Gender, violence and cultures of silence: young women and paramilitary violence

McAlister, Siobhán; Neill, Gail; Carr, Nicola; Dwyer, Clare

Abstract

Despite a growth in analysis of women and conflict, this has tended to overlook the specific experiences of young women. Likewise, in research on youth, conflict and peace, the term ‘youth’ is often short-hand for young men. Young women’s experiences are regularly absent from research and policy discourse, and as a consequence, also absent from public understanding and practice responses. In this paper, we prioritise the views of and on young women to forefront their experiences of one specific form of conflict-related violence–paramilitary violence. We demonstrate that forefronting young women’s experiences, and adopting an understanding of violence beyond that which privileges physical violence, unearths the multiple ways in which conflict-related violence is experienced. We further demonstrate how adopting an intersectional lens that prioritises age and gender can surface the specific experiences of young women, and the various ways in which these become silenced by cultures that omit, coerce, reduce and minimise.

Citation

McAlister, S., Neill, G., Carr, N., & Dwyer, C. (2021). Gender, violence and cultures of silence: young women and paramilitary violence. Journal of Youth Studies, 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2021.1942807

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jun 9, 2021
• Online Publication Date: Jun 19, 2021
• Publication Date: Jun 19, 2021
• Deposit Date: Jun 21, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 22, 2021
• Journal: Journal of Youth Studies
• Print ISSN: 1367-6261
• Electronic ISSN: 1469-9680
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 1-16
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2021.1942807
• Keywords: Sociology and Political Science; General Social Sciences; Life-span and Life-course Studies
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/5693311
• Publisher URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13676261.2021.1942807