Militarised Masculinity in the Colombian Armed Conflict: Gender Attitudes and Configurations of Practice

Signe Svallfors , Stockholm University

This study explores the relationship between local armed conflict violence and women’s experiences of and attitudes to gender-based violence. Women’s relationships may become more militarized due to armed conflict if men are socialized to a soldier archetype and if they are taught no other ways to deal with war trauma. The study combines pooled nationally representative data on individual women’s health and behavior from 2004–2016 with local data on armed conflict violence. Results from the fixed effects linear probability models show that conflict generally increased women’s risk of experiencing emotional, physical and sexual violence perpetrated by their partner. Women’s attitudes to gender-based violence were unrelated to local conflict. This suggests that women’s partnerships have indeed become militarized due to armed conflict, but conflict has not desensitized women to gender-based violence.

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 Presented in Session 9. Marriage, Family, Households, & Unions; Gender, Race, & Ethnicity