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19 Global Jurist 1 (2019)

handle is hein.journals/globjur19 and id is 1 raw text is: Claudia Pividori1 / Paola Degani1 Reflecting on criminalizing male violence against women under human rights and human security discourses: a feminist legal and policy analysis ' University of Padova, Padua, Italy, E-mail: claudia.pividori@unipd.it, paola.degani@unipd.it Abstract: Violence against women is an established issue of concern under international law as well as in the interna- tional security domain. More in general, it is contended that issues related to gender-based violence need to be countered with strategies aimed at fighting sexual hierarchies and structural discrimination affecting women at different levels and in different contexts. Despite this, international legal and policy responses to male vio- lence against women are increasingly turning to criminal law enforcement with a strict focus on perpetrators' individual accountability. The article critically analyzes this trend within the two international legal and policy frameworks that in the past decades have most consistently integrated the issue of violence against women, that is, human security and human rights. The article contends that the increasing focus on criminalization that has emerged in both these frameworks risks obfuscating and downsizing the collective and public dimension of States' responsibility with regards the social phenomenon of violence. Indeed, criminalization strategies allow States to circumvent their duty to work on the social, political and economic structural dimensions at the root of this severe form of violation women's human rights. Keywords: feminist legal theory, women's human rights, gender security, violence against women, international politics DOI: 10.1515/gj-2017-0028 Introduction In the last two decades, international legal and policy responses to the social phenomenon of male violence against women has focused, on the one hand, on women's victimization - and therefore also on the progressive criminalization of acts of violence; on the other hand, on women's empowerment, agency and participation. Adopting a policy framework analysis, the aim of this paper is to analyze the different orientations adopted within the human rights and human security frameworks with regards to the issue of male violence against women as a result, in particular, of the recognition and consolidation of a gender perspective in the security discourse developed by feminist approaches to International Relations and International Law (Bunch and Reilly 1994; Shepherd 2010; 2008b). Feminist research has provided a more in-depth reflection on the social construction of women's vulnera- bility in the context of gendered social hierarchy, where the social values associated with femininity and mas- culinity perpetuate inequality (Tickner 1992 1995). Undoubtedly since the 1990s the international community has looked at the issue of male violence against women, both in peacetime and in conflict-related scenarios, differently than before. In the first case, by recognizing it as a social phenomenon linked to discrimination and inequality on the basis of sex. In the second, by characterizing it as a gender-related security issue to be ad- dressed according to the human rights paradigm. Beside this institutional commitment, feminist research in the area of international relations and international law has worked to bring a gender perspective to the issue of security, taking on with vigor the problem of male violence against women, its meanings and pervasiveness (Charlesworth, Chinkin, and Wright 1991; Edwards 2010; Tickner 1992; 1995; Youngs 2008). Such development has highlighted the need to develop a women's point of view from a critical normative analysis of gender inequality (Baxter and Lansing 1980; Shepherd 2010). Feminist research has emphasized the need to identify a balanced and holistic political and legal response to it and thus take advantage of the per- spectives offered by human rights law to combat the social phenomenon of violence (Bunch 1990; Chalresworth and Chinkin 2000). That is, first of all, by addressing women's economic and social disadvantages, and working on a new conceptual and material perspective of peace and security (Boserup 1970; Reardon 1985; Brock-Utne Claudia Pividori is the corresponding author. © 2o18 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston. DE CRUYTER Global jurist. 2019; 20170028

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