Responding to Violence Against Women

The opinions expressed in this document are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the United Nations or of INSTRAW. The designations employed and presentation of the material in this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Secretariat of the United Nations nor INSTRAW concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area, or of its authorities or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. Copyright 2005 INSTRAW All rights reserved Responding to “Violence against women”: how development policies address the issue of gender-based violence Belén Sobrino Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor Dr Subir Sinha, for his advice while writing this paper; and Dr Chris Cramer for transforming my understanding of violence and the development process. I thank Angela Huamán Gómez, Gender Coordinator of ReproSalud Ayacucho (Peru) for the information provided about the project in Peru and, Silvia Pessah, of Flora Tristán (Peru), for her time, support and discussions. I would also like to extend my thanks to Elisa Van Waeyenberg for her valuable comments of previous drafts. Responsibility for any errors remains with the author CONTENTS 1. Summary Acronyms Introduction 2. Institutionalization of “Violence against Women” discourse: VAW as development oncern 2.1. Responding to Violence against Women: a new framework for analysis 2.2 From women’s movement advocacy to VAW as development concern 2.3 Redefining the link: VAW and sexual and reproductive health and rights 3. 3.1 3.2. The construction of gender identities in Latin America Finding Meaning: “The Openings” “Policing” women’s bodies through reproductive health policies 4. 4.1 4.2 Case Study: Violence against women in Peru Peru reproductive health and rights: Context and Background Health Community-Mobilization Programme: ReproSalud 5. Conclusion 6. Recommendations 7. 7.1 7.2 7.3 Appendices Landmarks in the global debate on violence against women and reproductive health On-Line resources and databases on VAW ReproSalud: areas of interventions 8. Bibliography Summary This paper aims to deconstruct (“desalambrar”) the links between violence, gender and sexuality in order to explore how gender politics may be shaped by hegemonic discourses, beliefs, and behaviours that promote the normalization of everyday violence against women. All types of violence against women have a common denominator in that they are all sexual violence – based on women’s physical difference and social and economic subordination within families, societies and States. Sexuality is an integral component of the web of gendered power relations that reach beyond the economic and political spheres to control women’s behaviour and maintain their subordination. Yet, sexuality is rarely discussed in development theory and practice, except in terms of population or reproductive health, and, within this discourse, women’s sexuality is primarily equated with their reproductive function and tied to national and economic well-being. While development discourse and practice are seldom defined in terms of gender and sexuality, they are nevertheless both gendered and sexed as they often revolve around women’s roles as child-bearers, mothers and wives. This marking has qualified developing world women’s sexuality with a powerful discourse that emphasizes their maternal role and the denial of sexual feeling and desire. Within this discourse, women’s bodies are exposed to violence in two ways: firstly, by equating womanhood with motherhood and imposing a utilitarian view of the mother/woman as a reproductive entity i.e., bearers of the family and guardians of national honour-; and secondly, violence against women who exhibit their sexual autonomy in opposition to the asexual construction of the mother figure. This paper will argue that the current discourse on women’s sexuality perpetuates violence against women by legitimizing the use of their bodies for political, cultural and economic consolidation. In addition, the paper will question the shortcomings of current theory and practices for addressing VAW, and discuss the possible utility of a new perspective, that of gender and sexuality, for explaining and challenging violence against women. Based on examples from the Latin American region, the paper will conclude with a recommendation for incorporating a gender and sexuality perspective in efforts to address and eliminate violence against women as a means to advance women’s citizenship and to give full meaning to “A Life Free of Violence.” Acronyms AI Amnesty International APROFAM Asociación Pro-Bienestar de la Familia AWID Association for Women’s Rights in Development. CBOs Community-based organizations CEDAW Convention of the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women CESIP Centro de Estudios Sociales y Publicaciones CHANGE Centre for Health and Gender Equity CLADEM Comité de América Latina y el Caribe para la Defensa de los Derechos de la Mujer or Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defense of Women’s Rights CRLP Centre for Reproductive Law and Policy or Centre for Reproductive Rights DAWN Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era DEMUS Estudio para la Defensa de los Derechos de la Mujer, Study for the Defense of Women’s Rights (Peruvian NGO). FLACSO Latin American Research Institute for Social Sciences Flora Tristán Centro de Mujeres Flora Tristán, Flora Tristán Women’s Centre (Peruvian NGO) GAD Gender and Development HRW Human Rights Watch ICPD International Conference on Population and Development ICRW International Centre for Research on Women INGO International non-Governmental Organization IPPF/WHR International Planned Parenthood Federation/Western Hemisphere Region Manuela Ramos Movimiento Manuela Ramos, The Manuela Ramos Movement (Peruvian NGO) MoH Ministry of Health MSPAS (see MoH) Ministerio de Salud Pública y Asistencia Social NGO Non-governmental organization NFP Natural Family Planning SRRs Sexual and Reproductive Rights UDHR Universal Declaration of Human Rights UN United Nations UNIFEM United Nations Development Fund for Women USAID United States Agency for International Development VAW Violence Against Women WHO World Health Organization WID Women in Development instraw www.un-instraw.org 1. INTRODUCTION This paper aims to deconstruct (“desalambrar”) the links between violence, gender and sexuality. The term desalambrar is borrowed from Latin American feminist scholars (Montoya et al. 2002) and used to explore how gender politics may be shaped by hegemonic discourses, beliefs, and behaviours that promote the normalization of violence against women (VAW). In this sense, this paper seeks to desalambrar the question of VAW not simply where it is most obvious - for instance in conflict situations, on the streets, at work or within the household - but also where it is less obvious, and rarely discussed, namely in the domain of knowledge, thinking and research.1 Up to 70 per cent of women that are murdered worldwide are killed by their male partners (WHO 2000), one in every three women is beaten, coerced into sex or abused in their lifetime (AI 2005) and more than 60 million women are “missing” from the world as a result of sex-selective abortions (AI 2005). Like the invisibility of these “missing” women, the violence perpetrated against women remains “misrecognized” (Scheper-Hughes 2004; Bourdieu 2004; Taussig 2004).2 As ScheperHughes (2004:20) points out, the normalization and misrecognition of everyday violence “lies in failing to sensitize ourselves, in misrecognizing protogenocidal practices enacted as normative behaviour by ordinary “good” citizens”.3 Violence against women has a common denominator: it is a sexual violence – either physical or psychological. Sexuality has served as a powerful instrument to control women’s lives and maintain their subordination.4 For instance, “virginity tests” are currently forced on South African women, supposedly as a means of controlling the spread 1.To deconstruct is the closest English translation of the Spanish word desalambrar. Desalambrar implies tearing down the fences, or destroying the wires –alambres- around people, concepts and structures in order to see beyond and beneath complicated social constructions and discourses. Desalambrar was popularized in Latin America by Daniel Viglietti in the 1970s with the song “A desalambrar”, which urged Latin American people to tear down the fences around the land that kept the elite divided from the common people, desalambrando or unravelling rooted inequalities embedded in society. Later, the notion of “desalambrar” was adopted as a regional model that emerged from the Latin American tradition of combining political-economic analysis with radical critique and practice. Latin American feminists have appropriated this term to analyze how gender politics can be influenced by discourses, practices, institutions, and behaviours. They argue that dismantling these discourses can lead to social transformation (Montoya et al. 2002:3-4). 2. Throughout the paper I will use the definition of violence against women adopted by the United Nations: “Any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivations of liberty, whether occurring in public or private”. Article 1, Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1993. 3. VAW protogenocidal practice occurs not only during war time – such as in Rwanda, ex-Yugoslavia, Sudan-, but also takes place in peacetime, like the femicide of women for instance in Guatemala (AI 2005) and in Ciudad Juárez/ Mexico (AI 2003). The concept of “everyday violence” allows me to reinforce the idea of normalization and misrecognition of violence perpetuated against women. This practice of everyday violence causes situations of impunity, failure of judiciary system, etc. 4. I refer in this paper to the foucaultian notion of sexuality. Foucault argued that the notion of sexuality first emerged in the 19th Century in connection with the development of other fields of knowledge. Sexuality was articulated in individual bodies and it had the tremendous power of administrating the life of the species. Therefore, sexuality was a very powerful domain that needed to be regulated through fields of knowledge i.e., medicine, law, etc., to please the wishes of power/knowledge structures (Foucault 1985). Throughout the paper, I show how sexuality has served as a powerful disciplinal practice to control human behaviours and maintain a gender order. Only when the body resists this disciplinal practice, it is when the body encounters violence. instraw www.un-instraw.org of HIV. In Uganda, women who pass these “virginity tests” are awarded scholarships to the University (AWID 2005). In Guatemala, Mexico and the Dominican Republic, female job applicants are forced to undergo pregnancy exams as a condition of employment in some export processing assembly plants (HRW 1998; HRW 2002; HRW 2004). In Zambia, the value placed on dry sex forces girls and women to attempt to dry out their vaginas in order to hide sexual arousal (HRW 2002a). These practices constitute forms of violence against women’s bodies that imply that women should be asexual beings whose primary function is reproduction. Women thus have little control over their sexual lives or autonomy, placing them at high risk for rape, exploitation, HIV-infection, unwanted pregnancy and other forms of violence. This paper will argue that gender and sexuality belong to a web of gendered power relations that are not confined solely to the economic and political spheres. To increase understanding of gendered violence and propose a new framework within which violence against women can be addressed, it is important to analyze how female sexuality is constructed in a given context, in order to identify rooted beliefs around women’s sexuality. Sexuality, however, is rarely discussed in development theory and practice, except in terms of population or reproductive health. Within this discourse, women’s sexuality is primarily equated with their reproductive function and tied to national and economic well-being. While development discourse and practices are seldom defined in terms of gender and sexuality, they are nevertheless both gendered and sexed as they often revolve around women’s roles as child-bearers, mothers and wives (Millán 2001; Lind and Share 2003, Lancaster and Leonardo 1997). The main objective of this paper is to explore how this utilitarian view of women’s sexuality can contribute to the perpetuation of traditional gender roles and, as a consequence, risk perpetuating or “domesticating” violence against women. Since the international discourse on violence against women was first created and then institutionalized, a growing body of international research has extensively documented the magnitude and outcomes of VAW. VAW has been analyzed from three different perspectives: the economic and social costs of VAW (Bott et al. 2005; Morrison and Orlando 2004); VAW as a health burden (Heise 1999; Garcia Moreno 2002; Ellsberg et al. 2001; Watts and Mayhew 2004; Lubben et al. 2004); and VAW as a human rights violation (UN, HRW and AI). One of the major achievements of the VAW movement has been the adoption of linkages politics,5 already a top priority in the international development agenda, to advocate for ending violence against women. 5. VAW movement managed to link top priority issues in the international agenda such as respect for human rights or the backlash of violence for economic development to claim more attention and funds from the international community to tackle VAW. instraw www.un-instraw.org These arguments have been adopted by both inter-governmental organizations (IGOs) such as the United Nations or the Organization of American States, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as a means to raise the visibility of violence against women in international development discourses and agendas. However, neither the organizations nor the policy-makers have paid sufficient attention to the vital points where these three perspectives intersect, which is essential to transforming women’s status as citizens. A new perspective of gender and sexuality could boost new debates on gendered power, and ultimately contribute to women’s realization of full citizenship –including the recognition of sexual and reproductive rights-, where women control their own sexuality, and where autonomy and sexual equality prevail.6 Such a situation would, above all, imply the capacity of women to refuse to be subject to violence against their bodies (Corrêa 2003; Jelin 1996; Corrêa and Petchesky 1994; Jelin 1997). To further the arguments put forth in this paper, concrete examples from the Latin American region will demonstrate how women’s sexuality has been strongly controlled by state health and social policies, with a tendency to equate women’s sexuality to reproduction, and the family (Molyneux 2000; Antrobus 1994 in Corrêa 1994). The rigid definition and protection of the notion of “family” has led to neglect of the individualization of women’s rights from the family (Molyneux 2000). The State and the Catholic Church’s control over women’s bodies has contributed to the dislocation of gender between the “public” and “private” spheres, strengthening sexual hierarchies in gender relations. Hegemonic discourses on “motherhood” and “womanhood” have gathered momentum as a means to maintain the “sexual moral order” (Htun 2003; Molyneux 2000; Melhuus 1996). The prevalence of violence against women in the Latin-American region today has its roots in historically, culturally and sexually constructed gender identities, which maintain women’s subordination to the hegemonic masculine order. This situation reveals fundamental inequalities in the organization of society and results in differential understandings and meanings of citizenship for women and men. A central point of this paper is to avoid the representation of powerless women as victims of gendered violence. Neither is the intent to invoke the aberration of patriarchal norms. Rather, the paper questions the shortcomings of current theory and practices for addressing VAW, and engages in a discussion about the utility of gender and sexuality for challenging and eliminating VAW. The first section of the paper will discuss the institutionalization of the VAW discourse, 6. I subscribe to Sonia Corrêa’s understanding of SRRs. In Corrêa’s words, sexual and reproductive rights should be defined as a non-negotiable dimension of human rights – sexual enjoyment and pleasure, free exercise of sexuality and reproductive capacity- and not to be exclusively framed in the context of health, population or violence (Corrêa 2002). instraw www.un-instraw.org firstly by illustrating the different perspectives available for addressing violence against women. Some of the current problems of development theory, in particular Gender and Development (GAD) theory, for addressing VAW will be highlighted. The paper will further argue that different policy trends have shaped the adoption of strategies for addressing VAW, such as the rights-based or the health approach. Despite the value of some of these arguments, all these perspectives share the same deficiency in that they do not question the stereotypical portrayal of women’s sexuality and the use of their bodies. The second section draws from a Mexican foundational narrative to illustrate the symbolic construction of gender identities in Latin America. Here the Openings (Belausteguigoitia, 2004) of women’s bodies allow for the coercion and control of women’s sexuality, and their vulnerability to violence. The final section of the paper draws from a case study of ReproSalud, a Peruvian project that seeks to combat VAW through a health-community mobilization project, aiming to increase women’s health-seeking behaviour. This case study will illustrate how the present health approach to VAW is still closely tied to discourses that emphasize women’s maternal role. In conclusion, the paper will recommend the incorporation of a gender and sexuality perspective to efforts to address and eliminate VAW as a means of advancing women’s citizenship, and ultimately recognizing what a “Life Free of Violence”7 really means. 7. A Life Free of Violence: It’s our Right is the slogan used by the United Nations Inter-Agency Campaign on Women’s Human Rights in Latin American and the Caribbean. The campaign’ objectives are to: raise awareness on the prevalence and high human, social and economic costs of violence against women and girls; sensitize, motivate and build capacity of governments to develop, change, and implement legislation and policies to combat gender violence; and support and strengthen networks, public and private organizations and programmes that work to eradicate violence against women and girls. September 2005 instraw www.un-instraw.org 2. INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF THE “VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN” DISCOURSE: VAW AS DEVELOPMENT CONCERN This chapter explores the institutionalization of the Violence against Women discourse as a development concern among Inter-Governmental Organizations (IGOs), and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). During the last decades, IGOs and the women’s movement worldwide have united in their efforts to place VAW on the international agenda and map a strategy to combat it. Despite significant advances in legislation and an increase in the number of development interventions that address VAW, it is still a common facet of women’s subordination throughout the world. Since violence against women is essentially gendered violence exercised against women’s bodies, it is vital to link VAW with issues of sexuality in order to address it. This chapter strives to open a debate regarding gaps in Gender and Development (GAD) theory and practice for addressing violence against women. In doing so, a new framework of analysis is proposed, namely that of gender and sexuality, which will allow for a greater understanding of other types of gendered power and resistance that go beyond the economic and political spheres. To date, the analysis of violence against women has largely ignored the issue of sexuality – its norms, roles and practices- as a powerful force behind VAW. IGOs and NGOs have approached the issue of VAW from three different perspectives: 1) the economic and social costs of violence or the neo-liberal/economist framework; 2) VAW as a violation of fundamental human rights or the rights-based approach; and 3) VAW as a health burden or the health approach. These perspectives have been influenced by different trends in development policies and practice, but also by the ideas that development discourse has forged on women’s sexuality and their bodies. Development discourse has contributed to some extent to the conceptualization of women’s sexuality and their bodies as reproductive entities. This conceptualization produced certain images of women/mothers and the normalization of sexual hierarchies, which have exacerbated violence against women by subjugating women to male will and opening their bodies to sexual, physical and psychological violation. Although the GAD discourse attempts to project a more “holistic” approach to understanding gender power relations within the household, it has focused primarily on an economistic framework of resource allocation and decision-making within the household. The women’s empowerment strategies used to address VAW have not challenged the power relations embedded in gender and sexuality. The so-called rights-based approach to addressing VAW illustrates the ability of women’s instraw www.un-instraw.org organizations to place the issue of VAW at the forefront of the international agenda. However, the rights-based approach has failed to incorporate sexuality and its impact on VAW, and, consequently, sexual and reproductive rights are still being defined within a framework of population and health. The health perspective for addressing VAW also places women’s sexuality within a population and reproductive health framework. A new framework that links gender and sexuality to the elimination of VAW could bring about new ways of thinking about the empowerment of women in the long term. Ultimately, such a framework would seek to erode sexual hierarchies, beliefs and thoughts that are often linked to violence. 2.1. RESPONDING TO VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN A NEW FRAMEWORK FOR ANALYSIS Into the 21st century, VAW is either still trapped in a totalizing patriarchal discourse i.e., subordination of “powerless” women to patriarchal structures or hegemonic masculinities, or framed within a medical and/or legalistic framework (ScheperHughes 2004). Research on VAW has been heavily influenced by the neo-liberal discourse on violence, conflict and development (Collier 2000). Within this discourse, violence and conflict are understood as a backlash to development, especially economic development, and violence is addressed mainly in terms of its costs to the health system, or its disruption of trade and markets. This framework has been borrowed and transferred to the study of VAW, such that the international community and NGOs have pressured national governments to condemn VAW on the grounds that: i) it is an economic burden; ii) it violates women’s rights; and iii) it poses a significant burden to health systems. To some extent, the institutionalization of VAW as a development concern has diluted a more feminist perspective with its core principles of the analysis of women’s sexuality and the body. As Parker et al. (2000:8) note, gender and sexuality’s power relations reproduce sexual inequality in specific ways. Cultural and social rules and regulations place certain limitations on negotiation over sexual interactions and contraceptive use, which in turn leave women vulnerable to violence. Although development discourse and practice are rarely manifested in term of gender and sexuality, they are essentially gendered and sexed. Within these discourses, women’s bodies are marked as mothers, child-bearers, and wives (Millán 2001; Parker 2000). This pattern constructs certain models of femininity vs. masculinity and implicitly defines a gendered social order, sustaining certain power relations between women and men as groups (Connell 1987 in Kandiyoti 2003).8 8. In Mexico, for instance, the reinforcement of masculinity among the male working class happens through the so-called albur. The albur is a symbolic game that alludes to a sexual relationship, in which one or more men –the winners- penetrate, and other man (or his mother, his wife or sister) –the losers- is penetrated. Thus, the virility of one man is constructed by negating the masculinity of the other. The albur requires mastery of the cultural codes of sexuality, and sexual knowledge becomes a form of power that men can exercise over women. Some authors interpret the albur as a form of boasting male power among men who lack political, ethnic and class power. Ultimately, the albur refers to a representation of the powerful –men- and the powerless –women (Szasz 1998). instraw www.un-instraw.org Gender and sexuality are under-researched in the fields of international development and human rights. Sexuality itself is rarely discussed except in the context of population, health and development, particularly in terms of reproductive health and the spread of HIV/AIDS. These discourses aim to control women’s reproductive function as a way of controlling population rates in poor regions reflecting a medicalized approach to women’s sexuality and its outcomes. More recently, a growing literature has begun to investigate the effects of colonialism and neocolonialism on the power regimes that shape women’s sexuality, and how these patterns of sexual regulation are, to some extent, fuelling violence against women (Baines 2003; Palma 1990; Hyam 1990; Manderson and Jolly 1997).9 Ignoring the analysis of sexuality closes new paths for researching entrenched VAW and addressing it more successfully. The current development discourse and its practices naturalize a certain understanding of women’s roles in development, including how women are linked to their family position and forced into certain sexual patterns of behaviour. It is, therefore, important to briefly review gender and development theories to uncover how women’s sexuality and reproduction have been targeted, and what the challenges for gender scholars are within the development framework to advance women’s status. The discourse on women’s participation in development began from a welfarist approach, in which women were brought into development essentially as “better mothers”, through population education and control policies (nutrition, childbearing, safe motherhood) (Hardiman and Midgley 1982; MacPherson and Midgley 1987). This approach identified women and their needs merely as recipients of development aid, a perspective that fit with the modernization of the state, in which motherhood was considered the pinnacle of nationhood. A turning point came in the early 1970s with the creation of the Women in Development (WID) framework.10 Based on economic efficiency arguments, WID advocated for the incorporation of women as agents in the development process. Women were no longer exclusively seen as recipients of development aid, but as active participants in the process. The WID approach reinforced family planning projects as an “effective, coherent and global strategy on stabilizing population growth” (USAID 1994) and freeing women to assume so-called “economically productive” work. As Moser (1993) argued, the first initiatives aimed at women by international development agencies were welfarist in nature: “ten of eleven projects approved in fiscal 1989 addressed such basic matters as family planning, and maternal and child health care” (World Bank 1990:15). This approach was “premised on the 9. Baines (2003) makes a detailed radiography of why Hutu extremists raped and murdered women, who were historically conceptualized as “sexed” and not “ethnicized” in the Rwandan genocide. Drawing on Nelson (1999), Baines traces the interconnections between the public and private sphere to understand the genocide as a strategic attempt to “link or articulate individual bodies with the national body politics” (Baines 2003:480). 10. The WID framework emerged in the 1970s with the work of the Swedish economist Esther Boserup. instraw www.un-instraw.org assumption of women as “others” performing childbearing tasks, and identified women with sole reproductive roles” (Chowdhry 1995 in Rai 2002:57). By the 1980s, WID was already heavily criticized by feminist scholars and activists (Moser 1993; Young 1997; Razavi and Miller 1995). The response was a shift from an exclusive focus on women to a critical analysis of gender power relations, giving rise to the Gender and Development (GAD) framework. According to GAD, women’s subordination is rooted in imbalanced gendered power relations (Young 1997; Moser 1993; Kabeer 1994; Razavi and Miller 1995; Rathgeber 1990). With GAD, empowerment became the “motherhood” term in the development process (Parpart et al. 2002; Kabeer 1999; Rowlands 1998; Gupta and Goetz 1996). Women’s empowerment projects have been increasingly implemented as a means to combat violence against women. During the 1990s, women’s empowerment was incorporated into the rhetoric of development discourse as the “magic solution” to women’s subordination. Under an economistic framework, such projects assume that the improvement of women’s economic status within the household would ultimately eliminate domestic violence (Kabeer 1998a). However, the shortcomings of these empowerment strategies were rapidly brought to light (Afshar 1998; Parpart et al. 2 0 0 2 ; Pa r p a r t 2 0 0 2 a ; Ro w l a n d s 1 9 9 8 ; Ra i 2 0 0 2 ; S t a u d t 2 0 0 2 ) . The research by Schuler et al. (1996) on women’s empowerment through credit programmes in rural Bangladesh illustrated that “greater involvement of women in income generation schemes is sometimes associated with greater violence” (p.1739). It appeared that a redefinition of women’s role and status in conjunction with their increased involvement in the cash economy was often accompanied by an escalation of violence by men who felt that their positions of authority were threatened by women’s new role (ibid.:1738). This new research highlighted that prevailing power relations are destabilized when established gender roles are actively questioned, and that VAW can be used as a means to reinstall male authority. Although we cannot dismiss the potential for positive change of women’s involvement in paid work, economic “independence” means very little in a context of “poverty” and continued social and cultural subordination. As long as normative assumptions about women’s roles continue to be circumscribed in responsibilities for childbearing and reproduction,11 so too do traditional patriarchal relations in the household (McClenaghan 1997). Mapping out the power dynamics embedded in gender and sexuality can facilitate the identification of strategies for negotiating sexual entitlements, highlighting those conditions that need to change before empowerment and full citizenship become a reality for women. 11. Many VAW projects still seek women as performing childbearing tasks. The British NGO CAFOD runs its VAW project “Violence and Hunger” in Cambodia. This project aims primarily to help women to grow food in their garden for trading and feeding their children. Again, this view of women reinforces the icon of the mother feeding her children. It also underestimates the problematic of violence when proposing that the provision of food can terminate violence within the household. http://www.cafod.org.uk/where_we_work/asia/cambodia/banteay_srei. July 2005. instraw www.un-instraw.org As Rai (2002) argues, WID and GAD literature is largely developed within liberal frameworks, and this makes certain strategies for women’s empowerment feasible while at the same time closing off alternatives spaces. In this sense, development interventions have involved women in projects to gain economic resources without challenging the social, cultural of policy environment within which these projects operate (DAWN, 2002). GAD theory has not successfully incorporated an understanding of violence in the development process, particularly violence against women. As argued above, one of the most important lines of research in the GAD discourse has been gendered power relations within the household. Gender and household studies have been largely documented from an economistic approach of resource allocation within households (Kabeer 1998; Moser 1993). Much of the evidence of violence against women calls for reflection on power and resistance dynamics on sexuality within the household, which forces us to move beyond the current economistic framework. As Scheper-Hughes (2004:3) argues, the family is one of the most violent social institutions. She points out that the family system in each instance responds to cultural, social, political and economic exclusion, which often make violent behaviour the only possible resource (ibid.:3). Recently, the proliferation of projects addressing VAW from different angles has increased: VAW and the reproductive health approach; women’s empowerment projects through self-esteem, micro-credit, education; and lobbying and implementation of VAW legislation from the human rights discourse. However, the incidence of VAW remains relatively unchanged. For example, rape as a weapon of war is more commonly used because women are considered the bearer’s of a nation’s honour and to rape them is to dishonour the enemy and disrupt their bloodline (Sideris 2001; Baines 2003; Turshen 2001):12 “ the bodies of three girls who have been raped where found in the area .Both sides mark their territory by leaving scars on the bodies of the women”. Colombia conflict zone, (AI 2004:3) The understanding of household gender dynamics in GAD theory should be challenged in order to shift its emphasis from the purely economic to a body politics approach, engaging issues of sexuality in order to challenge and eliminate VAW. This new 12. Baines (2003) argues that during the Tutsi-Hutus conflict, the Tutsi women were raped individually and collective. This act may have been a form of “initiation” of Hutu men to the nation, but it was also arguably an insidious means of extending humiliation to the entire family of the women (ibid.:482). instraw www.un-instraw.org approach to sexuality and violence aims to foster full recognition of women’s rights and citizenship, including serious debate on sexual and reproductive rights as a starting point for addressing VAW. The articulation of reproductive and sexual rights with power and resources acknowledges women’s power to make informed decisions about sexuality and the body, and the resources to carry out these decisions. The inclusion of sexual and reproductive rights will enhance the existing discourse on women’s rights. However, sexual and reproductive rights are meaningless, especially for the poorest and most disenfranchised, without the resources through which they can be operationalized, such as social welfare, personal security, and economic justice (Corrêa 2003; Petchesky 2000). 2.2 FROM WOMEN’S MOVEMENT ADVOCACY TO VAW AS DEVELOPMENT CONCERN After more than 25 years, the international movement surrounding VAW has gained momentum and recognition and has placed VAW on the policy agenda of IGOs and national governments. Until the early 1970s, there was very little public discussion of VAW, which was still considered a private issue. The question however remains as to why violence became such a flagship issue for the women’s rights movement? Part of the success of the VAW movement derived from the decision of activists to apply linkages politics, in order to gain credibility and funding for VAW projects, by demonstrating how VAW was related to other issues that were high on the development agenda, such as socio-economic development, health or human rights (Heise et al. 1999; Sen 2003). As a result many organizations and NGOs across the world have pressured national governments to pass legislation condemning VAW (Appendix 7.1). A brief history of the activism surrounding VAW provides a broader picture of the VAW movement dealing, playing with, incorporating, and sometimes being co-opted by this “violence and development discourse”, marginalizing in this way alternative understandings of women’s rights and empowerment (Alvarez 1998, 1999, 2003). It is, therefore, pertinent to trace a short account of the movement’s trajectory. According to Joachim (2003), the international movement surrounding VAW can be divided into three phases: the first period covers the 1970s, with two UN conferences on women and an alternative encounter of women NGOs and feminist activists gathering independently to asses the question of violence against women.13 The second phase began in the mid-1980s following the Third World Conference 13. This feminist encounter namely the International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women (Brussels 1976) gathered over 2,000 women from 40 countries. It was not a Tribunal structured along legal lines, but a meeting to think and incorporate new strategies to fight VAW. The fact that wealthier countries dominated the meeting raised many criticisms from the South. Testimonies of violence were given predominantly by women from western countries (Joachim 2003; Sen 2003). instraw www.un-instraw.org on Women in Nairobi, Kenya (1985), where VAW emerged for the first time as a major problem for the development of women. This phase saw the incorporation of VAW into a health and human rights discourse, where health services became key elements of a rights-based response to VAW (Miller 2004). In the mid-1990s, the third phase began with the World Human Rights Conference in Vienna (1993), where women’s organizations successfully adopted the motto “women’s rights are human rights” (Bunch 1990). More recently, the issue of VAW discourse has been successfully incorporated into the rights-based approach (Molyneux and Lazar 2003). Between 1975 and 1985, VAW was first introduced during three UN Conferences on Women seeking to identify new and pressing issues concerning women.14 The first UN Conference on Women held in Mexico in 1975 was overshadowed by the ongoing debate over the Cold-War, North-South conflicts and the issues of apartheid and Zionism (Joachim 2003). As a result, women’s organizations decided to organize independently to highlight women’s concerns and issues in the International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women (Brussels 1976), where the participants condemned all forms of male oppression as a crime against humanity including forced (non-) motherhood and the sexual objectification of women (Joachim 2003). This first encounter was a step forward to reinforcing the formation of national and international networks such as ISIS International,15 and also fuelled initiatives against VAW by bringing to light issues such as rape and dowry-death. In the second stage, the issue of violence became part of the UN Agenda. The common view was that domestic violence was a “societal ill” and that the victim as well as the perpetrator were abnormal or sick (Joachim 2003). These assumptions gave rise to therapeutic or welfarist frameworks for the analysis of VAW. With the World Conference of Human Rights in Vienna in 1993, VAW was at the forefront of the adoption a human rights framework that centred on the idea that “women’s rights are human rights” (Bunch 1999).16 For many women’s organizations this event presupposed the politicization of VAW. Finally, VAW was acknowledged as a women’s rights violation in private and public spheres reinforcing the movement after years of political struggle (Sen 2003; Molyneux and Lazar 2003; Sweetman and Williams 2001). 14. These three conferences were: the 1975 UN Conference on Women in Mexico City, the 1980 Conference in Copenhagen and the 1985 UN Conference on Women in Nairobi. 15. ISIS emerged in 1974 as a women’s movement concern to research and document women’s situation worldwide. To date, ISIS is based in Santiago de Chile (Chile) as a women’s documentation and advocacy centre, specialiing in gender violence and women’s health. See http://www.isis.cl July 2005 (Spanish only). 16. There were initially some problems with the definition of public and private spheres and how to legislate this field. Bunch’s paper confronted, for the first time, the separation of private/public spheres central to classical liberalisms and the human rights literature, by highlighting that VAW not only appears in the public but also in the private sphere (Bunch 1999). For a feminist critique on private/public sphere and women’s rights see Charlesworth and Chikin (2003). instraw www.un-instraw.org As Miller (2004) points out, the analysis of violence in the context of a human rights approach was simultaneously progressive and regressive. To a certain extent, VAW worked as a human rights scandal because it is an embedded horror that cannot be ignored (Bunch 1999), but it also worked because stories of suffering women were commensurate with the mainstream icon of the powerless woman (especially Southern woman) in need of protection (Kapur 2003). Critics to the rights-based approach to eliminating VAW argue that while legal reforms have provided protection for women survivors by attempting to sensitize the judiciary, police forces and the health system, these changes have not properly addressed the social conditions that give rise to VAW such as sexual hierarchies and gender inequalities that support or perpetuate women’s subordination (Collins and Whalen 1989; Romero 1985). To date, few attempts have been made by IGOs and NGOs to introduce a discussion on sexual and reproductive rights as a starting point for ending violence against women. Opening this debate would not only create greater understanding of the root causes of violence but would also give greater meaning to “A Life Free of Violence”, The campaign “A Life Free of Violence”17 and to the idea of citizenship for women. The Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defence of Women’s Rights (CLADEM) recently launched a campaign for an Inter-American Convention on Sexual and Reproductive Rights that has the potential to effect profound and long-term change in society’s understanding of sexual and reproductive rights.18The main goal of the campaign is to challenge laws and social beliefs in Latin American countries concerning sexual practices and reproductive choices, and ultimately to reinforce the notion of citizenship with regard to the free exercise of sexuality and reproductive capacity. In this sense, the incorporation of sexual and reproductive rights into the current VAW discourse could reinforce the gradual legitimization of those rights as a non-negotiable dimension of human rights, and consequently open possibilities for transforming gender relations and creating meaningful social change (Corrêa et al. 2004). With regard to reproductive rights and VAW, the International Conference on Population and Development (Cairo, 1994) was perhaps the first step to linking 17. inspired the motto of many NGOs working on VAW today. This campaign contributed successfully to rise awareness on VAW issues. By the end of the 1990s, all Latin American countries had signed CEDAW, the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Violence Against Women, which represents a huge advancement to combat VAW. http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/cedaw.htm , July 2005. Furthermore all Latin American and Caribbean countries developed their own Convention against VAW: Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women –Convención Belém do Pará. This is an important legal tool whereby VAW cases can be defended at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. h t t p : / / w w w. o a s . o r g / c i m / E n g l i s h / C o n v e n t i o n % 2 0 V i o l e n c e % 2 0 A g a i n s t % 2 0 Wo m e n . h t m , J u l y 2 0 0 5 . 18. The Convention is supported by more than 50 Latin American feminist networks and organizations. The Manifesto “Our Bodies, Our Lives” calls for ensuring state accountability for sexual and reproductive rights as well as for monitoring and resolving conflicts and human rights violations, and abuses at international level. For more information see http://www.convention.org.uy. August 2005 (mainly Spanish). instraw www.un-instraw.org VAW, women’s empowerment and reproductive choices.19 The Cairo Platform for Action called for the incorporation of VAW as a health issue for the success of any population and development-related programmes (Mayhew and Watts 2002). A year later, at the Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing, 1995), women’s sexual rights were again discussed from the perspective of health, violence, and population.20 Thus the trend has been to legislate for sexual and reproductive rights in relation to health, violence, population and development, but there has never been an explicit recognition of sexuality as a right, a pleasure, or as an essential component of women’s autonomy (Corrêa 2003). Rooted in the feminist tradition, the concept of citizenship in current Latin American women’s movements is used to strengthen democracy, for example through the slogan “what is not good for democracy is not good for women” (Vargas in Barrig 2001) as a method to operationalize through a redefinition of the notion of citizenship (Dagnino 1998). There is an understanding that to eliminate VAW it is essential to fully recognize women’s citizenship, including inter alia women’s sexual and reproductive rights.21 Under this citizenship framework, the movement surrounding VAW has linked the ability to exercise rights in both the private and public spheres (Molyneux and Lazar 2003). In a sense, this new citizenship challenges cultural constructions such as those underlying social, political and economic exclusion as fundamental impediments to democracy (Dagnino 1998). Drawing from this framework, the recognition of sexual and reproductive rights could articulate in the long term new insights to challenge cultural beliefs, diminish women’s subordination, and ultimately reduce violence against women. It is therefore crucial that the current rights-based approach to VAW include sexual and reproductive rights in its agenda. 2.3. REDEFINING THE LINK: VAW AND SEXUAL-REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH & RIGHTS In the late 1980s, the health approach to VAW emerged as part of the health and human rights discourse. Health programmes were seen as a key element in the 19. The Cairo conference moved away from the demographic-population vision to recognize a more “holistic” approach to reproductive rights. The Cairo documents set out the first attempt to empower women by exercising their reproductive rights/and choices and to guarantee women reproductive health service according to their needs. The Cairo agenda mainly focused on reproductive rights and not much attention was paid to sexual rights. 20. Feminist critics to the Beijing Conference stated that sexual rights were exclusively defined under the framework of health. These critics highlighted that sexual rights were located in the paragraph 96 of the Beijing Platform, which refers to health. Feminist activists were pushing to move them to the paragraphs 210-229, which refers to women’s human rights. http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/beijing/platform/index.html. August 2005. 21. Many feminist’s organizations are incorporating a new framework on sexual and reproductive rights as a means to combat VAW. For instance, Flora Tristán and DEMUS in Peru, Las Dignas in El Salvador, SOS Corpo in Brazil, to cite a few. (see appendix 7.2 for an annotated bibliography on VAW and SRRs, and current Latin American organizations working in both fields). 22. Health and rights responses in the 1980s emerged as a call to involve health professional in preventing and responding to torture treatment (Miller 2004). instraw www.un-instraw.org identification, referral and treatment of VAW (Miller 2004).22 Although there has been an emphasis on defining health under the framework of human rights, many of the health-related VAW projects have a tendency to medicalize rights. To date, the link between VAW and sexual and reproductive health and rights has been primarily on a medical basis. Extensive studies have illustrated the dramatic outcomes of VAW for women’s health, including their reproductive health (WHO 2000; Heise et al. 1999; Garcia-Moreno and Watts 2000; IPPF/WHR 2000; IPPF/WHR 2000a; Garcia-Moreno 2002). To some extent, however, these health services and projects dealing with VAW are exclusively focused on how VAW can damage the reproductive functions of women: “The experience of gender-based violence has been linked to increased risk for gynaecological disorders, unsafe abortions, pregnancy complications, miscarriage, low birth weight and pelvic inflammatory disease” (IPPF/WHR 2004:3). This idea reinforces the definition of womanhood as motherhood, establishing a discourse based on sexual hierarchies and gender inequalities in which women are constructed as asexual mother-figures. While medicalized responses to violence against women are necessary, over-reliance on them can depoliticize the issue of VAW, turning women into patients with a disease that needs to be ‘cured’. The first priority for current health projects addressing VAW is training health workers to deal with victims of violence.23 It also aims to increase the healthseeking behaviour of women’s reproductive and sexual health. The majority of these projects attempt to deal with the outcomes of violence, rather than working toward the prevention of VAW. In this setting, women are seen, for the most part, as sexual agents in need of sexual health services. In a sense, these are marked bodies (Millán 2001) surviving their female sex, therefore their bodies are at the core of violence. 23. The idea of training health professional emerged in the late 1980s with the work of Amnesty International and its campaigns against torture during the 1980s, responding to reports of medical participation in torture in South Africa, Chile and Uruguay (Miller 2004:28). To date, the idea of training health professionals has been taken fully on board. For instance, the International Planned Parenthood Federation/Western Hemisphere Region (IPPF/WHR) works to improve health services across Latin America –first by training medical staff, and secondly by increasing the health care services available. IPPF/ Western Hemisphere Region works with more than 45 family planning associations and NGOs such as PROFAMILIA (Dominican Republic); INPPARES (Peru); PLAFAM (Venezuela); APROFAM (Guatemala). One of its VAW strategies is to implement gender violence screening to refer women to other services (i.e. legal aid, shelter, psychological care, etc), unfortunately those services are not always available in those countries. For instance, in Peru battered women can only get the emergency contraception pill –EC- for free, the rest of the treatment (psychological, legal aid, etc) need to be paid by the women. If the woman wishes to take the case to court, she will have to undergo and pay for a legal-medical exam. In other cases, women can not even get the EC, or a safe abortion in the National Health System because of state policies. These policies are especially discriminatory for women with low or non economic resources (Peruvian NGO Flora Tristan/ personal conversation). instraw www.un-instraw.org In many countries violence against women is used to control women’s sexual behaviour, and the mere fear of violence may influence women’s sexual and reproductive decision-making. In Colombia for example, women can be imprisoned for up to four and a half years for having an abortion even in cases of rape or when their lives are at risk (HRW 2005a). In Argentina, women are routinely denied access to voluntary sterilization in the public health system, or are only allowed the procedure when their husbands have given express authorization (HRW 2005). In Guatemala, Mexico and the Dominican Republic women are forced to undergo pregnancy tests in order to be employed in export-processing plants (HRW 1998; HRW 2002; HRW 2004). All these cases underlie the linkages between the exercise of violence over women’s sexual autonomy, sexual desires and their bodies. Sexuality and sexual behaviour have historically been a powerful mechanism of discipline for regulating male and female behaviours, based on established norms of “sexual morality”. Health policies have been key in this domain by imposing restrictions on female behaviour, and ultimately on women’s bodies. This regulation of sexuality –including thoughts, behaviours and orientations- is imposed on both men and women, and is inevitably linked to cultural conceptions of masculinity and femininity. These beliefs also define the nature of the body and its functions, what is considered erotic or offensive and what is appropriate for men and women to do (Berer 1998, Dixon-Muller 1993). In general, health’s engagement with sexuality has consistently linked it to reproduction. While health services are clearly essential, they should not only be assistencial but also transformative services. This transformation comes when essential rights regarding sexuality and reproduction are integrated into the policies of the state, for example, availability of contraceptives, informed decision-making, safe abortion, reproductive choice, sexual choice, etc. The image of powerless women and their wounded bodies, victims in need of health services, displaces the idea of a citizen able to participate in political and social life and demand change on the policies that affect her life (Miller 2004). In a sense, the wounded female body is no longer worthy of respect because it no longer plays the role that has been established for it. Such, misconceptions often exist among reproductive health providers, who may hold common stereotypes about women experiencing partner violence, including the assumption that these women have done something to warrant violence or that partner violence is not a serious issue (Mayhew and Watts 2002; CRLP 1999).24 24. This “blaming the victim” is a common measure used by officials to minimize the severity of these women’s deaths and avoid responsibility (Bejarano 2003). In Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, the mothers of murdered women are told by the authorities that their daughters had a doble vida – or double life. This destroys the women’s reputation in two fundamental ways because the expression “doble vida” has a double meaning: las dos vías -both passages- is euphemism for a rape that is both vaginal and anal, and las dos vidas -double lives- implies that the murdered women were maquila workers by day and prostitutes by night (Voces sin Eco/Voices without Echo) see http://www.angelfire.com/in2/qualm/voces.html August 2005. September 2005. instraw www.un-instraw.org An emphasis on the risk of VAW for women’s reproductive functions contributes to the construction of women bodies as merely passive reproductive organs, while the male body is constructed as a proactive sexual body.25 This passive characterization of female sexuality establishes a situation of subordination and control, where sexual desires, negotiation, and so on are not in play because women are not active agents. Women’s bodies can be everything -beliefs, honour, tradition, culture, religion, pleasure and nothing: “ . (The) body of a young woman was found on the waste ground near to where the emergency call had been made. It was wrapped in a blanket and showed signs of physical and sexual violence”. Femicide in Ciudad Juárez/Mexico (AI 2003:6) Changing existing norms and conceptions about sexuality and the body means adopting a more holistic view of social justice that includes sexual and reproductive rights (Berer 2004). Ensuring social justice on the part of governments in relation to sexuality means that public and economic policy, public services and education would seek to prevent discrimination and abuse in relation to sexuality, and promote sexual health and rights. Otherwise, violence against women in general, and practices such as forced marriages, “honour killings” or “crimes of passion”, stoning, acidburning, or female genital mutilation in particular, will continue to deprive women of full citizenship (Berer 2004). 25. The fact that sexual purity is not an issue for men, but it so for women, obviously places the women in a more precarious position than men. This implies the view that sexuality for pleasure is merely a masculine domain. For instance, the Colombian courts have advanced the idea of sexuality as something that is inherently for the purpose of masculine pleasure. In this country, The Constitutional Court found that the obligatory Health Plan should include the supply of the drug known as viagra, which remedies erectile dysfunction in men, because the supply of this drug protects the dignity of life (CRLP 2003). In contrast, Colombian women can be imprisoned for up to four and a half years for having abortions even in cases of rape or when they lives are at risk (HRW 2005a).  !" """#$ !"% &                                                                    !!"#$      %&%                            ' %   '    () *                    &%        + ,      &   )  *  &       )&   %     -,    + ,         %&   %      -,., *                          .*       / 0    %  &                $*   )     )        %           )                  )  *  &   &    .          )      $)   )                %    %         *  &    &           &%  % )  *  &                          () *               &%         + , 1   2    3445# ) %   )    &   )  *  & 6   %   $  &  + ,            &  & *344 71 34487( !!97  3443# :  ) %&       ;%      2   34457  !!"#$     &     *  )                 )  .        10 < ) ) ,    *    = !$            >         * >  *;  $&  ?    ) )   ?% &@# instraw www.un-instraw.org case of mestizaje and national identity in Mexico.+4 For instance, Carlos Monsiváis uses the myth to metaphorically rename Mexico as -The betrayed nation- , while Octavio Paz refers to Mexico as La Chingada.+5 All these narratives of the Mexican nation and Mexican identity have strongly influenced popular culture and beliefs. Within this discourse, Octavio Paz draws the gendered identity of the Mexican nation, where an Indian woman is raped by a stranger and subsequently gives birth to illegitimate children. The rape of the woman is metaphorically equated with the rape of the land (Melhuus 1996). Paz describes how masculine and feminine identities relate to closed and open respectively, where being closed is the desirable state implying protection against others, and openness is seen as weakness and vulnerability to foreign powers. La Chingada is also “the Mother . She is one of the Mexican representations of maternity or the long-suffering Mexican mother”. He continues “La chingada is the mother forcibly opened, violated or deceived”, she is the one who give birth to illegitimate and mixed-race children, and with them the shame or the honour of the entire nation. Violence is thus exercised against the bodies of women in two ways: firstly, women’s bodies are used for “nation building” because of their reproductive function and their traditional roles as the carriers of family and cultural tradition and honour; and secondly, against those women who exhibit sexual autonomy in opposition to the asexual construction of the figure of the mother. Although, La Malinche is a local Mexican narrative, the gender imagery that this myth has generated is applicable to different settings across Latin America. The imagery mother-role is deeply rooted in Latin American culture –virginity, marriage, purity, childbearing- and often used as a justification for violence against women. This foundational narrative, the Openings, shapes a specific imagery of raping and assaulting women’s bodies. As argued by Belausteguigoitia (2004) the openings of women’s bodies offer a framework from which to analyze violence against women. For example, in Acteal/Chiapas more than 32 indigenous women were brutally killed by the military: “Women were raped; their bodies were opened, slit and mutilated. Their breasts were sliced off and pregnant women were cut in half. Witnesses +4. Mestizaje is a term of origin used to designate the peoples of mixed and racial descent inhabiting Central and Latin America. The term has been used for constructing national identities in many Latin American countries. For a discussion on Mestizaje and the construction of gender identities see Sonia Montecino “Understanding Gender in Latin America” in Gender’s Place, Montoya et al. eds. 2002. +5. “La Chingada” literary translates as “the fucked one” and refers, in Cherríe Moraga’s words, to the “sexual legacy” of betrayal “pivoting around the historical/mythical female figure of La Malinche”. According to Paz in The Labyrinth of Solitude (1961), the term “La Chingada” is derived from the verb chingar. This verb in Paz’s words “is masculine, active, cruel: it stings, wounds, gashes, stains. And it provokes a bitter resentful satisfaction. The person who suffers this action is passive, inert and open, in contrast to the active, aggressive and closed person who inflicts it. The relationship between them is violent and it is determined by the cynical power of the first and the impotence of the second” (cited in M.A. Lindauer 1999:34). instraw www.un-instraw.org report to have heard the cry: “Let’s kill the seed”, where the bodies were attacked”. December 1997, Acteal killings/Chiapas (Belausteguigoitia 2004:67) The Opening of women’s bodies is symbolic of the vulnerability of indigenous communities to invasion and destruction by outside forces. Along the same lines, the femicide in the borderline city of Ciudad Juárez over the last decade are symbolic of the opening of the Mexico-USA border and the vulnerability of Mexico to infiltration and exploitation by an outside force. More than 370 fronteriza women have been raped, strangled, bitten, beaten, and their bodies dumped in the desert or the suburbs.+? The openings of women’s bodies fuelled the narrative for Latin America mestizaje. Gender and the body became vehicles for discourses on ethnicity, race, and nationhood. The purity of the race, the honour and status of the family were heavily driven by women’s social and sexual behaviour (Ortner 1996). As Nelson (1999) points out, white-ladina women’s sexuality in Guatemala is channelled through reproduction,.@ where “ the elite family, with the wife and the mother at the centre, reproducing for the line, class, and the nation, constitutes unequal gender roles and is in turn constituted by racial and gender inequalities” (ibid.:218): “They open her up in front of everybody. The bodies of the girl and the baby were thrown in the river”. Indigenous women, Colombia conflict zone (AI 2004:18) Latina women have, to some extent, internalized the foundational narrative of La Malinche as the betrayers and mothers of a country that they have left behind for financial reasons:.( “I knew I was a Malinche. I knew it was my fault. How could a father, a brother, hurt a child this way? I had to be doing something to provoke them”. Latina testimony (Flores-Ortiz 2001: 354) +?. Fronteriza is a Spanish term to defined a women raised between borders, and who is both directly and indirectly affected by this border violence. It comes from “Frontera”, which means “border”. It refers here to those women raised on the Mexico-USA border near Ciudad Juárez. For more information about the killings of Ciudad Juárez see AI “Mexico: Intolerable killings, 10 years of abductions and murders of women in Ciudad Juárez and Chihuahua”, 2003. In reference to the data: a) Amnesty International reported 370 women murdered and 70 disappearances (08/2003). B) The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights reported 285 women murdered and 257 disappearances (2002). C) The Mexican National Commission of Human Rights (CNDH) reported 263 women murdered and 257 disappearances (11/2003). Source: CNDH special report on violence against women in Ciudad Juárez (11/2003) August 2005 (Spanish only). .@. Ladina women: of mixed European and indigenous descendent. .(. Latina women: proletarian women who emigrate to more developed countries for financial reasons. The term is very much in use in the United States. instraw www.un-instraw.org The image of women’s bodies as reproductive organs is central to the idea of women’s purity. Ortner (1996) suggests that the value placed on virginity began with the emergence of the patriarchal family and the need to protect the family unit. To some extent, women able to engage in sex, where a potential danger of transgressing traditional female behaviour and therefore the patriarchal family (Molyneux 2000). Thus, the regulation of women’s sexuality and their bodies were inscribed in the process of state making (Molyneux 2000; Ortner 1996). .+ The rhetoric of nationhood in Latin America, especially during periods of military dictatorship, was invoked through gendered virtues, contributing to the establishment of hegemonic masculinities and femininities. While masculine virtues were defined as heroism and glory, feminine virtues related to the purity and fertility of the beloved land (Molyneux 2000). La Patria was the mother(land) despoiled by enemies... In addition, ideas of gender difference were strongly rooted in Catholicism, which gave symbolic meaning to maternalist constructions of femininity or the civic maternalist (Molyneux 2000). This civic maternalist was closely tied to the dichotomy of the “good/virtuous” woman and the “bad/prostitute” woman, which underpinned the idea of separate spheres for men –public- and women –private-. Within the motherhood discourse, women are constructed as asexual, while men are sexual. The mother/woman belongs to one man and is by definition private, while the sexed woman belongs to all men (Melhuus 1996). Women who transgress their culturally prescribed role in the private sphere are subsequently blamed for the violence they suffer: "She was 17 years old. She was already a woman; she wasn’t a virgin. She’s a piece of meat –already fucked up.” “ That’s why I don’t really want a daughter. I can’t stand the feeling of another man touching my daughter. I got like a prejudice against women because of that shit”. Gang rapist testimony (Bourgois, P. 2004:346) The tension between models of family life, gender and sexuality upheld by religious doctrine, patriarchal traditions and conservative and nationalist regimes is essential to an analysis of VAW. Beyond these prototypes, women in Latin America have consciously used maternal claims to gain political positions during times of political conflict. Many feminists .+. Many scholars have discussed the construction of the sexed State. The sex of the State is constructed as female when it is attacked and in need of protection, and it depends on its (male) military to defend it. Here the metaphor of rape is common when a state is invaded. (in Chalesworth and Chinkin 2000:138). ... “La Patria” translates as “The Nation”, and has a special military connotation. During military dictatorship, nationhood discourses were supported through strong military state terror. The use of violence against prisoners was both eroticized and sexualized. In Argentina, Guatemala, Peru and Chile women were raped and sexually abused in ways that represented a sadistic misogyny. Men too were raped in “mechanical acts of sodomy which reconstituted their bodies as homosexuals, and later as passive, broken, “females” in ordeals of agony and humiliation” (Molyneux 2000). instraw www.un-instraw.org have argued that motherhood can carry an implicit “moral authority” and that when women speak from this “maternal” position they can exercise extraordinary political power. Motherhood confers on women a certain legitimacy and authority in a society that values mothers almost to the exclusion of all other women. This maternal thinking (Scheper-Hughes 1998) has engaged women in various activities to claim rights and contest state control. As Scheper-Hughes (1998) highlighted “maternal thinking” is not exclusively related to do-goody activities and fighting state terror. The mater dolorosa can push her sons and husbands to go to war, invoking an ultra-nationalist discourse..0 .)( “POLICING” WOMEN’S BODIES THROUGH REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH POLICIES All over the world, states and political movements have attempted to manipulate women’s sexuality and fertility for political purposes. These discourses position women in a particular way, coercing their autonomy, limiting their rights, and exposing them, ultimately, to violence. By emphasizing female bodies as reproductive bodies and as child-bearers, the state is regulating the ideology of motherhood, where women are responsible for reproduction but without control over it or their own bodies. This sets up a “particular institutionalization of patriarchy and a particular strategy for the subordination of women” (Kandiyoti 2003:199). Violence is, then, exercised as a means to maintain women’s subordination: “Violence against women per se is not perceived by men as an essential aspect of their masculinity .however the leverage it gives men in controlling women is”. (Wood and Jeweks 1998:38 in Sideris 2001) This section illustrates that the policies and practices related to reproductive health contribute to the establishment of a hegemonic discourse on reproduction and sexuality in society. This discourse reinforces discriminatory conceptions of women’s sexuality and reproduction, promoting as such the normalization of beliefs and behaviours in acts of violence against women. Foucault’s writings on sexuality and power demonstrate a profound insight into the regulatory mechanisms of sexuality by the State and other institutions such as the health system, the law, or the Church. For Foucault, the discipline of sexuality converts the body –through a corporeal mode of behaviour-, and population –through 34. In Chile in the mid-70s, for instance, conservative mothers took their opposition to the Socialism government of Salvador Allende, into the street banging their empty pots and pans in protest because their children were hungry, and blaming their socialist government for their redistributive policies. In Peruvian poor neighbourhoods, “Mothers’ Clubs” were classic traditional women’s organizations that help with charity services to the community. (Blondet 1995). More recently, the anti-war movement in the USA is mobilizing people with mother/nationalist thinking. (see Cindy Sheehan anti-war campaign: August 2005). instraw www.un-instraw.org biological procreation. In a sense, sexuality becomes a powerful form of discipline, a potential tool by which patriarchal powers can be implemented. To date, some of the abuse and violations against women are mandated by the Law. For instance, in many countries in Latin American abortion is still an illegal practice, even in the case of rape or when there is a risk to a woman’s health. In Chile, Colombia and El Salvador, women who are raped cannot obtain an abortion through the national health system. In other Latin-American countries, the provision of safe abortion services is very deficient..2 In general, safe abortion in the region could reduce maternal deaths by up to 50% in many Latin American countries (Berer 2004). Not only abortion, but family laws, divorce and marriage have been heavily influenced by the disciplinary mandate of the state and church, establishing drastic controls over women’s bodies, sexuality and behaviours (Htun 2003). Many of the abuses and violations committed against women are in breach of internationally recognized human rights, including women’s right to life, bodily integrity, privacy and health (HRW 2005b). In the 1990s, three world conferences were decisive for the recognition of reproductive rights as a human rights..3 In addition, crimes related to sexual violence were included in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. In all these conferences the notion of reproductive rights was discussed but there was not much discussion or definition of sexual rights. As Corrêa (1994) points out, sexuality is somehow implicit in the concept of reproductive rights, even if just within the framework of heterosexual relations. Both the Cairo and Beijing conference documents affirmed reproductive and sexual rights as fundamental human rights. However, many feminists have pointed out that “sexual rights” are still being framed as health-related rights (Corrêa 2002). The mainstream’s initial adoption of the Cairo reproductive health discourse has largely maintained a biomedical bias and restricted women’s social roles to their biological reproductive functions, especially by emphasizing maternal-child health and family planning programming (Corrêa 1994). During the 1980s, women’s groups worked to promote broader aspects of maternal health, but economic constraints produced a narrow clinical focus on family planning, prenatal care, and “safe motherhood”, divorcing reproductive health from its wider context. (Mayhew and Watts 2002) .2. Abortion is one of the key issues for women and feminist organizations in Latin America. Currently, those movements are running a powerful campaign “The September 28th Campaign: Regional Campaign for the Decriminalization of Abortion in Latin America and the Caribbean”, August 2005 (Spanish only). The World Health Organization estimates that at least eighty thousand women die each year and many more experience lifelong physical or mental health problems as a result of unsafe abortions (WHO 1997). .3. These conferences are: the United Nations Conference on Human Rights (1993); the United Nations International Conference on Population and Development (1994); and the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women (1995). instraw www.un-instraw.org After the Cairo conference, increased funds were diverted to promoting reproductive health programmes that addressed VAW. Many of the NGOs and institutions working on reproductive health embraced this new wave by incorporating projects on VAW, for instance NGOs such as IPPF/WRH, Promundo, Promujer, and APROFAM. While initiatives addressing VAW were in demand, donors’ priorities perpetuated a focus on clinical services -especially family planning and management of sexually t ra n s m i t t e d d i s e a s e s - ( Wa t t s a n d M ay h e w 2 0 0 4 ; M ay h e w 2 0 0 2 ) . This situation forcibly led to a re-thinking of the assumptions that the international community has made about women’s reproductive health. In a sense, these policies perpetuate the idea of women’s marked bodies as passive agents in need of sexual and reproductive health services. How far then are these health policies perpetuating gendered roles –such as reproduction- and consequently incurring and domesticating violence? While medicalized responses to VAW are one necessary component, over-reliance on them could contribute to the de-politicization of the issue, and consequently convert VAW into a medical syndrome that requires only physiological assistance such as medical examinations and treatment. Development projects and interventions that address women’s health are still fixed on the delivery of maternal and child health programmes. As feminists have criticized, these programmes do not recognize women’s sexuality, mainly because policies and their implementation are still imbued with the dominant social construction of women as child-bearers. The majority of these programmes and projects are shaped by the hegemonic discourse around reproductive health policies and development. The discourse of donors and IGOs has been intertwined with the controversial debates on population and development. The Cairo process incorporated decisive steps towards reshaping the population and development discourse in the direction of a gender-friendly health and human rights framework. For the first time, VAW was recognized in Cairo: “The Platform of Action emphasises the advancement of gender equality, the empowerment of women and the elimination of all forms of violence as cornerstone of population and development related programmes”. Platform of Action/ Cairo, 1994 The connection between “sex” and “health” has been systematically defined in terms of risk, disease and danger. As Carole Vance (2001) suggests, the very notion of sexual health legitimized in Cairo must be subject to critical scrutiny since the instraw www.un-instraw.org semantic instability of the term “health” makes it easily prone to interpretations that are in conflict with principles of sexual “freedom” and respect for sexual expression (Vance 2001 in Corrêa 2004) Women’s bodies are the first place where political struggle is defined – for autonomy, for reproductive and sexual integrity and rights, for safe motherhood, for freedom from violence and sexual oppression. The body in most political theories is not a subject but an object of political control, and is the exteriorized terrain of public regulation (Harcourt 2002). Therefore, violence against women should be seen as a part of a political struggle, highlighting the links between gender and sexuality, gender discrimination – in the political and economic sphere- and violence. instraw www.un-instraw.org 0) CASE STUDIES: VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN IN PERU This section briefly sketches the current situation of violence against women in Peru. Between February 2003 and March 2004, Peru registered 297 cases of VAW, of which 56 per cent ended in the death of the woman (Flora Tristan 2004).37 This case study seeks to illustrate how the present health approach to VAW is still closely tied to discourses that emphasise women’s maternal role, and to some extent their asexuality. This situation, as argued above, is risky for women because it fuels rooted traditional beliefs and roles embedded in a discriminatory construction of gender relations. Peruvian health policies continue to focus on family planning services rather than gynecological and obstetric care and comprehensive health services for women. As some organizations have criticized this perspective aims to meet above all government policy objectives rather than women’s needs. The second section analyses one health community-mobilization initiative, namely ReproSalud. This initiative is a USAID-funded reproductive health project being implemented by Movimiento Manuela Ramos, a Peruvian women’s NGO. ReproSalud aims to improve the reproductive health status of low income rural and peri-urban w o m e n b y i n c r e a s i n g t h e i r u s e o f r e p r o d u c t i ve h e a l t h s e r v i c e s . 4.1 PERU’S SEXUAL AND REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH AND RIGHTS: CONTEXT AND BACKGROUND Violence against women and problems associated with women’s reproductive and sexual health have been one of the greatest concerns for the Peruvian women’s movement during the past two decades. To this effect, Peruvian women’s rights groups have been strongly advocating for raised awareness of how gender inequalities work against women’s reproductive health and rights, and pressuring the national government to promote appropriate public policies to reduce such inequalities.38 Some legislators and government officials began to recognize women’s rights to bodily integrity and autonomous decision-making in issues of sexuality and reproduction in the early 1980s, and in the 1990s Peru made significant modifications to laws affecting these rights.39 37. According the study “Femicide in Peru” carried out by the Peruvian feminist organization Flora Tristan: 76 per cent of the cases have a “sexual” motivation –i.e. marital rape, refusal of sex, sexual control over women, jealousy-; 16 per cent have a “economic” grounds, and 8 per cent for an unknown reason. Report available in Spanish only: . September 2005. 38. For instance, the NGOs Manuela Ramos, Flora Tristán or CESIP worked to train schoolteachers in sexual and reproductive education. Others like Red Nacional de Promoción de la Mujer and Movimiento El Pozo designed guides for sexual education. They not only pressured the government to changes policies, but also trained official staff such as police, judges, etc. 39. At international level, Peru has signed the CEDAW (1982) and Convention of Belém do Pará (1996). It has also actively participated in Cairo Conference (1994) and Beijing Conference (1995). At the national level, Peruvian Constitution recognizes women’s rights and equality. In 2002, Peru promoted the Acuerdo Nacional, which contained a special section for the promotion of women’s equality and social justice. In the particular case of sexual violence, Peruvian legislation considers “sexual violence” exclusively as a manifestation of “domestic violence”, ignoring in this way other patterns of sexual violence taken place outside the family (CRLP 2001; Flora Tristán 2003). instraw www.un-instraw.org After singing the Programme of Action from the International Conference on Population and Development in 1994, and reaffirming that commitment to reproductive health and rights at the Beijing Conference the following year, the Peruvian government undertook several steps towards advancing the reproductive health and rights agenda.0@ However, the case of Peru exposed the complexities involved in developing such an agenda. In this country, the advancement of sexual and reproductive rights has been overshadowed by two periods of adverse reproductive health approaches: firstly, the demographic approach (1996-1997), and secondly the conservative approach (2001-2003). The demographic focus on population policy emerged as a response to mounting international and national pressures to address deepening socio-economic disparities. This phase began with the launching of the National Population Programme 19911995, which was supported by the president of the Republic, who declared 1991 the “year of austerity and family planning” (CRLP 1999). The policy was to increase the use of modern contraceptives, especially sterilization, largely among poor, disenfranchised women with little or no formal education (Coe 2004:62). According to the Ministry of Health (MoH), the total number of sterilizations carried out rose from 15,000 en 1995 to 67,000 procedures in 1996, and approximately 115,000 in 1997 (Coe 2004). The cases of forced sterilization in Peru have been extensively documented (Tamayo 1998; León 1999; Villanueva 2000) and became not only a political scandal, but also jeopardized women’s future autonomy over their sexual and reproductive decisions, and lead to an increase in abuse within health services (CRLP 1999). Family Planning programmes were created in a vacuum, isolated from broader efforts to change the cultural and economic conditions that contributed to poverty and the subordination of women. Although such programmes have filled a latent need among women for methods of fertility control, their promotion was in many cases instrumental to the goal of fertility reduction and not in the interest of promoting rights, equity and empowerment (Jacobson 2000). In fact, utilitarian reproductive health programmes have produced certain disempowerment of women and reinforced the power of providers of sexual and reproductive health services and technologies over the women using such services. A study conducted by the Centre for Reproductive Law and Policy (1999) illustrates the discriminatory treatment of women by health providers. The inequality in the provider-client relationship is reflected in providers’ tendency to judge and to try to control the sexual conduct and reproductive decision-making of women, which 0@. The Peruvian delegation expressed two reservations with regard to the Platform of Action at Beijing: abortion could not be included as a contraceptive method and sexual rights could only be defined in terms of heterosexual relations. instraw www.un-instraw.org is largely viewed as a perfectly normal aspect of health care. Providers continue to behave intrusively and judgementally with respect to women’s sexuality and reproductive decision-making: “He gave me a prescription and then he gave me a naughty look and said that if I was not married, there was not reason to take birth control pills.” Peruvian women’s testimony in a health care centre (CRLP 1999:61) This example illustrates that concerns about sexuality, power, gender and rights should be intrinsically linked to all sexual and reproductive health programmes. After the forced sterilizations that characterized Fujimori’s term in office, Peruvian women face, at present, coercive reproductive health policies implemented by Alejandro Toledo’s administration. Upon taking power in 2001, the Toledo Administration espoused views on reproductive and sexual health that were explicitly religious. For instance, all sexual relations, other than those between married heterosexual couples for the purpose of procreation, were characterized as immoral practices. Moreover, policy proposals stressed abstinence as the exclusive means to prevent STIs and HIV/AIDS. The administration also aggressively promoted the notion that an ideal family model, in which “women’s only role is motherhood, must be preserved at all cost” (Coe 2004:65). The ideology of motherhood has been reinforced with the National Health Policies 2002-2012, where women are forced to register their pregnancy with the MoH. The new policies not only jeopardize women’s sexual and reproductive autonomy, but also position the “family” as the primary health unit (IPPF/WHR 2003). Moreover, policy guidelines have eliminated terms such as “gender equity” and “sexual and reproductive health”, sexual education in schools has been banned, and the availability of family planning services and contraceptives drastically reduced (Tavara 2003). With regard to the law, Peru still enforces measures that discriminate against women and interfere with their autonomy in decision-making regarding sexuality and reproduction. For instance, abortion is only legal when it is the sole means of saving a women’s life or preventing permanent illness. Although the MoH recognized that illegal abortion is a public health problem, it discourages the performance of abortions. To date, women who are pregnant as a result of rape must carry their pregnancies to term under threat of legal sanction (CRLP 2003).0( In the same 0(. Around 350,000 women have clandestine abortions every year. Of these women, around 800 die from post-abortion complications—three women every single day. Poor women, rural women, and women abandoned by their partners are the most likely to die. It is estimated that of 100 women who have an abortion and suffer from complications, 44 would be poor rural women, 27 would be poor urban women, 24 would be rural women who are not poor, and five would be urban women who are not poor (Ferrando 2002:22). This denies most poor women the right to life, health, and control of their own fertility (CRLP 2003a). instraw www.un-instraw.org terms, the laws and other norms that exist to protect women against violence contain gaps and ambiguities and are inadequately enforced, giving rise to uneven implementation and the continued use of traditional criteria for adjudicating cases of abuse (CRLP 2001; Flora Tristán 2003; Tamayo et al. 1998). The Family Violence Law, despite its amendment in 1997, remains deeply flawed. Its definition of family violence is incomplete, effectively excluding entire categories of women as well as particular forms of domestic violence. Furthermore, the law privileges conciliation over prosecution, sending a troubling message that assaults within interpersonal relationships can be resolved through negotiation rather than sanctions. Women who attempt to lodge a domestic violence complaint face a justice system that appears fraught with bias and incapable of affording them effective remedy or redress. Police are unresponsive and ineffectual; medical examinations by forensic doctors are frequently cursory and inadequate, tending to minimize injuries women have sustained through domestic violence; and state prosecutors and judges often appear to consider domestic violence insufficiently serious to warrant prosecution and punishment of the perpetrators.0+ In reality, Peruvian women are facing inadequate protection against domestic violence by the state, and this, in turn, serves only to deter women from making complaints, thereby masking the full extent of the problem. 0)+  : A HEALTH COMMUNITY-MOBILIZATION PROGRAMME ReproSalud is a USAID-funded reproductive health project being implemented by Movimiento Manuela Ramos, a Peruvian women’s NGO. The project was launched in 1995 with the aim of improving the reproductive health status of low income rural and peri-urban women by increasing their use of reproductive health services.43 In 1999, ReproSalud began to work with VAW at the petition of women’s Community Based Organizations, CBOs. From a women’s empowerment perspective, ReproSalud assists women in overcoming gender and socio-economic barriers to their reproductive health needs, and also increases their own health-seeking behaviour (Coe 2001). At first glance, ReproSalud operates within a new and innovative framework by empowering women’s groups regarding their reproductive health issues. However, ReproSalud employs, to some extent, traditional views of women’s reproductive health, which are still defined under the framework of “safe motherhood”. In words of one of the founders of the project: 42. Legal-medical examinations are requested by the Court as prove of assault or violent act. The medical certificate is often the only evidence to corroborate victims' testimonies. The Family Violence Law stipulates that all state-run facilities must issue the medical certificates free of charge to victims of domestic violence. However, medical examiners charge for conducting forensic examinations and quantifying injuries to legal effect (HRW 2000). 43. ReproSalud works especially with rural and indigenous women in 8 different region across Peru (Ayacucho, Huancavelica, Ancash, La Libertad, Puno, San Martin, Ucayali, Lima). See Appendix 7.3. instraw www.un-instraw.org “There is nothing new here in terms of reproductive health. What is new is that we are, with the mandate of Cairo, actually implementing what has been learned from the field of development”. Susan Brems, Head of USAID Health, Population, and Nutrition Division in Peru. (Bruce and Rogow, 2000:10) The project employs a “holistic” methodology by interconnecting three components: reproductive health, income-generation and advocacy. According to ReproSalud, this approach helps women to gain awareness about their own reproductive needs and also provides women with some economic independence through incomegeneration projects, called village banks. Since mid-1997, the main method of operation is through training-delivery on reproductive health issues to women’s community-based organizations in rural areas. The project is executed in five stages: selection of the CBO partners; identification of reproductive health problems, design of the reproductive health project according to demands from CBOs; implementation and final evaluation. ReproSalud works mainly with two specific women’s CBOs: The Glass of Milk Committees and Mothers’ Clubs.00 While ReproSalud advocates for a bottom-up model of participation –empowerment from below- the actual organization of CBO partners within ReproSalud can be very hierarchical. ReproSalud only selects participatory CBOs as partner organizations. Following the selection process, leaders of the CBOs develop their leadership capacity as project managers and implementers: “There are women who have an ease for affirming themselves as communicators, as advocates, as leaders, and the groups begin to shape leaders who are capable of being the vanguard, or the head of their group of their community”. (Coe 2001:16) This attitude could lead to negative consequences for other women participating in the programmes. Moreover, this model reproduces vertical distributions of power based on a top-down model that calls into question issues of representation within 00. In broad terms, we can identify four kinds of grassroots women’s organizations in Peru. The Mothers’ Clubs, the classic women’s organizations, are dependent on the state’s welfare program (they emerged in the early 1980s as a result of Fujimori’s popular policies of welfare and nutrition programmes for the poor). People’s Kitchens, supported by the Catholic Church and NGOs, are organizations in which members collectively share the task of food purchase, preparation and distribution. The Glass of Milk Committees, promoted by the United Left municipal government of Lima (1983-1986), are neighbourhood groups of women who meet daily to prepare and distribute among local children milk they received free from local government. The network of grassroots health and legal aid promoters, formed and advised by feminist NGOs, are organizations of women specially trained to provide these services in poor neighbourhoods. The organizations are fundamentally an urban phenomenon concentrated in the capital city. Though organizations exist in many provincial cities, and Mothers’ Clubs receive food in rural areas (Blondet 1995, pp.256-257). instraw www.un-instraw.org the project. This pattern reproduces embedded gender inequalities strongly anchored in patriarchal power relations. The constant experience of CBOs of being co-opted by external parties and programmes has also undermined the political autonomy of women’s CBOs as well as endangered their internal democracy. One of the challenges ReproSalud faces is that information often becomes diluted from one level to the next, reducing its quality. Although first-tier participants show improvements in their knowledge of reproductive health and gender equity issues, it is uncertain how effective the training is on second-tier participants (Coe 2001). It also remains unclear whether women will translate gained skills in the reproductive health training sessions into attitude and behaviour changes. To prioritize and define women’s reproductive health needs, ReproSalud and the CBOs conduct the autodiagnóstico,02 where participants identify and prioritize the reproductive health problems affecting their community. Employing this method, ReproSalud opens discussion about participants’ experiences, attitudes and practices related to reproductive health in their lives (Bruce and Rogow 2000). The topics addressed during the autodiagnóstico relate to women’s beliefs and perceptions about “their bodies, fertility, pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum, breast-feeding, vaginal infections, sexuality transmitted diseases, and the context of these processes” (Coe 1999:6). The topics are focused primarily on maternal health and reproduction needs. The definition of “women’s needs” presupposes the idea of women’s bodies as reproductive organs. This emphasis undermines understanding of women’s sexuality and reproductive health and rights, perpetuating in this way traditional gender roles. Within this discourse, there is no space for a more “holistic” approach to women’s reproductive health and rights, where motherhood is a choice and noncompulsory and where women’s bodies are not exclusively seen in reproductive terms. 02. Autodiagnósticos are a participatory research process using games and group exercises designed to help women analyze their lives, identify their health needs, and reflect on how they view their health care (Bruce and Rogow 2000). instraw www.un-instraw.org 2) CONCLUSION It has been argued throughout this paper that gender and sexuality can be seen as a fresh and meaningful framework for addressing issues of violence against women. This new framework could not only contribute to a greater understanding of violence against women, but also to the establishment of a new lens through which gendered power relations can be more successfully challenged. At present, development practice has qualified developing world women’s sexuality with a powerful discourse that emphasizes their maternal role and the denial of sexual feeling and desire. Within this discourse, women’s bodies are left open and vulnerable to violence in two ways: firstly, by equating womanhood with motherhood and imposing a utilitarian view of the mother/woman as a reproductive organ; and secondly, violence against women who exhibit their sexual autonomy in opposition to the asexual construction of the mother figure. Within this discourse, women are trapped in their own subordination by fulfilling the position that this discourse provides them. This paper has, therefore, argued in favour of a more complex picture in which women are considered active agents of the development discourse who adopt alternative discourses in the negotiation of their daily lives. This new gender and sexuality framework could bring about new ways of thinking about sexuality and the body in the long term. Ultimately, such a framework would seek to erode sexual hierarchies that are often the cause of violence against women. In this way, advocating for sexual and reproductive rights becomes a means to eliminate VAW and bring about a transformation in the understanding of gender equality and women’s citizenship. International discourse created to address violence against women across the world has emphasized the understanding of VAW as one of the greatest human rights violations. But this discourse’s promise of “equality and autonomy” for women is impossible to achieve without a recognition of the obstacles that women face, which are basically an inability to make decisions regarding their sexuality and fertility. Given the acknowledgement of women’s sexual and reproductive rights, national policies need to ensure the enabling conditions for women to be able to operationalize these rights: for instance, the delivery of sex education in schools, and a transformation in the health, judicial and police systems. Finally, this situation will allow for an erosion of sexual inequalities and discriminatory institutional treatment, which are ultimately at the core of violence against women. There is a particularly disabling gap between the different official approaches to VAW, discussed throughout the paper, and their means to make visible this citizen instraw www.un-instraw.org transformation. Many of these development interventions have not kept pace with embedded thoughts regarding women’s sexuality, resulting in a growing gap between women’s formal rights and their actual ability to avail themselves of those rights. The incorporation of a feminist approach would contribute to reveal the suffering and the violence exerted on women’s bodies and different forms of sexual repression, which result in a more radical and more human conception of social transformation. Violence against women should be seen as a part of a political struggle, highlighting the links between gender and sexuality, gender subordination and violence. A gender and sexuality perspective could contribute to work creatively, making the invisible visible, and, scholars and practitioners could assemble a more holistic framework by continuing to desalambrar the meaning of a “life free from violence”. This holistic framework would be based on an intersection of health, sexuality, economy and rights, and would aim to contribute to the recognition of women’s full citizenship. 3) RECOMMENDATIONS · Incorporate a gender and sexuality perspective into the analysis and treatment of violence against women in all institutions dealing with the monitoring and protection of women’s rights. · Call upon the international community and national governments to strengthen advocacy of sexual and reproductive rights as a mean to advance women citizenship, and combat more creatively violence against women. The international community should go beyond a conceptualization of sexual and reproductive rights as merely relating to health, reproduction and violence, and affirm sexual and reproduction rights as non-negotiable human rights to own decision-making, recreation, pleasure and enjoyment. Exposure to alternative ideas about gender and sexuality can create, in the long term, the possibility of investing in different gender discourses and challenge received ideas about gender. · Call upon international human rights organizations to draw up, implement and monitor a comprehensive guideline on sexual and reproductive rights and VAW as a way to make visible and condemn coercive and discriminatory sexual practices. This is a key element to strengthen their worldwide campaign on violence against women. · Conduct sex education programmes at schools and advertising campaigns to promote a broader understanding of sexuality and violence. · Decriminalize abortion for women worldwide as an immediate remedy for avoidable pregnancy-related deaths and as an essential step towards achieving sex equality. instraw www.un-instraw.org X Call upon the international community and national governments to equip women and feminist organizations with the organizational capacity and financial resources to form the broadest possible political alliances and associations networking in different regional contexts, as a way to strengthen their voices. 7. APPENDICES 7.1 Landmarks in the global debate on violence against women and reproductive health 1975 (Mexico City) and 1980 (Copenhagen) Conferences on Women:                                1976 Tribunal on Crimes Against Women (Brussels):          !     "        ! #      #     $%&'   ()* + 1979 Convention of the Elimination of All Forms of discrimination against Women:    * !                 *# , *#         #   1984 Mexico Conference on population and development: - .   #   /    # #          #  # # #          /   1985 (Nairobi) Conference on Women:      #      1992 Recommendation 19, 11th session of CEDAW: "   0  1      ( 01+       !      /      1993 UN General Assembly Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women:  2    3 .      *!  !        - 4 - )     56657 20) 5668 1993 UN World Conference on Human Rights, Vienna: 9  !       *     *#           !              1994 The International Conference on Population and development (Cairo): :    #  #   #   ;, #         !         # #   ! # / #  March 1994 The Commission on Human Rights appointed the first Special Rapporteur on VAW 1994 Convention of Belém Do Pará, Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence Against Women: First international document for Latin America and the Caribbean, which deal and condemn VAW in Latin America region. 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing): Reproductive health is recognized as a Human right and its provision a state obligation. Entire section devoted to VAW, recognizing that the elimination of VAW is essential to equality, development and peace. $% # & ' ¨ Databases and on-line resources on SRRs and VAW SOS CORPO, Instituto Feminista para a Democracia. Brazilian Feminist organization. Bibliography of Violence Against Women. Brazil: SOS CORPO Research Center, 2000. http://www.soscorpo.org.br/ June 2005 (Portuguese only) Centre for Reproductive Law and Policy Researching Reproductive Rights on the web http://www.reproductiverights.org/pdf/pub_pg_researchingRR_web.pdf September 2005 Global Forum for Health Research Contemporary database containing over 2000 references that focus on sexual violence against women and health. http://www.globalforumhealth.org/filesupld/vaw/start.html. May 2005 World Health Organization (# )#  ** +"& , Geneva: WHO, 2000 http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/media/en/633.pdf June 2005 World Health Organization Annotated Bibliography on Violence Against Women: A Health and Human Rights Concern. Geneva: WHO, 1999 http://whqlibdoc.who.int/hq/1999/WHO_CHS_GCWH_99.2.pdf. June 2005 World Health Organization. Multi-Country Study on Women’s Health and Domestic Violence Against Women. Geneva: WHO, 2002 http://www.who.int/gender/violence/multicountry/en/. August 2005 Organizatión Panaméricana de la Salud PAHO (2003), # , -. %/#"&0  & 1#2 .  PAHO: Costa Rica, 2003 http://www.paho.org/English/HDP/HDW/gph14.pdf June 2005 (Spanish only) End Violence Against Women Information and Resources Network (dissemination of Information, bibliographies, facts and data, organization working on VAW) http://www.endvaw.org/ August 2005 Site Specializing in the Treatment of Domestic Violence for Health Care Professionals (SIVIC) (Medical bibliography on VAW, case studies, organizations working on VAW) http://www.sivic.org/ June 2005 (web site in different languages) ¨ Latin American Organizations working on VAW 5" Regional Networks Comité de América Latina y el Caribe para la Defensa de los Derechos de la Mujer (CLADEM) http://www.cladem.com/ June 2005 (Spanish, English and Portuguese). Red Feminista Latinoamericana y del Caribe Contra la Violencía Doméstica y Sexual http://www.redfem.cl/ July 2005 (Spanish only) Red de Salud de Mujeres Latinoamericanas y del Caribe, RMSLAC (América Latina) http://www.koalaweb.cl/reddesalud/sitio/default.asp July 2005 (Spanish only) Latin American and Caribbean Women’s Health Network (LACWHN): http://www.reddesalud.org/english/sitio/portada.htm July 2005 Mujeres Latinoamericanas en Cifras http://www.eurosur.org/FLACSO/mujeres/ August 2005 (Spanish only) Red de Educación Popular Entre Mujeres –REPEMhttp://www.repem.org.uy/ September 2005 (Spanish only) Red de Académicas Latin Americas http://www.red-alas.org/ June 2005 (Spanish only) ISIS International Network –Special focus VAWhttp://www.isis.cl/ August 2005 (Spanish only) 55" National Networks and Organizations Feminist International Radio Endeavour (FIRE) – Costa Rica http://www.fire.or.cr/ September 2005 (Spanish only) Flora Tristán – Peru http://www.flora.org.pe/ September 2005 (Spanish only) Fundación Mujeres en Igualdad (M.E.I.) - Argentina http://www.mei.com.ar./ June 2005 (Spanish only) Projeto Saúde e Direitos Humanos – Brazil http://www.mulheres.org.br/violencia/index.html August 2005 (Portuguese only) Las Dignas – El Salvador http://www.lasdignas.org.sv/ August 2005 (Spanish only) DEMUS -Peru http://www.demus.org.pe/ July 2005 (Spanish only) V-DAY http://www.vday.org/main.html September 2005 Mujeres del Sur (América Latina) http://mujeresdelsur.org.uy August 2005 (mainly in Spanish, but some information in English) 3"# *+ Source: Manuela Ramos, ReproSalud. 0) BIBLIOGRAPHY Alvarez, S., “Latin American Feminisms “Go Global”: Trends of the 1990s and challenges for the New Millennium” in S. 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