“Gender Justice in Guatemala: Advances and Challenges,” a talk by Erin Beck and Lynn Stephen

Erb Memorial Union (EMU)
Room 119
UO campus

UO professors Erin Beck and Lynn Stephen will discuss their research in a CLLAS Faculty Collaborative Research talk titled “Gender Justice in Guatemala: Advances and Challenges.” The talk will take place in Room 119 in the Erb Memorial Union on January 19, 2017, at 3:30 p.m.

Presentation Focus
“In Guatemala, a woman is killed every twelve hours and her killer is likely to go unpunished. Feminicide—the killing of women based on their gender in the face of a negligent or complicit state—is the extremity of gendered violence, which includes sexual assault, gender-specific forms of torture, and economic and psychological violence towards women. Our project explores the accomplishments and challenges of Guatemala’s new feminicide law and specialized gender violence courts. We use in-depth ethnographic and qualitative analysis of the participants: judges, social workers, advocates in women’s organizations, those who train judges and advocates about gendered violence and its prevention, and survivors of gendered violence. This presentation will focus on the history of the feminicide courts and use the case study of indigenous Mam women from Todos Santos Cuchamatan, Huehuetenango to explore what the obstacles to women’s access to gendered justice are: including monolingualism, isolation and poverty, regional cultures of competing generational masculinities, and local justice systems that encourage women to reconcile with aggressors.”

Erin Beck is an assistant professor in the UO Department of Political Science. CLLAS founding director Lynn Stephen is a Distinguished Professor, College of Arts and Sciences, in the UO Department of Anthropology.

Their CLLAS-funded research is the first phase of a long-term collaborative project.

Tags: CLLAS, Erin Beck, Guatemala research, Lynn Stephen, UO