Feminist Approaches to Justice: Contributions to CSW67

Abstract

We thank Dr Frances Heidensohn, a pioneer of feminist perspectives in criminology and a visiting professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, for her foreword. We are pleased to provide this introduction to our guest-edited special issue. This issue comprises five articles developed from presentations at NGO parallel events during the Sixty-Seventh Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), held March 6–17, 2023. This marks the fourth time we, as co-editors, have collaborated to organize these events and edit a special issue. We are grateful to Editors Vera Lopez and Lisa Pasko for this opportunity with Feminist Criminology. We thank Christine Leavitt, managing editor for her support as we navigated the challenges of developing this special issue.

The UN Commission on the Status of Women was established in 1946. It is a functional commission of the UN Economic and Social Council and serves as the main intergovernmental body exclusively devoted to the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women. Over the past three decades, it has become the global meeting place for activists and advocates for gender equality, and to some extent, researchers and academics. This is partly due to the fact that there have been no World Conferences for Women since the fourth one in Beijing in 1995. Indeed, 2025 will mark the 30th anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing and its important outcome document, the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. The popularity of the CSW for activists is also due to the creation of UN Women in 2010 and its proactive nurturing of civil society participation. Finally, the enthusiasm of NGOCSW, the large civil society coalition that contributes advocacy and evidence to the intergovernmental deliberations of the CSW, has played a significant role in attracting high numbers of advocates and observers to the CSW. During the Covid-19 pandemic, NGOCSW/NY transitioned to a virtual gathering, and CSW67 was the first time that NGOCSW/NY produced a hybrid forum.

Every year, the CSW holds its annual session at the UN headquarters in New York. Each session has a priority theme and a review theme that frame the discussions and the main outcome document, termed Agreed Conclusions. For CSW67, the priority theme was “Innovation and technological change, and education in the digital age for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls.” The review theme was “Challenges and opportunities in achieving gender equality and the empowerment of rural women and girls,” reviewing the agreed conclusions of the sixty-second session of the CSW. Although many topics are discussed at CSW sessions, these two themes are carefully chosen for their timeliness, and frame much of the Agreed Conclusions. Since 2015, much of the discussions and Agreed Conclusions of the CSW have aligned with Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals. Of interest to us as feminist criminologists was the intersection of these debates with the negotiations of the Ad Hoc Committee (AHC) to Elaborate a Comprehensive International Convention on Countering the Use of Information and Communications Technologies for Criminal Purposes.

NGOCSW is a broad coalition with affiliated branches in various world regions. NGOCSW/NY is the main organizer of NGO contributions to the CSW, primarily through its management of a forum, which includes scheduling parallel events for the entire NGO community, orientation and advocacy training for NGOs and sessions devoted to NGO mobilization such as caucuses, briefings and conversation circles. The parallel events are NGO-sponsored sessions held alongside the intergovernmental deliberations of the CSW. Months before each CSW session, NGOCSW informs its members about the key issues to be discussed and prioritizes its own suggested goals for the Agreed Conclusions, consulting with its membership. The forum allowed participants to come to New York and join over 300 in-person events, while also providing over 400 virtual sessions and spaces on a virtual portal for those who were not able to participate in-person. More than 15,000 people participated overall.

As academics, we represent four NGOs with ECOSOC consultative status: the International Sociological Association, the World Society of Victimology, the American Society of Criminology, and Criminologists Without Borders. We collaborate to organize co-sponsored parallel events through NGOCSW/NY to address the priority and review themes and the general topics of international feminist criminology. Each year, our panels focus not only on the priority and review themes but also on feminist approaches to justice, particularly issues faced by women as victims/survivors, criminal justice professionals, and system-impacted women. We recognize that while the CSW and many parallel events aim to educate policymakers about various women’s issues, not all are research-focused, nor do they encompass our specific focus on topics at the intersection of criminal justice. Our contributions, therefore, aim to provide research evidence and highlight relevant perspectives regarding women as victims/survivors, criminal justice professionals, and women in conflict with the law, including incarcerated women.

Our experience organizing these sessions has evolved since 2019 when we held our first collaborative CSW panels. Each year, we build on insights from previous years and have learned that while most NGO parallel events now focus on violence against women, it is much rarer to find events addressing the criminal justice response to such violence, women as criminal justice professionals, or women in conflict with the law. In particular, the digital divide between incarcerated individuals and those in the community has been increasing. Gabriela Franich and Marietta Martinovic highlight this divide and discuss the initial benefits and challenges of the ‘use of technology’ policy change aimed at improving the experiences of incarcerated women in New South Wales, Australia. Therefore, we strive to always include these topics in our panels. We have also learned that, given the location of UN headquarters in New York City, there is a disproportionate number of sessions and speakers focusing on the United States. While the NGOCSW Forum attracted participants from 139 countries, over 50% of those attending was from the United States. We thus aim for global representation in our panels. This special issue reflects that effort, featuring articles about Australia, Israel, Spain, Sweden, and India.

To ensure permanence of our work, we have been recruiting our best presenters to submit articles for special issues of journals that we co-edit. This is our fourth such special issue. For CSW63 in 2019, we pursued a special issue of the International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy (IJCJSD), an open access journal published by the School of Justice at Queensland University of Technology, and Dr Ranjan took on the lead co-editor role of soliciting manuscripts from our panelists and managing the entire peer review process to publication. That special issue was entitled “The Social Protection of Women and Girls: Links to Crime and Justice at CSW63” (Ranjan et al., 2020) and was enormously successful. Dr Kerry Carrington, then editor of IJCJSD, reached out to us shortly after the special issue was published to let us know that we had 17,000 downloads and over 37,000 views in the month in which the special issue was published. CSW64 was shortened to a one-day meeting due to the emergence of Covid-19 and no parallel events were held. For CSW65, we approached Claire Renzetti, the editor of Violence Against Women, a longstanding advocate of international feminist criminological scholarship. Dr Beichner-Thomas took on the lead co-editor role, producing a special issue entitled, “Prioritizing the Elimination of Violence Against Women Worldwide: Lessons from the 65^th Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (Beichner et al., 2022).” This issue was also very well-received, and besides a podcast and free downloading of the issue granted by Sage Publications, we sent notice to the UN diplomatic community in New York, receiving quite a few positive replies. For CSW66, we approached Mahesh Nalla, editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Comparative & Applied Criminal Justice and Dr Barberet took on the lead co-editor role, producing a special issue entitled, “Feminist Approaches to Justice: Contributions to CSW66 (Barberet et al., 2023).” This issue was also well-received, and besides a video featuring select authors of articles in the special issue and free downloading of the issue granted by Taylor & Francis, we also sent notice to the international community in New York and abroad.

Panels Organized at the Sixty-Seventh Session of the CSW in 2023

We will now detail the panels we organized in 2023, from which the articles in this special issue are drawn. In 2023, at the Sixty-Seventh Session of the CSW, our four parallel events were:

1. 10th March 2023: Feminist Approaches to Justice - Empowerment of Women and Girls in the Digital Age.

2. 11th March 2023: Feminist Approaches to Justice - Reintegration of Justice System-Impacted Rural Women.

3. 14th March 2023: Feminist Approaches to Justice - The Impact of Technology on Women and Girls in the Justice System.

4. 15th March 2023: Feminist Approaches to Justice - Rural Women and Girls in a Just Society.

Feminist Approaches to Justice: Empowerment of Women and Girls in the Digital Age

This panel was chaired by Dr Rosemary Barberet from John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY). The opening remarks were presented by Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury, former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, who highlighted the digital age as both a challenge and an opportunity for empowering women and girls. The topics included “The Empowerment of Women and Girls in the Context of the Cybercrime Convention Negotiations,” presented by Gilberto Duarte Santos, Esq., Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Officer, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), New York Liaison Office; “The Dark Side of Innovation: Implications for a Feminist Criminology in the Digital Age,” by Dr Marie-Michelle Strah, International Consultant and Adjunct Professor, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY (USA); “Gender-Based Violence in the Digital Age: Challenges and Responses,” by Dr Dimitra Laurence Larochelle, Postdoctoral Researcher at Université du Québec à Montréal (CANADA) and Youth Representative to the United Nations, International Sociological Association; and “Girls’ Experiences of Digitally Mediated Interactions,” by Dr Sue Nichols, Professor of Education, Centre for Research in Educational and Social Inclusion, University of South Australia (AUSTRALIA). The question-and-answer session was moderated by Dr Jan Marie Fritz, International Sociological Association (ISA) Representative to the UN and Professor at the University of Cincinnati (USA).

Feminist Approaches to Justice - Reintegration of Justice System-Impacted Rural Women

Dr Dawn Beichner, UN Representative World Society of Victimology, Professor, Illinois State University, presented in this panel, sponsored by the World Society of Victimology, and served as chair and moderator. Topics included Rural Women Returning Home from the U.S. Prisons and Jails presented by Dr Dawn Beichner-Thomas, UN Representative World Society of Victimology; Professor, Illinois State University (GERMANY and USA); Colombian Women Crafting Justice in the Digital Age: Reflections on Peace, Health and Rights by Ms Beatriz Ciordia, Communications Consultant, United Nations (USA) and Dr Arnaud Kurze, Associate Professor of Justice Studies, Montclair State University (USA); A Feminist Analysis on the Reintegration of Women Offenders in Africa by Ms Doreen Namyalo-Kyazze, Director- Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), Penal Reform International (UGANDA) and Rural Women, Social Movements, and their Representation in the Indian Media by Dr Sheetal Ranjan, Professor, Montclair State University (USA) and Dr Maya Chadda, Member, Council on Foreign Relations; Professor Emeritus, William Paterson University (USA).

Feminist Approaches to Justice - The Impact of Technology on Women and Girls in the Justice System

Dr Sheetal Ranjan, Past Chair of Division of Feminist Criminology - American Society of Criminology and Professor, Montclair State University (USA) chaired the panel. Topics included Deployment of Digital Devices in a Female Prison in NSW In Australia: Opportunities, Challenges and Lessons Learnt by Dr Marietta Martinovic, Associate Professor in Criminology and Justice, Australian Inside Out Prison Exchange Program Director, Australian Prison-based and Community-based Think Tanks Director, RMIT University City Campus (AUSTRALIA); Patterns of Nonconsensual Image-Based Victimization of Women in India: A Critical Analysis by Dr Debarati Halder, Professor, Parul Institute of Law, Parul University (INDIA); How Technology has Impacted Women’s Victimization in Online Romance and Dating Crimes by Dr Aunshul Rege, Associate Professor & Director of the CARE Lab, Temple University (USA); Investigating Digital Misogynoir and How Black Women Create Harm Reduction on Twitter by Kay Coghill, Digital Director, me too. International (USA); Gender Effects of Social Network Use Among Secondary School Adolescents: Extremist and Pro-Violence Attitudes by Dr Pilar Rodríguez Martínez, Professor of Sociology, Universidad de Almería (SPAIN) and Technology Assisted Searches in Women’s Prisons: A Critical Appraisal by Dr Amy Hughes-Stanley, Liverpool John Moores University (UNITED KINGDOM).

Feminist Approaches to Justice - Rural Women and Girls in a Just Society

This panel was chaired by Dr Rosemary Barberet from John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY) and opening remarks were provided by Dr Lisa Pasko, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Sociology & Criminology, University of Denver (USA) and Co-Editor, Feminist Criminology. Topics included Transit Safety For Women And Girls In Rural Environments by Dr Vania Ceccato, Professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Environment, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, affiliated with Sao Paulo State University, Brazil and an International Ambassador of the British Society of Criminology (SWEDEN & BRAZIL); Constructing a Resilient Subjectivity: Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Women Managing LGBT-phobia in Rural Israel by Dr Gilly Hartal, Gender Studies Program, Bar-Ilan University (ISRAEL); The Resilience of Women in Ménaka, Mali (in French, with interpretation to English) by Chief Warrant Officer Alizeta Kabore Kinda (BURKINA FASO), Gender Unit, UNPOL, MINUSMA; and Barriers to Access to Justice for Indigenous Women in Guatemala (in Spanish, with interpretation to English) by Dorotea Gómez Grijalva, Masters in Social Anthropology (GUATEMALA). Interpretation to English provided by ISA Youth Representatives to the United Nations Dimitra Laurence Larochelle, Université du Québec à Montréal and Sebastián Galleguillos Agurto, John Jay College of Criminal Justice and CUNY Graduate Center, City University of New York.

Special Issue Contributions to CSW67

We believe our primary contribution to CSW67 lies in the intellectual discourse we generate and curate by selecting panelists for the presentations. To create permanence, we solicit manuscripts from these presenters for inclusion in this special issue. Throughout this process, we ensure that voices from different parts of the world are included. Scholars who might not have considered publishing their presentations in the context of the CSW can now link their work to CSW themes and share their ideas with a global academic audience. Additionally, by working with editors and publishers to enable extended open access to these journals, practitioners and policymakers interested in the topic can access the content without incurring any expense. The articles included in this special issue focus on a range of topics as they relate to the priority and review themes of CSW67.

Gabriela Franich and Marietta Martinovic discuss the deployment of digital devices in prisons in New South Wales, Australia. They explore the experiences of incarcerated women and the double digital divide they face. Focusing on a recent policy change that provided digital devices to incarcerated women, they examine the impact of this policy. They analyze how these devices can enhance community and family connections, which are crucial for these women given their extensive trauma histories.

Pilar Rodríguez Martínez, Francisco Villegas Lirola, and Janara Sousa discuss the gendered nature of extremist and pro-violence attitudes associated with social network use among secondary school adolescents in Spain. Using scales developed and tested by Ozer and Bertelsen (2018), they administered a questionnaire to secondary school adolescents in Spain (n = 1135) to investigate whether social media use correlates with self-reported extremist and pro-violence attitudes. Their research found that boys use social media more than girls and that greater social media use does not correlate with increased extremism but does correlate with more pro-violence attitudes.

Gilly Hartal and Rachel Levi Herz discuss how lesbian, bisexual, and transgender women manage LGBTphobia in rural Israel. Drawing on data gathered through semi-structured interviews for a large project focusing on LBT women’s experiences in rural Israeli settings, they use a theory of vulnerability to support their claim that LBT women exhibit resilience even in situations of marginalization and vulnerability. Their paper demonstrates how resilience is embedded within vulnerability for these women and how they manage LGBTphobia by constructing alternative spaces, engaging in advocacy, and directly resisting acts of violence.

Vania Ceccato, Catherine Sundling, and Gabriel Gilori analyze data from a 2022 survey of railway passengers in neighboring municipalities in southern central Sweden to explore women’s safety experiences in diverse rural and urban environments. Their study is particularly relevant as the lack of safety impedes women’s ability to freely engage in school, employment, and public activities without being on high alert. They found that young women are more likely to be victimized. Additionally, although rural women feel safer than their urban counterparts, they are more likely to take precautionary measures before traveling. The authors advocate for gender- and age-sensitive transit policies that consider rural contexts.

Sheetal Ranjan and Maya Chadda use case study methodology to explore the commonalities and differences between two rural women’s social movements in India: the Gulabi Gang (GG) in Uttar Pradesh and the Anti-Liquor (AL) movement in Karnataka, both aimed at combating violence against women. They analyze the emergence of these movements, the actions undertaken, the tactics employed, and the progression and outcomes over time. Their findings highlight the safety challenges rural women face due to ongoing domestic violence and gender inequality. They emphasize the need for international support to ensure sustained political interest and efficient legal protection and call for the empowerment of indigenous organizations to drive effective social change.

Reflecting on our contribution to CSW67 in this special issue, we believe it lies in the nuanced empirical analyses of our authors to the priority (Franich & Martinovic; Rodríguez Martínez, Villegas Lirola & Sousa) and review themes (Ranjan & Chadda; Hartal & Levi Herz; Ceccato, Sundling & Gliori). These articles illustrate, but also go well beyond the content adopted in the CSW67 Agreed Conclusions with detailed analyses of on girls, technology and attitudes towards violence (Rodríguez Martínez), and policies regarding technological access by women in prison (Franich & Martinovic). Furthermore, in addressing the review theme, they showcase women as change agents (Ranjan & Chadda) and the situation of rural LBT women and LGBTphobia (Hartal & Levi Herz), both under-explored in the CSW62 Agreed Conclusions (Commission on the Status of Women, 2023). We would especially like to note that while the priority theme is extensively tackled in the CSW67 Agreed Conclusions, it fails to delve into the two areas developed by our authors – the importance of technological access and its many benefits for women in detention, and the differential use by and impact on girls of technology as concerns incitement to violent or extremist behavior. As noted elsewhere (Barberet, 2014), the CSW over-emphasizes women as victim-survivors, and pays much less attention to them as potential law violators or as incarcerated persons. But a feminist approach to justice cannot envisage women and girls only as victim-survivors. Their full relationship to the law must be acknowledged and analyzed. That said, although the harms (including crimes) inflicted on women via technology are extensively detailed in the CSW67 Agreed Conclusions, they have largely failed to be included in the drafts to the new United Nations Convention against Cybercrime, still in negotiations. To date, there is only consensus on criminalizing offences related to online child sexual abuse or child sexual exploitation material, solicitation or grooming for the purpose of committing a sexual offence against a child and the non-consensual dissemination of intimate images (A/AC.291/22/Rev.2). As feminist criminologists, we urge more collaboration between the CSW and the UN Crime Programme.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Sheetal Ranjan

Dawn Beichner-Thomas

Rosemary Barberet

Author Biographies

Sheetal Ranjan, PhD, is a Professor of Justice Studies & Sociology at Montclair State University, USA. Her research interests include feminist approaches to justice and healthcare approaches to justice. She focuses on violence prevention, intervention, coordinated community response, and program evaluation through grant funding, establishing new programs, supporting existing ones, and conducting research to assess their effectiveness. Dr Ranjan has partnered with Jersey Shore Medical University to secure $7.5 million in grant funding for community-based violence prevention and intervention programs. She is also the founder of the Healthcare Approaches to Justice Collaborative at Montclair State University. Her recent teaching aligns with her research, offering courses like Global Issues in Gender Inequality (Spring 2024) and Healthcare Approaches to Justice (Fall 2024). Dr Ranjan has received the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Division of Feminist Criminology of the American Society of Criminology and is an expert on the global roster of UN Women - End Violence Against Women (EVAW). She has served on the ASC Policy Committee (2019–2022) and as past chair of the Division of Feminist Criminology. Her co-organized CSW panels have resulted in three co-edited thematic special issues.

Dawn Beichner-Thomas, PhD, is a professor in the Criminal Justice Sciences Department and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Illinois State University. She co-directs an international post-graduate course in Victimology, Victim Assistance, and Criminal Justice at the Inter University of Dubrovnik (Croatia). Her research centers on victimology, justice system-involved people and their families, prisoner reentry, and restorative justice. She is a member of the executive committee of the World Society of Victimology and represents the organization at the United Nations. Through this role, she co-organizes NGOCSW/NY parallel events annually and has participated as an NGO observer at the High-Level Political Forum (UNHQ New York) and the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime Intergovernmental Expert Group on Model Strategies on Reducing Reoffending (United Nations Office at Vienna). Dr Beichner-Thomas is chair of the American Society of Criminology’s Division of International Criminology. She is also a research consultant for the Peoria County Problem Solving Courts and the YWCA Labyrinth Outreach Services to Women, a nonprofit organization which provides reintegration services to women returning home from prison and jail.

Rosemary Barberet, PhD, is a professor in the Sociology Department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York where she has directed both the MA and BA programs in International Criminal Justice. She is a former chair of the Division of International Criminology of the American Society of Criminology (2001–2005). Her publications have dealt with self-reported youth crime, women and crime, crime indicators, comparative methodology, and victimology, and include the award-winning Women, Crime and Criminal Justice: A Global Enquiry (Routledge, 2014). Fluent in Spanish and French, she held positions in Spain and the UK from 1990–2005. Dr Barberet represents the International Sociological Association (ISA) and Criminologists without Borders at the United Nations. She has been attending the CSW since 2006 and organizes NGOCSW/NY parallel events on women and girls as victim/survivors, criminal justice professionals, and on women in conflict with the law. She is a member at large of the executive committee of NGOCSW/NY for 2023–2025. Dr Barberet is also a longtime NGO observer of the sessions of the UN Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice. She is a former editor of Feminist Criminology (2014–2018) and is a current editorial board member.

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