Abstract

PISCOPO, Jennifer M.. State Capacity, Criminal Justice, and Political Rights. Rethinking Violence against Women in Politics. Polít. gob [online]. 2016, vol.23, n.2, pp.437-458. ISSN 1665-2037.

Female politicians in Latin America experience myriad forms of gender-based abuse, from physical attacks to degrading sexual commentaries. Activists have framed this problem as violence against women in politics (VAWIP), an emphasis on women's political and electoral rights that reflects the political opportunity structure. In Latin America, broken criminal justice systems foment impunity, normalizing actors' use of violence to maintain political and patriarchal power. Citizens' rights to physical and emotional security are not protected by law enforcement, but women's rights to elect and be elected have received substantive protections from electoral institutions and electoral courts. Consequently, framing VAWIP as an electoral crime represents an astute activist strategy-but one that researchers cannot adopt without losing explanatory power. From an academic standpoint, VAWIP overlooks how widespread impunity results in the routinization of violence throughout state and society, leading to policy solutions narrowly tailored to punish political parties and protect elite women. Such reforms do little to address the underlying absence of the rule of law.

Keywords : gender; violence; political rights; electoral rights; women; criminality; impunity.

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