Book project
Women’s Security After Civil War: Protection and Punishment in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo
Does violence against women increase in the aftermath of war? If so, why? Scholars and policy-makers have begun to ask questions about violence against women in the post-conflict space, yet complexities in measurement and a focus on outcomes (rather than mechanisms) leave essential questions unanswered. This book refines and scopes these questions to learn about whether, how, and why the social context that supports violence against women changes as a result of war.
The central argument of this book is that armed conflict fosters protective masculine norms that, in turn, affect how communities socially sanction or punish local crimes, including violence against women. Drawing insights from feminist theory, economics, social psychology and political science, the theory of protective masculine norms describes a process by which the gendered nature of protection and exigencies of community security lead communities to choose more severe punishment for public crimes deemed to threaten their communities. Protection tradeoffs, however, also lead people to choose less severe punishment for other “private” crimes.
