nations’ Beijing + 20 Report shows world-
wide improvements in women’s health, education, and political participation— but an
epidemic level of violence (UN Women 2015). In some cases, women’s insecurity may

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Violence against Women 5

even be intensifying— although the incidence of specific forms of violence is notoriously
difficult to measure, we can model the overall pattern and its social impact. Over the pe-
riod 2006– 2014, in an era of rapid growth in the developing world, the Physical Security
of Women Index (PSOW) collected by the WomanStats database project across 169
countries has deteriorated in more countries than it has improved. During the last decade
of development and urbanization, China has fallen from 2 in 2006 to 3 in 2009 to 4 in
2014 on the PSOW scale, signifying a deterioration from occasional to widespread and
tolerated violence (Hudson et  al. 2011; WomanStats Project Database n.d.). Although
clearly reporting has improved in many places, if we assess VAW reports in a similar
fashion to other forms of crime, the diversity of reporting sources and locations, trend of
steady increase, and recorded increases in fatal forms of abuse that are more likely to gen-
erate official registration combine to suggest there is some genuine underlying increase
in violence— and even increased perception and fear of violence diminishes women’s
empowerment.3

Deepening the contradiction of violence amid modernization, many major hot spots of
VAW are globalizing, urbanizing, liberalizing middle- income states with rising women’s
education, employment, and political participation. In Brazil alone, 43,700 women have
been killed by their partners since 2000 (Agencia Patricia Galvao n.d.). In that country,
recently headed by a female president, reports of rape increased by 168% in five years—
from 15,351 in 2005 to 41,294 in 2010 (Forum Seguranca n.d.). The 2012 fatal gang rape
of a student in Delhi— in the heart of a modernizing city in a rapidly growing country
that has been led by a woman— was just one marker of an epidemic of VAW in India that
spans the public and private sphere, from dowry deaths to female infanticide. According
to the US Department of State human rights country reports for 2013, in India, “Official
statistics pointed to rape as the country’s fastest growing crime” (US Department of State
Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor 2013, “India.”). Domestic violence data
on India also show an increase from 1998 to 2005 (Simister 2012, 51). South Africa—
with one of Africa’s best records on women’s political empowerment and worst on so-
cial inequality— reported over 66,000 rapes in 2013, up from 64,000 the previous year,
and the figure has been steadily rising since the 1990s (US Department of State Bureau
of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor 2013, “South Africa”). Human trafficking has
surged in post- apartheid South Africa (Frankel 2016). This pattern continues in simi-
larly situated countries beyond the emerging economy BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India,
China, and South Africa) in other middle- income globalizers, such as Turkey and the

3 The WomanStats database, the most comprehensive and verified source of global information, measures over
300 indicators for 175 countries with extensive requirements for at least three independent sources and checks
for cross- coder reliability. All dimensions of women’s security include separate information on prevalence via
reported data, law and theoretical …