Critical perspectives on gender, politics and violence

Among scholars and practitioners alike, gender-based violence against political actors is increasingly recognized as a global phenomenon of interest, to be problematized and theorized vis-à-vis traditional definitions of ‘violence in politics’ or ‘violence against politicians’ (Krook and Restrepo Sanín 2019). In particular, there is growing awareness and evidence that, as women advance into a traditionally male-dominated political arena, they are targeted with instances of violence which are distinctive for both their sheer quantity and vitriolic quality (InterParliamentary Union 2018). Existing social and political perspectives on the phenomenon are characterized by different (and often competing) conceptualizations of the role played by gender in determining the forms, motives and impacts of violence against political actors (see Bardall, Bjarnegård and Piscopo 2019 for an overview). This is partly because the very dyadic relationship between politics and violence has often proven difficult to disentangle, and partly because the literature on political violence has only recently taken on a gendered focus (ibid.). Gender-based violence has been explored from a traditional perspective on political violence, showing how the phenomenon differentially affects men and women (see Davies and True 2019) as well as from perspectives more firmly grounded in gender and politics, where it is commonly labelled “Violence Against Women In Politics” (VAWIP) (Krook 2017, 2020; Krook and Restrepo Sanín 2016, 2019). This Special Issue contributes to the current debate by offering a complementary perspective: through current international case studies, it investigates consolidated and emerging discursive practices which characterize gender-based violence against political actors as an increasingly mainstream phenomenon. In particular, it explores a vast array of forms of “semiotic violence”, an umbrellaterm recently introduced by Krook (2020) to refer to the forms of gender-based