CSWS Annual Review

Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies brought Judge Yassmin Barrios to campus; CSWS was a cosponsor / photo by Jack Liu.

Gender, Power, and Grief: Announcing Our 2019-2020 CSWS Theme

I started as director of CSWS in the summer of 2016. Sadly for us, CSWS lost two of our founding mothers within months of each other in 2016. Joan Acker and Sandi Morgen, pathbreaking feminist titans, made the Center a focus of research and activism around women’s economic rights and security for over forty years.

Amna Javed

In the Name of Honor?: Evaluating the Impact of Weather Variability on “Honor” Killings in Pakistan

by Amna Javed, PhD Candidate, Department of Economics 

Every year, approximately 5,000 women are murdered globally in the name of honor. These crimes, labeled as “honor” killings, are meant to punish transgressing individuals who are believed to have brought shame to their families by overstepping social boundaries regarding acceptable sexual freedoms. In Pakistan’s context, where the “purity” of a woman is crucial to ensuring a successful arranged marriage, dishonor might result from, among other reasons, coming home late, having an alleged affair, or eloping. 

Marcio Freitas’ “Nunca Me Calarei” (I Will Never be Silenced) features the faces of women who have experienced gender-based violence in Brazil / photo by Emily Masucci.

"The Struggle Continues": Gender-Based Violence and the Politics of Justice and Care in Brazil

by Emily Masucci, PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology For many historically marginalized women, the state and its institutions are not perceived as reliable. State-sponsored violence against women—low-income, afro-descendant, and indigenous women in particular—is a weapon with which the Brazilian state was founded and has maintained power since. The fabric of Brazil is stained by histories of forced sterilization of indigenous and afro-descendant women, of brutal rapes of young women students by military officials during the dictatorship, and recently by the calculated political feminicide of Rio de Janeiro city councilwoman Marielle Franco. Given this legacy, survivors of gender-based violence (GBV) are justifiably apprehensive of appealing to state institutions as they pursue safety and redress.
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