21 The Case – Rape Etiology and Gendered Institutions

In Our Bodies, Their Battlefields: War Through the Lives of Women, Christina Lamb writes about her travels to document direct accounts of women facing the effects of war. Through looking at the forgotten histories of what Lamb calls “the world’s most neglected war crime,” wartime rape and sexual violence are explored as being universally weaponized against women in instances of war and genocide (Lamb 2020). Lamb tells the testimonies as a story of her travels to connect womens’ circumstances as not only an individual problem to one war-torn region, but also as a worldwide issue where women are often silenced because of the same lack of support, acknowledgment, and accountability. This results in “a woman’s body still [being] very much a battlefield [around the world], and hundreds of thousands of women bear the invisible wounds of war” (Lamb 2020: 9).

Each chapter focuses on a different location with testimonies from women on the forgotten and glossed over impacts of war and history; these locations include the Congo, Rwanda, Nigeria, Bosnia, ex-Yugoslavian countries, Syria, Iraq, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Philippines, and Argentina. The experiences that these women talk about are Korean and Japanese “comfort women” during WWII, sexual assaults committed by Red Army soldiers against German women, the rise of ISIS in the Middle East and Boko Haram in Nigeria, the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar, the Bangladesh Liberation War, the 1994 Tutsi genocide in Rwanda, rape camps in the Bosnian War, and Argentina’s “Dirty War.”

Women have been historically excluded from social, economic, and political power through the gendering of social behaviors such as household and child care. Through providing a biological and historical background, Huber explains “male control of resources stemming from the gendering of production and reproduction and the tendency of all-male groups to become solidary around masculine erotic identity” that have provided the foundations to how the current patriarchal state and gender relations look in modern-day (Huber 2008: 9). Huber attributes the institutional exclusion of women due to the “gestation and prolonged lactation…[that] barred women from warfare and politics, which were inextricably linked since the invention of metal weapons 5000 years ago” (Huber 2008: 9). Gendering institutions and the patriarchal state gave rise to “the male’s perspective and contributions [being] considered more valuable, resulting in the silencing and marginalization of the woman” (Boundless 2016). This resulted in what we see in modern-day as women aren’t as represented in positions of power

Statistics on the weaponization of sexual violence is complicated to have accurate reporting on because along with rape, in general, making it hard for victims to come forward, most perpetrators hold positions of power like being military officers, militants, civilians, or workers in displacement camps. Systematic data of rape reporting during war can likely underrepresent certain victims bringing to light a serious problem reflective of the lack of resources and support for women to report sexual violence. There are some instances where rape reporting is likely to be overreported like “during the Bosnian war [where] approximately 20 000 cases [were reported]… from a 1993 European Commission report” (Palermo & Peterman, 2011). There are also some instances where it is likely to be underreported like “estimates of rape during the 1994 Rwandan genocide [that] range from 250 000 to 500 000 individuals” (Palermo & Peterman, 2011). The complex effects of wartime rape are seen through the psychosocial effects seen when “women who have been exposed to 3 or 4 types of gender-based violence experience high rates of mental disorder (77.3%), anxiety disorder (52.5%), mood disorder (47.1%), and substance abuse disorder (56.2%)” (Stark & Wessells 2012). This problem reflects the multifaceted experiences with wartime sexual violence and the importance of being sensitive to the complexities of weaponized rape.

In 2020, the United Nations documented in “the Council on the Secretary-General’s report… almost 3,000 UN-verified cases committed over the course of a single year [where sexual violence was weaponized in contemporary armed conflict], the vast majority of them (89 percent) targeting women and girls” (United Nations 2020). Due to them being UN specific verified cases, this results in an underestimate because the UN has recently adopted a resolution where they are required to take a survivor-centered approach requiring to “[tailor] solutions that build resilience, restore voice and choice to survivors, and address the diverse experiences of all affected individuals” (United Nations 2020). In 2019, the UN reported, “on conflict-related sexual violence [listing] nineteen countries where women were being raped in war and named twelve national military and police forces, and forty-one non-state actors” (Boswell and Spade 1996: 8). It is important to note that empirical evidence is limited because of the feelings of shame and fear that come along with reporting wartime rape.