PLC 348
Join the International Studies Community for a discussion at the INTL Lunch Talk Next Friday, May 10 @ 12 p.m. in PLC 348
The Uneven Impacts of Violence against Women Reforms in Guatemala: Intersecting Inequalities and the Patchwork State
Presented by Dr. Erin Beck, Associate Professor, Political Science, UO
In 2008, Guatemala passed one of the most comprehensive pieces of violence against women legislation in Latin America, which criminalized various forms of violence against women (VAW) and mandated the creation of a specialized court system that would focus exclusively on VAW.
This talk explores the passage of such agenda-setting reforms and analyzes their impacts. It demonstrates that the reforms’ impacts are unevenly felt, with those who are already the most marginalized benefiting the least. It explains these uneven effects by drawing on a historical intersectional analysis of gender violence and an an analysis of state-society relations at their local instantiations where reforms do (or do not) affect state officials’ behavior and individuals’ expectations and experiences of the “reformed” state.
Among other theoretical insights, this analysis reveals the importance of including place in an intersectional analysis alongside more commonly studied categories of difference such as gender, ethnicity, and class.