Complicating notions of violence: An embodied view of violence against women in Honduras

Abstract

Feminist geographic analysis has demonstrated that violence inflicted on women is embodied, experienced and personal and at the same time, linked to global socio-political and economic processes and patriarchal norms. Consequently, violence is a complex system instead of a norm located in certain places. In heavily militarised societies, patriarchal power regimes are even more prevalent because states’ security strategies promote a masculinist understanding of protection as to who should be protected and by whom – and from what. This study draws on feminist geopolitical analysis and explores how feminist activists in Honduras experience and resist violence in their everyday lives. The research is grounded in interviews, focus-group discussions and participant observation with Honduran activists. The findings demonstrate that violence and its effects are first embedded in women’s everyday lives through feelings of fear and unsafety on the streets, at the workplace and at home. Second, violence operates through structures and institutions such as the military and police, impunity for violence against women and the juridical restriction of reproductive rights. Third, the internationally financed war on drugs and ‘development’ projects contribute to violence, thus, there is a link between intimate experiences of violence and global economic and military powers that sustain violence. Activists therefore argue that, for their needs, the state’s and international organisations’ security approaches are inadequate. The paper weaves together feminist visions of collective self-care and discusses activists’ strategies against violence. This study contributes to a growing feminist geographic scholarship linking women’s bodily experiences with violence and responds to calls for complicating notions of violence.

Webs of oppression: An intersectional analysis of inequalities facing women activists in Palestine

“…Despite the increasing participation of Palestinian women in activism, there is still a struggle for power and a backlash, meaning some women activists experience state-sanctioned violence, making their bodies part of the battlefield through which power is reasserted. The aim is disciplinary: to disempower women activists by making them feel unsafe, limiting their mobility and use of space (Jokela-Pansini, 2020).…”

“…In this research, we identify how the organizing power of authoritarian regimes attacks and defames women activists, through personal abuse, subterfuge and blackmail, contributing a fine-grained understanding of the Palestinian institutional context to the dynamics of women’s struggles and activism explored elsewhere (Al-Ali and Tas, 2018; Jokela-Pansini, 2020). Our article uncovers how institutional inequalities produced by the quasi-state, its security apparatus and social structures including patriarchy and family, manifest simultaneously and differently in activists’ everyday organizing.…”

Hemispheric, Relational, and Intersectional Political Ecologies of Race: Centring Land‐Body Entanglements in the Americas

“…Since the Honduran military coup in 2009, daily life in much of the country has grown more violent as instances of human insecurity have soared particularly borne out through the increased violence against women in the form of feminicide (Jokela‐Pansini 2020). Such state and everyday patriarchal and misogynist violence against women is part of the dynamic of “corporal spatial precarity” in Honduras.…”

Engaged pedagogic research: Transforming societies through co-learning and social action

“…Together, Fabiola and Mariana taught the other participants and researchers about the ways in which sexism and violence are articulated in domestic spaces and institutions. As Jokela-Pansini (2020: 850, italics in original) argues, ‘women’s bodies become battlefields through structures and governmental institutions ’.…”