Latin American scholars have problematized the binary between private gender-based violence and public urban violence, highlighting the interconnection of state, urban, and gendered violence. Yet cultural notions of the public and private continue to inform the “gendering” of violence. In this article, we examine how police officers who investigate murders of women (thirty-six inquiries and nine interviews) and girls incarcerated in a juvenile detention center (twenty-two interviews) in Brazil narrate violence through a differential gendering of the categories of the “home” and the “street.” We find that the street is framed as a space of genderless, (drug) market-related, and expected instrumental violence, and the home is a space of gendered and unexpected emotional violence. This framing reduces gender violence to emotional disputes within the family and naturalizes violence in the “street,” portraying it as unavoidable, thus obscuring and legitimating structural state and gender violence against women.

Women’s rights organizations in Central America have been key actors in promoting women’s right to a life free of violence and advocating for reproductive rights and other social and economic protections for women and girls. Yet throughout Central America, these organizations have experienced myriad attacks in recent years. In this article, we examine attacks on women’s rights organizations in four Central American countries: Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. Although there are important distinctions among the regimes of these four countries, across all of them, setbacks for women have occurred in contexts characterized by increased militarization, autocratic governance, the incursion of conservative religious ideologies in government policies, and the spread of dangerous misinformation that discredits women’s organizations’ efforts. Within these regimes, women’s organizations have been subjected to intimidation, physical violence, legal threats, and digital harassment. Our analysis identifies patterns in these attacks, showing similarities and differences across the four countries during various temporal moments. To do so, we draw on twenty-nine interviews with twenty-eight women activists, academics, and human rights defenders in the region as well as a compilation of newspaper articles, social media, and independent reports documenting attacks on women’s rights leaders and organizations in the four countries. Efforts to dismantle the work of women’s organizations and committed feminists in Central America provide a window into the gendered dimensions of authoritarian practices in the region.

This article examines how Maya Kaqchikel women from Iximulew (Guatemala) conceptualize and respond to gender-based violence through a theater-making praxis rooted in ancestral healing traditions. Focusing on Las Curanderas Teatro as a case study, I theorize performing healing as an embodied practice that integrates theater making with ancestral medicinal knowledge to confront patriarchal violence shaped by the coloniality of gender and the pedagogies of cruelty. I trace this praxis in two interconnected ways: first, through performance, where curanderas and limpias are invoked to address individual and collective wounds; and second, through a theater-making methodology grounded in Indigenous healing systems. This methodology unfolds in three cyclical stages: identification of the wound(s), release and transformation, and restoration of life. Drawing on seven semistructured interviews with Las Curanderas Teatro members and multisited feminist ethnographic research (2019–2020), I argue that performing healing constitutes Indigenous women’s resurgence of cultural memory and spiritual activism—both deeply political. Through embodied ancestral knowledge and collective care, Las Curanderas Teatro advances decolonial feminist interventions that insist on healing a deeply wounded social body produced by intersecting forms of gender-based violence.

This article investigates why restorative justice in France—legally recognized since 2014 and broadly endorsed by political actors—remains only marginally implemented, particularly in cases of gender‑based violence (GBV). Drawing on qualitative research, including interviews, observations, and parliamentary debate analysis, the study shows that limited uptake cannot be explained primarily by feminist resistance or public reluctance. Instead, restorative justice has been shaped by blame‑avoidance strategies, institutional ambivalence, and the downward delegation of responsibility to under‑resourced local actors. Presented as a right but maintained in a quasi‑experimental mode, it relies heavily on the discretionary, often overtime labour of frontline practitioners. This governance configuration reframes, a statutory right into an optional service, preserves existing penal hierarchies, and obscures the structural nature of GBV. The article highlights how symbolic reforms may be neutralized through managerial practices and calls for comparative research on institutional designs that enable more consistent implementation.

Conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) has attracted significant attention from policy-makers, practitioners and the public over the past two decades, but it continues to occur in conflicts around the world – in some places, on a massive scale. Research on CRSV has also grown remarkably in recent years. This article assesses the state of the scholarly literature on CRSV. It first reviews advances in the field, including the widespread recognition of variation in CRSV, the power of mapping the complete pattern of violence (repertoire, targeting, estimated frequency), and the importance of distinguishing between CRSV that occurs as a policy (either a military strategy or a policy for non-military purposes, often the management of the sexual and reproductive lives of combatants) and CRSV that occurs as a practice (in which sexual violence is driven by social dynamics among combatants and is tolerated by commanders). It then highlights emergent themes, including intersectional approaches to studying survivors, victims who did not survive, and their communities, as well as perpetrators, and ongoing debates, including how gender hierarchies and norms shape CRSV. It identifies persistent gaps in scholarly understanding of causes and consequences, along with opportunities for deepening that understanding. After discussing the implications for policy to address CRSV, the article concludes by laying out some lingering questions for future research.

Gender-based violence (GBV) is a global public health crisis exacerbated in fragile settings by gender inequalities, displacement, and resource scarcity. While mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) interventions aim to support people with experience of GBV, research on their effectiveness across diverse fragile contexts remains limited. In this review, we answer the following questions: (1) What type(s) of MHPSS interventions are commonly implemented with survivors of GBV in humanitarian/fragile settings? (2) What outcome(s) are targeted by MHPSS interventions implemented for those exposed to GBV in fragile settings? (3) What is the reported effectiveness of these interventions in addressing these specified outcomes? Seven electronic databases (PubMed, PsycINFO, Cochrane, CINAHL, ERIC, ProQuest, and Web of Science) and grey literature were searched for studies published up to July 2024. Following screening of 2,268 titles and abstracts, 157 full texts were screened (20% independently), with included studies analysed using narrative synthesis. Quality of studies was assessed using the Quality Assessment with Diverse Studies (QuADS). Forty-seven studies are included in this review. MHPSS interventions addressed four broad categories of outcomes: mental health, incidences of GBV, social and community outcomes, and women’s economic empowerment. MHPSS interventions for GBV survivors in fragile settings show promising mental health benefits, with the highest quality evidence found for cognitive behavioural therapy-based approaches in reducing post-traumatic stress, depression, and anxiety. Economic and psychosocial empowerment interventions also led to reduced incidences of intimate partner violence, enhanced financial autonomy, and shifts in social norms, though some interventions yielded mixed or non-significant effects. While many MHPSS interventions for people who had experienced GBV led to meaningful improvements in mental health, GBV reduction and economic empowerment, variability in effectiveness highlights the need for culturally adapted, context-specific approaches and further research on long-term effects in fragile settings.

Faith groups played an important role in initiating and sustaining the movement against Japanese military sexual slavery in Korea. However, individual activists’ experiences related to the connection between their faith and activism have not been extensively discussed, particularly in a transnational context. Given the transnational nature of the issue and the movement, this article explores the role of faith in meaning-making practices through activism, drawing on public narratives of survivor-activists from Korea and Australia and interviews with Korean migrant activists. It identifies the influences of faith on the perceptions and experiences of gender-based violence and related activism, as understood by those engaged in “comfort women” activism. Despite the different focuses and practice contexts of each faith, research participants link their understanding of and response to gender-based violence with religious and spiritual teaching, particularly with human dignity as a common thread. While faith—particularly Christian faith—is widely suggested to be aligned with values such as human rights and social justice, this research also identifies tensions between religious and activist identities, as well as between spiritual teachings and approaches to social change. The potential misalignment in faith and activism, along with the influence of transnational contexts in migrant activism, warrants further investigation.

This article considers the legal status of the prohibition on gender-based violence against women. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) does not contain a prohibition on violence against women as such. However, the CEDAW Committee found in its General Recommendation 19 that the definition of discrimination against women in Article 1 CEDAW includes gender-based violence against women. As general recommendations are not binding, it is often suggested that, aside from the regional treaties on the issue, the prohibition exists only under soft law. By contrast, this article argues that the prohibition exists also under hard law. Whether the definition of discrimination against women in Article 1 CEDAW includes gender-based violence against women is a question of treaty interpretation.

The article contends that, in line with Article 31(3)(b) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, the subsequent practice of States Parties in the application of CEDAW has established their agreement that discrimination against women in Article 1 includes gender-based violence against women. It argues further that General Recommendation 19 served as the catalyst for this subsequent State practice. The article also explores the relationship between treaties and customary international law and contends that CEDAW has generated rules of customary international law, namely that gender-based violence against women is prohibited and that there is an obligation on States to exercise due diligence to eliminate it. The large number of States Parties to CEDAW has not proved an obstacle to the generation of these customary rules.

This article introduces the first of two international Themed Collections on gender and work, published as, Part A across Volumes 35(4) and 36(2), and as Part B in Volume 36(3) of The Economic and Labour Relations Review. In introducing the 11 Part A articles, we identify three main themes: contexts, impacts, and effects on gender status. Contexts include climate crisis, uncertain gender impacts of artificial intelligence (AI), and ongoing skill under-recognition in feminised ‘ancillary’ occupations. Impacts include increasing care load and violence in traditionally feminised teaching work, LGBTQ+ workers’ intertwined experiences of stigmatisation and job insecurity, and immigrant experience of unregulated care work in private households. Impacts on well-being, safety, and security include restricted access to nutrition, rest, creativity, life cycle, and community participation, and diminished status, agency, voice, and recognition of productivity contribution. An alternative productivity calculus is provided in articles documenting the benefits of Australia’s universal statutory 10 days’ family and domestic violence leave entitlement, a proposed Indian green jobs guarantee programme that could transition millions of women into the formal labour market, and an Australian calculation of the unrecognised GDP contribution of breastmilk. A Sub-Saharan African article shows that legally mandated maternity protections are inaccessible to women in informal labour markets. In the context of the United Nations’ key normative and programme role, and its stocktakes of equality and empowerment milestones, we foreshadow questions of official structure and grassroots agency to be addressed in the Part B exploration in (Volume 36(3)) of informal economy work, community agency, and intersectional voice.