Citation

Henderson CW. Hum. Rights Q. 2004; 26(4): 1028-1049.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2004, Johns Hopkins University Press)

DOI

10.1353/hrq.2004.0044

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This paper, as its primary task, makes a case for a new conceptualization of political repression to take into account the experiences of women. The secondary task is to demonstrate that the new conception is operational. After establishing the characteristics of repression that are essentially the ill fate of women, the author coded reports from two sources into numerical data for fifty-seven country cases. Using this preliminary data on women's repression both in correlation and regression analyses, this research tests two counterpoised hypotheses, one claiming women's empowerment leads governments to choose repression and the other is that women's weakness allows repression. The results are promising but represent only a beginning. This study should encourage governments and human rights NGOs to collect more substantial reports on the repression of women.

This violence takes a dismaying variety of forms: the abortion of female fetuses, female infanticide, dowry deaths, female genital mutilation (FGM), domestic violence, rape, trafficking, and sexual violence against women during conflicts.
Violence against women has eluded the global human rights agenda for almost fifty years. The women’s NGOs at the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna focused an international spotlight on the neglected issue of violence against women, making special mention of systematic rape, sexual slavery, and forced pregnancy during armed conflict. The international community further acknowledged female-targeted violence in 1993 when the UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women, followed by the creation of a Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women in 1994. Also, in 1995 at Beijing, the Fourth World Conference on Women made sexual violence toward women during armed conflict one of twelve critical areas of concern in the conference’s “Platform for Action.” Finally, the fact that an estimated 60 to 100 million women are missing from the demographic tables on world population, due to neglect and violence, dramatizes the enormity of the problem.