High-Risk Leadership in Latin America: Women’s Pursuit of Gender Justice in Violent Contexts
This three-year research project is about women’s resistance to violence(s) in high risk settings in Latin America. I will be based at the Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas at the UNAM (Mexico City) and the Latin American Centre & Oxford School of Global and Area Studies (Oxford, UK).
In contexts of high violence, we might expect women to shy away from activities that augment their exposure to risk. My previous research shows, however, that against all odds, women do engage in high-risk collective action. These women transgress traditional gender barriers and thus expose themselves to the additional risks of retributive violence. Not only are such women resisting violence, their activism focuses on the pursuit of gender justice.
The project has two objectives:
To further document and explain women’s high-risk mobilisation in the region, particularly in Mexico & El Salvador (building on existing work in Colombia);
To comparatively study women’s leadership in high-risk social movements across Latin America.
The first article published from this research – “Complex gendered agency in Mexico: how women negotiate hierarchies of fear to search for the disappeared” – is available Open Access in the European Journal of Politics and Gender.
The second article published from this research - “The Gendered Risks of Defending Rights in Armed Conflict: Evidence from Colombia” - written with Kiran Stallone, is available Open Access in the Journal of Peace Research. Watch a video presentation of the research with the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) below.
My research has also been published as policy papers and public commentary:
Here, you can read a policy paper that Gema Kloppe-Santamaria and I wrote for the Wilson Center “Engendering Safety: Addressing Femicide in Mexico” series: “Beyond Collateral Damage, Femicides, Disappearances, and New Trends in Gender-Based Violence in Mexico.”
Here, you can read a public commentary article that María José Méndez and I wrote for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: “El Salvador’s ‘State of Exception’ Makes Women Collateral Damage.”
This project has received funding from the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 838513.