Men Have Gender and Women Are People: A Structural Approach to Gender and Violence

The Coconstitutive Relationship Between Gender and Violence

As noted above, the relationship between patriarchy and violence at times seems paradoxical. Recognizing the coconstitutive relationship between gender and violence (Mack et al., 2018) helps elucidate this phenomenon. Violence shapes and influences gender performances and structures in important ways, such as by maintaining the gender binary and gender hierarchies (i.e., patriarchies). Gender itself is constructed and determined, in part, by violence, and the formation and imposition of gender by such means serves other purposes, such as imposing and reaffirming the domination of coloniality (Mack et al., 2018). At the same time, the gender order within societies facilitates and shapes violence in particular contexts. We cannot understand most violence without understanding the ways that patriarchal gender systems help structure those events. Building on these insights, in the following section, we propose two terms—patriarchy-enhancing and patriarchy-facilitated violence—that capture the coconstitutive relationship between gender and violence and address the limitations of gender-based and mainstream research. Pease (2019) noted the importance of naming oppression and by extension the hierarchal systems that structure society to prevent co-optation and colonization of ideas by those working under dominant traditions of thinking. Thus, conceptual development that gives a name to structural power dynamics in relation to violence is an important step in theorizing and addressing violence.

Patriarchy involves “social arrangements that privilege males, where men as a group dominate women as a group, both structurally and ideologically” (Hunnicutt, 2009, p. 558). ⁷ Hierarchical structuring tied to group characteristics such as gender occur at the structural and institutional levels, as well as at the cultural/normative level. Patriarchal gender orders, as hierarchical organizing principles in societies, include societal conceptions of gender as a binary. The supposed naturalness of gender differences is the foundation upon which patriarchies are built and sustained. Patriarchy is not static—to understand complexity in violence depends on recognizing that patriarchy manifests in different ways across cultures, social systems, over time, and by degree. Additionally, gender intertwines with other social phenomena and hierarchical systems to produce violence. The intersections of these varying hierarchies—including race and ethnicity, social class, religion, and sexuality—produce differentials in power both across and within gender. Patriarchy not only interacts with other social hierarchies, but it can also be implicated in social processes including globalization, imperialism, and economic stratification (Pease, 2019).

Patriarchy-Enhancing Violence

Broadly speaking, violence is patriarchy-enhancing when it is patterned and when it maintains or strengthens the given patriarchal gender order of a culture or society. As such, patriarchy-enhancing violence can include, for instance, patterned violence that restricts the movements, choices, and opportunities of girls and women. It can include violence against boys and men who engage in nonnormative or nonhegemonic/dominant masculinity or masculine expression, as well as, more generally, violence against those who do not conform to the gender binary or to normative gender expressions. It can include patterned violence that promotes the gendering of institutional arrangements and violence that shapes cultural understandings of what gender is—what it means to be a man or woman.

There are multiple and testable ways that violence can serve to enhance patriarchal systems. Violence can act as a form of social control in response to particular behaviors or social phenomena (Moffett, 2006), an idea brought to prominence with respect to sexual violence by Brownmiller in the 1970s (Brownmiller, 1975). Violence may instill fear in individuals against whom the violence is directed as well as members of their respective groups (Chakraborty et al., 2018; Ferraro, 1996; Yodanis, 2004). Individuals who experience this type of violence may also experience corresponding stigmatization and ostracism. The violence may be culturally perceived as “lessening” victims as people (Kennedy & Prock, 2018). Perpetrators of violence intended to cause shame or diminishment against those who transgress social expectations, with the consequence of engendering fear of both the violence and the associated social stigma (Chakraborty et al., 2018). The social messaging tied to this type of violence may regulate behavior, maintain the organization of gender in a society, and preserve the status quo of inequitable gender arrangements in a given context (Barnett et al., 2016). Patriarchy-enhancing violence causes harm to the individual subjected to violence, as well as indirect harm to the group or stratum to which the victim belongs. In the same vein, violence is often advantageous to individuals who perpetrate this type of violence, in terms of status, control, power, and so forth, as well as to others of their group by the extension of authority in that social context. Status markers may vary by culture and context, so these manifestations may occur in different ways.

Violence can also socially demarcate a group's solidarity and dominance and express another group's relative vulnerability and subordinate positioning, and/or demarcate a space as hostile or dangerous to particular groups. These processes may contribute to the gendering of social institutions and are especially identifiable in social and institutional spaces dominated by men. For example, Bonnes (2020), citing prior research, noted that military contexts may be characterized by a masculinity that “pushes service-members to demonstrate aggressiveness, dominance, physical strength, mental fortitude, bravery, control, and violence” (p. 1659). These dynamics impact women who reside within these spaces. Weitz (2015) noted that in the U.S. military, “Harassment, assault, and denigration of women allow men to reinstate the military as male territory and to demonstrate male power over women” (p. 179). A sense of group cohesion and empowerment may also occur when groups victimize people who are more socially vulnerable than them. In the United States, for instance, men on athletic teams in certain sports and men in certain types of fraternities may commit group violence against women as well as antigay violence for the purposes of social bonding, exerting heterosexual masculinity, and demonstrating their power and status (Franklin, 2004).

Notably, gains in individual status may not always align with group status depending on the characteristics of an offender. When women perpetrate violence against other women, they may gain an advantage—or maintain their position—within their particular strata of the gender order or in a particular institutional arrangement but exacerbate women's subordination within the overarching gender stratification. Women's violence against other women can act as enforcement of the status quo through “‘enforcing’ the dictates of the prevailing, inequitable social structure” with the intent to gain status, which often translates to a degree of security (Sichel et al., 2020, p. 297). Understanding there are terrains of power tied to the intersectionality of other statuses for both men and women within patriarchies helps assess violence committed by the various gender configurations of offenders and perpetrators.

Violence is patriarchy-enhancing when the direct or indirect consequences of violence disproportionately and negatively impact the resources, health, and opportunities of girls, women, transgender and nonbinary individuals, and boys/men who engage in nonnormative and/or nonhegemonic gender expression. The disproportionate impact of climate change on women as discussed above is an example of patriarchy-enhancing violence. Violence, therefore, may be intentionally patriarchy-enhancing, when individuals/groups use violence to extend their gendered privilege and dominance in a particular context, ⁸ or it may be nonintentionally patriarchy-enhancing, when gendered patterns in society interact with violence to bring about or maintain gender inequities and injustices.

A great deal of research and theorizing focuses on how women's violent victimization, primarily by men, may contribute to women's subordinate position in societies. Research suggests that in some contexts women's choices and behaviors may be restricted or regulated to “protect” them from certain types of violence (Chakraborty et al., 2018). The underlying message is if women behave properly and follow the rules (which are often more restrictive than those men follow) they will be safe from both violence (Brooks, 2011) and corresponding social stigma (Sommer et al., 2018). As noted, much of this research relies on the terms “gender-based” or “gendered” violence; this framing does not overtly demarcate the structural roots and consequences of such victimization. The term patriarchy-enhancing violence recognizes that violence can systematically maintain men's dominance within patriarchal societies. Hunnicutt (2009) aptly observed that “Norms and actions of protection can also serve as instruments of repression. Women may be both dependent on the mercy of men for protection (which is a position of powerlessness) and subject to their aggression” (p. 565). Researchers need to pay attention to the contextual circumstances of—and messages surrounding—violence in particular spaces to assess these possibilities.

Sexual violence is commonly asserted to enhance patriarchies and the subordination of women, ⁹ and research on this topic serves as a useful illustration of this framework. Survivors of sexual assault often experience stigmatization and ostracism (Kennedy & Prock, 2018). Cross-national research illustrates that high levels of sexual assault in a country are linked to increased fear among women (Yodanis, 2004). Fear of sexual assault may inhibit women's movements and constrain their choices, including the choice to participate in paid labor as seen in India (Chakraborty et al., 2018) or even to simply go outside of their homes or into other communal spaces as seen in certain communities in the United States, among Sudanese refugees in Ethiopia, and among girls in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Miller, 2008; Sommer et al., 2018). There are also often societal expectations that women have the responsibility to prevent sexual assault. The allocation of responsibility onto the victim can be readily identified through social processes such as victim-blaming and violence-prevention approaches tailored to women as potential victims (Brooks, 2011; Kennedy & Prock, 2018; Miller, 2008).

Violent victimization against boys and men who do not conform to normative expectations about masculinity in a given context or who step outside the bounds of what is considered acceptable gender expression can also be patriarchy-enhancing. For boys who are mistreated by their peers for violating gendered expectations, Brooks (2000) wrote, emphasizing insights from the United States, “The message is clear: either conform or pay the price of social isolation, persecution, and even violent confrontations, causing injury and in extreme cases, death” (p. 108). The devaluation of girls/women both undergirds and reinforces this process, where boys/men must both avoid and police expressions associated with femininity. This type of violence tends to polarize and reinforce gender as a rigid and hierarchical binary (Brooks, 2000) with highly delineated “rules” for how to properly “be a man.” Homophobia and its violent expression often serve to police the boundaries of masculinity and delineate “real” men deserving social rewards from “failed” men who purportedly deserve victimization. For example, in a U.S.-based study, Meyer (2012) argued, “Gay male respondents regularly perceived their violent experiences as a masculinity contest, with heterosexual men trying to impose notions of weakness onto them” (p. 861).

Given the ability for gender nonconformity to disrupt dominant narratives about gender in patriarchal systems, violence targeting individuals who do not conform to essentialist beliefs about the gender binary can also be patriarchy-enhancing. In an analysis of the violence transgender-identified people experience in the United States, Jauk (2013) found that individuals in the study experienced direct physical violence because they violated the binary gender system, including, in some instances, violence at the hands of police officers. Violence and discrimination that center around defending the borders between “men” and “women” serve the function of policing people into normative categories that are socially demarcated as “natural” and “inevitable.” “Gender based violence and discrimination results in an environment in which covert if not overt permission is given to society to ‘punish’ people for gender transgressions,” wrote Lombardi et al. (2001), focusing on experiences of people in the United States, “This gender fundamentalism operates by denying and stigmatizing any form of gender nonconformity” (p. 91). Although data and research are limited, initial works suggest “an extremely high burden of gender-based violence among trans populations” (Wirtz et al., 2020, p. 228), which is often heightened among people of color. In a survey of almost 30,000 transgender people in the United States, almost half of the respondents in the survey reported that they believed it was their gender identity or expression that resulted in them being denied equal treatment or service, experiencing verbal harassment, and/or being physically attacked (James et al., 2016). Such violence generates a “climate of fear” among other individuals (Ellis et al., 2016). Fear of violence may inhibit individuals’ sense of safety in certain public and private spaces and constrain their choices (Linander et al., 2019).

Patriarchy-Facilitated Violence

Although violence can help maintain and enhance patriarchies, the patriarchal structuring of societies also shapes violence, both as an act and as a concept. Patriarchy-facilitated violence results from cultural attitudes, norms, practices, laws, and institutional arrangements tied to patriarchies that produce, encourage, legitimize, normalize, and/or justify violent practices. Patriarchies can shape various aspects of violence, including if acts are conceptualized as violence, coded as illegal, perceived as deviant or immoral, deterred or encouraged by social institutions and cultural messages, committed by particular groups, committed against particular groups, and/or committed in particular ways. “Men's domination persists in violent institutions and state control of violence,” observed Hearn (2012), “and indeed also in the construction, identification, naming and defining of violence,” which is often “framed within institutions dominated by men” (p. 601). Additionally, some theorizing within masculinities research acts as an important bridge between patriarchy and gender, allowing us to think about the gendered nature of violence through the landscape of patriarchies. For instance, in a theoretical piece on masculinities, Schrock and Schwalbe (2009) noted the importance of emphasizing “what men do, individually and collectively, such that women as a group are subordinated to men as a group and such that some men are subordinated to others” (p. 278). Importantly, this approach is in line with the sociological theory that, “sees gender not as an attribute of individuals but as the name we give to cultural practices that construct women and men as different and that advantage men at the expense of women” (Schrock & Schwalbe, 2009, p. 278, emphasis added). Thus, there are two primary avenues for how violence can be thought about as facilitated by patriarchy—one focuses on how patriarchy is built into the material and nonmaterial fabric of societies, including in ideologies, laws, punishments, rewards, and so forth. The second focuses on how patriarchy is embedded in gendered behaviors, masculinities and femininities, and gendered expressions. These two avenues often act in accordance with each other, but it is also useful to recognize times when they do not.

If there is an identifiable component of patriarchy in the facilitation of violence, the categorization of violence as such does not necessitate that violence is committed by or against members of a particular gender. For violence to be facilitated by patriarchy, only one of the areas identified in the prior paragraph requires patriarchal influence, though patriarchy often influences violence in a multitude of ways. Patriarchy also does not need to be the sole determinant of violence; it may be one of many social forces that shape acts of violence. Gender does not have to be the most important social factor in a violent act for the act to still be a gendered phenomenon; gender invariably interacts with other social forces. In regard to intimate partner violence against women, Rodríguez-Menés and Safranoff (2012) described sexism as an exogenous causal factor; they added that “there may be other endogenous factors … that specify the conditions leading to an intimate partner's violence” (p. 585). We conceptualize patriarchal influences similarly. This conceptualization allows for the recognition of the multidimensionality of violence and the utility of other theoretical paradigms that explain violence. Yet, we also align with Pease's (2019, emphasis added) perspective that intersectional feminism should be “the lens through which other theories are held together” (p. 34), rather than being one component among many that are otherwise decoupled from a critical gender analysis.

Theorizing about violence from this framework requires moving beyond focusing on violence as a singular moment or gender as an isolable variable. This perspective recognizes that the patriarchal facilitation of violence can be established sometimes years prior to the actual infliction of injury. For example, in an analysis of conflict-related gender and sexual violence from a global perspective, Davies and True (2015) observed that because women are less likely to have political representation, institutionalized dynamics act as “a major permissive condition” for the perpetration of sexual assault against women during conflict situations. Indeed, these gendered precursors are fundamental to an accurate understanding of violence: “It is crucial to trace and intercept the moment where gender discrimination and gendered violence were normalized in a society to such an extent that, in situations of civil unrest and political violence, it becomes logical and instrumental to direct sexual and gender-based violence against political opponents” (Davies & True, 2015, p. 502). Patriarchal gender relations shape the beliefs, values, and attitudes of perpetrators which, as they noted, “do not arise ‘naturally’” (p. 501). It also shapes the legitimization and “culture of impunity” of such violence within specific contexts, as well as barriers that contribute to the lack of reporting of violence and poor-quality data in certain contexts. These dynamics are brought about by numerous patriarchal manifestations, including “discriminatory family codes that entrench men's domination over women and children; severe restrictions on women's civil liberties and access to resources and entitlements; institutionalized bias toward sons, boys and men; and normalized, everyday violations of women's physical and bodily integrity” (p. 507).

Research has documented the ways that organizations may facilitate the perpetration of sexual violence through penalizing individuals for reporting violence and by covering up cases of misconduct, especially in hierarchical spaces and those dominated by men (Armstrong et al., 2018). These occurrences have been documented in prisons, workplaces, schools, the military, and churches (Armstrong et al., 2018). Gendered violence is more than a moment of aggression; it is the result of a “social template” developed in the years prior to the violence that set the stage for the violence to unfold (Hollander & Pascoe, 2019). Nyseth Brehm et al. (2016) illustrated this idea in their research on the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The gendered norms, practices, and institutions of manhood and “good citizenship” existed well before the genocide unfolded (Nyseth Brehm et al., 2016). “Boys were charged with shepherding livestock and were often taught combat techniques, whereas men performed heavy labor,” noted Nyseth Brehm et al. (2016), continuing that, “Men were also expected to defend the country by serving in the armed forces” (p. 720), whereas girls were expected to do chores and women were tasked with managing households. Thus, they observed, “To the extent that potential perpetrators are called on to defend their families and their nation against a grave threat, crimes of genocide may be aligned with the gendered expectations of responsible adult citizenship” (p. 720). Gendered processes interact with other social forces to produce patterned violent outcomes.

At the cultural level, there are numerous examples of patriarchy-facilitated violence in research on gender and violence; many of these studies focus on men's offending and women's violent victimization. For instance, researchers consider how notions of romance may be conflated with control and violence in some cultures; jealousy, for example, is sometimes framed as a sign of love and devotion. Similar processes have occurred around stalking, as illustrated in research conducted in Australia (McKeona et al., 2015), where stalking behaviors may be framed as romantic ideals within the culture. Research suggests that similar attitudes may set the stage for the justification and minimization of intimate partner violence (see Papp et al., 2017, for an overview of this research). Madhani et al. (2017), in a discussion of the literature on domestic violence from a global standpoint, wrote “In [certain] contexts, social norms around gender have normalized VAW [violence against women], particularly domestic violence, to the point where it is believed to be necessary, is construed as a sign of love or affection, and victims are blamed for violence that is perpetrated against them by their partners” (p. 78). Cultural norms centering on the control of a woman's sexuality by her husband may mean that when men use force against women within the marital context, neither perceive the act to be violence. In a study from 51 countries with over 70,000 respondents, using data from the World Values Survey, Herrero et al. (2017) found that sexism was a significant correlate of views that intimate partner violence against women is acceptable. Views on the general acceptability of violence were also significantly related to viewing intimate partner violence against women as acceptable. Sexism remained significant even after controlling for views on the general acceptability of violence, suggesting that violence against women has a somewhat distinct etiology and is not simply an extension of “general violence.” The conceptualization of rape culture also speaks to the normalization of sexual violence through certain cultural practices (Grosz, 2018). These acts of violence against women committed by men have certain common elements—the violence builds on cultural practices surrounding the objectification of women and men's sense of entitlement over them, and the violence may be implicitly or explicitly legitimized in society, rendering it less visible in public discourse and hampering women from seeking recourse (Russo & Pirlott, 2006).

At the structural level, men's greater status and the relative social, economic, political, and/or physical vulnerability of women and transgender and nonbinary individuals often facilitate violent acts. Campbell and Mannell (2016) describe contexts in which “socially sanctioned gender inequalities are played out in varying combinations of social, cultural and political exclusion” linked to “social conflict, displacement, social exclusion, illness, poverty, homelessness and food insecurity” (p. 2), all of which diminish the ability of people to extricate themselves from, or respond to, violence. The institutional structuring that places women as more economically dependent on men also may leave them more vulnerable to violence without recourse. In some contexts, men may also have more status in their communities, leaving women vulnerable to social isolation and loss of status (Campbell & Mannell, 2016).

Importantly, violence is not just patriarchy-facilitated when it is directed at women. In reflecting on the role of masculinities in violence, Hearn (2012) observed, citing numerous scholars, that three of the most referenced types of masculinities—hegemonic, complicit, and subordinated—may be conducive to violence in different ways. Hegemonic masculinity, as legitimating patriarchy, may be more effective for explaining violence perpetrated by men against other men. Messerschmidt (1997) similarly maintained that certain aspects of the social structure allow men to use crime and violence against other men as a resource to achieve masculine status. In her critique of the term “gender violence,” Harris (2000) argued that the deeply engrained relationship between masculinity and violence in the United States makes violence committed by the state “seem necessary and desirable,” where, “violence must be countered with more violence lest manhood be reduced or lost” (p. 799). It is also mostly men, noted Ellis and Wykes (2013), who “sit atop the global economic order,” as “those who are prepared to ‘do what is necessary’ in the furtherance of their own interests” (p. 87), even when it costs other people their lives. Although the violence of economic elites is less direct, they still resemble men in marginalized positions who use violence, “in that they are also about power, fear, shame, humiliation and status” (p. 87). Patriarchy-facilitated violence among men can be seen in other contexts as well. Kubicek et al. (2015) found that young men in same-sex relationships in the United States who had experienced intimate partner violence tended to express their power dynamics in heteronormative and gendered language. They linked masculine norms with violence in a way that tended to legitimize it; the authors found that most respondents did not perceive violence in same-sex relationships to be domestic violence or intimate partner violence, “instead seeing it as relatively normalized and using the adage ‘boys will be boys’” (p. 102).

Patriarchy may also facilitate violence committed by women. Violence committed by women may occur as a consequence of women's accommodation of violent normative expectations within the social milieu of patriarchal spaces, and it may also occur in resistance to, and rejection of, the status quo and inequitable or dangerous social arrangements presented to women. Violent self-defense in violent intimate partner contexts illustrates this type of response (Sichel et al., 2020). Women's subjection to violence within patriarchies thus also facilitates their perpetration of violence. For instance, research has shown that women who commit violence tend to have high rates of a history of childhood abuse. Women's violence in intimate partner relationships also typically occurs in the context of violence committed against them by their partners, with women's motivations for committing violence including self-defense, defense of children, and retribution (Swan & Snow, 2006).

Societies tend to have many messages and practices surrounding acts of violence. Although sexual assault is facilitated by patriarchy, it is not an action that is wholly embraced across societies; indeed, it is repudiated to varying degrees at different levels of modern societies. Dualistic and simplistic ways of thinking about patriarchy—that societies (or practices/attitudes therein) are purely patriarchal or have a total absence of patriarchy, or that patriarchy is only manifested in one particular and static way—are neither valid nor useful in developing a historically or socially accurate understanding of the workings of societies. Davies and True (2015) wrote that the importance of unequal gender relations in conflict-related gender violence has been dismissed in prior research because it is perceived that such relations “are inherent in all situations of widespread and systematic SGBV [sexual and gender-based violence],” and thus “cannot explain why it occurs in some situations but not in others” (p. 496). Yet, there is significant variation in gender inequality across countries and conflict situations, and the treatment of unequal gender relations as a unitary concept does not account for “varying forms with respect to individual behaviour within and across ethnic, racial and substate groups and with respect to institutions and collective norms” (Davies & True, 2015, p. 498).

Additionally, as noted above, recognizing terrains of power for men and women within patriarchal social systems helps make sense of different messages related to violence for men. Hearn (2012) observed that, “Men's violences can be sources of pride, be shameful, be routine in reaffirming power, or they can be backlash reactions to loss of or perceived threat to power” (p. 602). Men enact violence for particular purposes, but the management and approval/disapproval of violent occurrences by and among men serve to construct men as a group, differentiate layers of power among men, and maintain masculinized dominance (Pascoe & Hollander, 2016). Although it is worth recognizing that patriarchal manifestations may differ by degree, it is also worth reflecting on the extent to which gender inequality “is perhaps more flexible, durable, and tenacious than is popularly assumed,” and correspondingly that the enactment of violence for the purposes of sustaining men's dominance may not always be overt (Pascoe & Hollander, 2016, p. 74). The actual act of sexual violence is just one component of rape as a mechanism for enhancing patriarchies; “sexual assault is not simply an individual incident but a wide-ranging constellation of behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, and talk that work to produce and reproduce gendered dominance in everyday interaction” (Pascoe & Hollander, 2016, p. 69). Violence as a social behavior has more subtle interactional components where rape and sexual violence become embedded in everyday language, behaviors, and cultural imagery, and in the doing of gender itself (Pascoe & Hollander, 2016).

It is clear from these insights that violence is often both patriarchy-enhancing and patriarchy-facilitated, due to the inextricability of how violence constructs and is constructed by gender. In a piece on men's intimate partner violence against women in Spain, Rodríguez-Menés and Safranoff (2012) demonstrated the interlinkages of these terms in their theoretical conclusions on status inconsistency theory and intimate partner violence. This perspective “contributes to a vision of patriarchy as a multidimensional power structure that subordinates women through different means” (p. 587). The authors stated that violence is “an outcome of a sexist culture that denigrates women,” and “the result of an opportunity structure that disadvantages women” (what we call in this article patriarchy-facilitated violence) as well as “a means to restore subordination when it is challenged” (p. 587) (what we call patriarchy-enhancing violence). In line with these insights, the researchers found in their empirical analysis that women in Spain were more susceptible to violence if their partners exhibited sexism, if the women experienced socioeconomic dependence and disempowerment and, conversely, if the women's economic status was greater than that of their partners. The inter connectedness of the terminology presented here is a strength; the ability to use the terms together or separately allows for greater nuance in our understanding of how, when, and why violence emerges in social contexts. Despite their similarity, these terms identify different features and functions of violence and gender. As such, the terms hold the possibility of both tying together and differentiating violent acts through a gendered lens of analysis.