Intersectional complexities in gender-based violence politics

Abstract

The chapter asks how gender-based violence politics is inclusionary or exclusionary of other inequality projects. How are intersectional framings with inclusive aims negotiated, deliberated or struggled over in gender-based violence politics? Who is opposing and/or co-opting intersectionality? The chapter explores intersectionality as a repertoire for inclusion in gender-based violence politics, but finds that the dominant framing of gender-based violence as domestic violence privileges gender to the extent that intersectionality becomes impossible. Instead, the chapter explores how the focus, frame and de/gendering of gender-based violence politics enable and/or disable the inclusion of multiple inequalities and intersectionality in specific ways, thereby privileging some inequalities over others. To explore and untangle the intersectional complexities are involved in gender-based violence politics, we first address the articulation and the conceptual links between intersectionality and violence; second, we illustrate these processes in three countries - the UK, the Netherlands and Sweden -; third, we draw conclusions based on the interrelation of violence and intersectionality: violence is shaped by social positions and gender orders, and multiple inequalities are cause and consequence of gender-based violence. Consequently, there cannot be a sound understanding of gender-based violence and its mechanisms without including intersectional components of gender inequality.