Join us Thursday Nov. 7th 12:30 – 2 pm at Machmer Hall Room W26 for a talk on “Anti-Gender Politics and Violence Against Women In Politics: The Case of The Latin American President Bachelet, Rousseff and Kirchner”, by Fulbright Scholar Marlise Miriam De Matos Almeida – Associate Professor of Political Science Department (UFMG,Brazil), Fulbright Chair of Brazilian Studies at CLACLS, UMass.
Summary:
In the contemporary global resurgence of right-wing politics, many variants of anti-feminism are becoming apparent, appearing in social movements, political regimes, institutional initiatives, policy consequences, and on- and off-line cultural practices. Violence against women in politics (VAWIP) is one such anti-feminism variants and also poses a serious threat to democracy, human rights, and women’s and gender equality all around the world. It cannot simply be dismissed as ‘politics as usual’ or the ‘normal cost’ of political participation.
In this presentation, I argue that sexist political violence is a form of VAWIP based on gender to maintain the white male privilege of political representation. Perpetrators act against those women who have, in some way, made interventions in public and political life, and seek to expel these invaders from the political realm, thereby sustaining the dominance of men in political representation. I make this argument by examining the cases of three Southern Cone presidents: Michelle Bachelet, Dilma Rousseff and Cristina Kirchner, all whom experienced this kind of violence. I use data from media and popular images to show how this violent strategy operated. Through political and sociological analysis, I present 10 comparable strategies or mechanisms of sexist political violence against the Presidents, connecting these modalities to a growing worldwide agenda of “anti-gender” and the adoption of anti-gender ideology rhetoric in Latin America. Finally, I situate these phenomena as a weakness of the democratic state and also of the judicial systems that discriminate and make invisible the demands of women in politics. As such, VAWIP reflects the fragile and unfinished processes of democratic consolidation in Latin America.
In this presentation, I argue that sexist political violence is a form of VAWIP based on gender to maintain the white male privilege of political representation. Perpetrators act against those women who have, in some way, made interventions in public and political life, and seek to expel these invaders from the political realm, thereby sustaining the dominance of men in political representation. I make this argument by examining the cases of three Southern Cone presidents: Michelle Bachelet, Dilma Rousseff and Cristina Kirchner, all whom experienced this kind of violence. I use data from media and popular images to show how this violent strategy operated. Through political and sociological analysis, I present 10 comparable strategies or mechanisms of sexist political violence against the Presidents, connecting these modalities to a growing worldwide agenda of “anti-gender” and the adoption of anti-gender ideology rhetoric in Latin America. Finally, I situate these phenomena as a weakness of the democratic state and also of the judicial systems that discriminate and make invisible the demands of women in politics. As such, VAWIP reflects the fragile and unfinished processes of democratic consolidation in Latin America.