Resurfacing Gender: A Typology of Conflict-Related Violence Against Women for the Northern Ireland Troubles

The conflict in Northern Ireland has been assumed to represent an outlier in respect of the contemporary global discourse on conflict-related violence against women (CRVAW) and particularly strategic sexualised violence. CRVAW has neither commanded the narrative nor imagery of that conflict, nor specifically recognized as part of women’s experiences of it. However, a composite and comprehensive analysis of CRVAW for that context has been absent. Drawing from primary and secondary research the article presents the first typology of CRVAW for Northern Ireland. The article maps and evidences a range of gendered harms directly and indirectly resulting from the conflict enacted by state and non-state actors. Drawing from early feminist work on the need for gender in the analysis of conflict violence and based on critical harm theory, the typology evidences that sexualised sectarianism directed at women featured in and characterised women’s experiences of the conflict and that there is a strategic characteristic to some of the harms that women experienced. The article argues that a re-surfacing of gender is required in current global debates on conflict violence to make visible the strategic nature of violence that is determined by its gendered underpinnings, meaning and efficacy in a context such as Northern Ireland.