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This thesis analyses key documents from the United Nations Security Council (the Council) meetings during the period of 1999 to 2001. This thesis maps out the shift in the discourses that occurred within the Council, when adopting United Nations Security Council’s resolution (UNSCR) 1325. Moreover, this thesis argues that the nodal point ‘Civilians’ has become gendered by being replaced by the concept of ‘Women’. This thesis argues that UNSC is misrepresenting female agency within the discourses, which has contributed to a gendering of the concept of civilians. Sexual violence, defined as a wartime weapon, has also been part of the construction of stereotypical gender binaries, which has constituted a representation of women as either victims or saviors within the discourses. It becomes evident that the notion of female agency as for example independent, empowered or strong has been neglected. The discourse theory provided by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe is applied in order to map out the existing discourses within the Security Council meetings. The aim of this study is to acknowledge the importance of that women have been and still are being excluded from the ontology of war. Furthermore, when the role of women in war is described, it is in relation to constructed stereotypical gender binaries.

This study focuses upon the relatively unexplored area of sexual harassment in British universities. In sum, the thesis suggests that although MacKinnon's (2004) aim is to enable women to feel more powerful and less stigmatised, the contribution of feminist harassment discourses may, in part, generate in some women an understanding of powerlessness and vulnerability. In particular, it suggests seemingly prevailing discourses surrounding sexual harassment in higher education and considers if and how the women interviewed define themselves through these discourses. Thus, by exploring the power effects of and resistances to these suggested prevailing discourses, it is possible to infer the degree to which these discourses may have constituted the participants' subjectivities. Further, the thesis argues that feminist harassment discourses may have generated specific effects of power with regard to my participants. That is to say, many of my participants seem to understand sexual harassment as exploitative behaviours rooted in the unequal distribution of ascribed power in higher education. Feminism's understanding of power as a static and gendered appears to have generated for the participants, at least in part, the understanding that sex at work is used to humiliate and degrade women, maintaining and reproducing ascribed notions of power. For this research, twenty-four unstructured interviews were carried out with women who had identified themselves as having experienced sexual harassment within higher education, either as a student or a member of staff, or who had witnessed events they had defined as sexual harassment. This was a passionately interested form of inquiry, recognising the partial nature of knowledge and identifying my political positionings (Gill 1995; Aranda 2006). The analysis is Foucauldian oriented, understanding power as fluid - rather than possessed - and as generating particular ways of being. In addition, although it notes that the participants did resists specific effects of power, this resistance always takes place from a new point of power and does not, therefore, carry us beyond power into a power free space. The prevailing discourses suggested from my data are: the 'grades for sex' discourse; the 'all boys together' discourse; the 'trustworthy lecturer' discourse; the 'knickers in a twist' discourse; and the 'sexual harassment as unwanted sexual behaviour' discourse. Supervisors: Dr. Kristin Aune and Dr. Gordon Riches

Master of Science / School of Family Studies and Human Services / Sandra Stith / Sexual assault is a serious problem on college campuses. The purpose of this study was to examine factors that are associated with sexual assault survivors reporting their assault. The sample included 266 individuals who had experienced a sexual assault since enrolling in their university. A multinomial regression was tested to predict the odds of whether or not the survivor made a formal report of the assault, an informal report to friends or family members, or if the survivor told no one about the assault. The type of assault, the survivor’s relationship to the perpetrator, whether or not the survivor was drinking alcohol at the time of the assault, whether or not the survivor received sexual assault training, and the survivor’s perception of the overall campus climate were added as predictors of the odds of making a report. The participant’s belief that the university would handle the assault appropriately was used as a moderator of those associations. Race/ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation were used as control variables. It was found that if the survivor had received sexual assault training, if the assault was vaginal or anal sex, and if the survivor had a positive perception of the overall campus climate, they were more likely to formally report the assault. If the perpetrator was an acquaintance, friend, or dating partner, survivors were less likely to formally report the assault. If the survivor was a racial or ethnic minority, they were less likely to formally or informally report the assault. Our findings suggest that there are ways universities can aid in survivors reporting their sexual assault through education, training, and improving the overall campus climate.

Magister Legum - LLM / This thesis examines the sexual rights violation in Eastern DRC, which has been described as the worst in the world. The sexual violence against women and children in this country is systematic and widespread and perpetrated by armed groups, and increasingly also by civilians. The prosecution of sexual offences should contribute to the reduction of these offences, but the Congolese state prosecutes very few cases. The resulting impunity became an obstacle to the state to stop sexual violence, which become unable to overcome the obstacles to prosecutorial action. The successful prosecution of sexual offenders in Eastern DRC faces many obstacles and requires an exceptional jurisdiction which must provide a minimum of better freely conditions to the prosecutors and better unrestrained justice access to the victims. The enforcement of the international instruments of justice will be possible only by this jurisdiction. The victims of sexual violence need more confidence in the jurisdiction which is really working for them to attain justice.

Magister Legum - LLM / This thesis examines the sexual rights violation in Eastern DRC, which has been described as the worst in the world. The sexual violence against women and children in this country is systematic and widespread and perpetrated by armed groups, and increasingly also by civilians. The prosecution of sexual offences should contribute to the reduction of these offences, but the Congolese state prosecutes very few cases. The resulting impunity became an obstacle to the state to stop sexual violence, which become unable to overcome the obstacles to prosecutorial action. The successful prosecution of sexual offenders in Eastern DRC faces many obstacles and requires an exceptional jurisdiction which must provide a minimum of better freely conditions to the prosecutors and better unrestrained justice access to the victims. The enforcement of the international instruments of justice will be possible only by this jurisdiction. The victims of sexual violence need more confidence in the jurisdiction which is really working for them to attain justice.

This dissertation examines how gender and temporality are co-constitutive of one another and what temporalities underlie the actuality of gendered life. I weave together the insights of feminist phenomenology and feminist poststructuralism in order to argue that temporality produces and constrains the actuality of lived gender as racialized, heterosexist, and cissexist. More specifically, I argue that this is done through sexual violence. Ultimately, I suggest that the temporality of sexual violence is encrusted into the dominant configurations of gender and into the bodily life of gendered subjects solidifying what gendered subjectivity can become. / 10000-01-01

Motivated by student survivors of sexual violence at the ‘University of Nike,’ this dissertation claims the denial of trauma is a central motor to the temporal operation of racialized patriarchy and its philonikian, or ‘victory-loving,’ notions of masculinity. I bear witness to this ‘temporality of denial’ in the institutional responses of the University of Oregon and UO-alum Phil Knight’s Nike corporation to the group sexual assault of Jane Doe by three university men’s basketball players. I also think through philosophies of overcoming this ancient operation of patriarchy in contemporary times. Simone de Beauvoir suggests that patriarchy provides tempting avenues to flee our freedom of becoming who we are by denying the ambiguity of our human subjectivity. Instead, human potential is funneled into hierarchical gendered destinies derived from ancient perceived binaries of natural, embodied sex difference prescribing masculine material, political, and ontological domination. Rape, war, and conquest are central to this logic, a logic racialized in the Modern era of European colonization. Recent trauma-informed feminist psychology suggests that denial is a psychological mechanism that has efficiently abetted patriarchal oppression throughout history. I suggest Plato, the ‘father’ of the contemporary Academy, may have recognized this in his philosophy. To overcome centuries of masculine bias in interpretation, I undertake a close feminist translation of the war veteran Socrates’ pursuit of the virtue ‘andreia’ (ἀνδρεία), both ‘manliness’ and ‘courage’ in the Greek, through several dialogues contextualized within their dramatic placement in the history of the Peloponnesian War. Socrates’ pursuit of ‘andreia’ includes a critique of the denials of philonikian ‘manliness’ and a hunt for an alternative philosophical understanding. I suggest this wisdom-loving ‘andreia’ is articulated as a gender-critical vision of the strength and courage of love to recollect and rebirth oneself in the aftermath of trauma. Finally, I return to Beauvoir’s feminist philosophy of freedom and its temporality of repetition to further distinguish the ‘forgetting’ of denial from the ‘forgetting’ involved in trauma’s overcoming. The latter requires we collectively sacrifice the destinies of patriarchal ontology as we continue to build a world in which victims of trauma might not only survive, but meaningfully live.

Mass ethnic violence, including genocide and ethnic cleansing, can take a variety of forms, but sexual violence often remains a key and defining feature. In the Bosnian war of 1992-1995 following the break-up of Yugoslavia, it is estimated that between 20,000 and 60,000 rapes were committed; and estimates are that between 250,000 and 500,000 rapes were committed during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. And yet the experiences and needs of these survivors of sexual violence can often remain marginalised through post-conflict reconstruction processes and beyond. Drawing on ethnographic and multi-method research, this dissertation explores and contrasts the post-conflict experiences of women who suffered from wartime sexual violence in Rwanda and Bosnia-Herzegovina and the programmes offered by key NGOs that continue to work with them. Focusing on policies and experiences of re-integration and the creation of a sense of social belonging, I show that these women represent a distinct category of civilian victims of war, whose postconflict needs and experiences are often marginalized by both their states and their communities. The thesis’ empirical core draws on ethnographic fieldwork, which included participant observation of ten key NGOs, four focus groups with HIV-infected individuals and women survivors of sexual violence, semi-structured and unstructured interviews with 17 survivors, 23 NGO staff and a Rwandan government representative, as well as informal conversations with all of these actors and members of the local communities. This ethnographic data was complemented and contextualized with official statistics, as well as government and NGO documents, and with interviews conducted at UN Women and the UN Trust Fund. The main substantive findings of this dissertation are that following the end of the ethnic violence in Rwanda and Bosnia-Herzegovina, the two states embarked on very different post-conflict reconstruction efforts. Rwanda has been characterized by an important process of nation-building, with the state outlawing ethnicity in favour of national unity, and implementing gender-sensitive policies to promote women’s rights. In contrast, the Bosnian-Herzegovinian state implemented policies mostly geared towards state-building, based on the rationale that the institutionalisation of ethnicity could only truly be accommodated through strong state institutions. The dominance of ethnic politics however overshadows other political agendas, such as gender policies, policies that have still not lead to transformative changes at the local level. These macro-policies importantly influence post-conflict experiences, most especially those of women who had survived sexual violence. My findings are suggestive of the complexity of the post-conflict experiences of the women I met, mostly in terms of social reintegration, where the macro-policies of post-conflict reconstruction continue to powerfully shape both their everyday lives and the work done by the NGOs. In Rwanda today, the women I interviewed mostly wish to be fully socially accepted and treated as part of their communities, with the NGOs offering them holistic support. But in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the women I interviewed today mostly demand legal recognition by the state, with the NGOs actively lobbying for this on their behalf. And yet, due to a shared experience of continuing everyday marginalization within both societies, as civilian victims of war, in both places the women often rely on NGOs to negotiate their social position within their states, nations and communities. This mediation role is structurally complicated by the NGOs’ relationships to donors and to the pressures of the state in which they operate. The impact of this is that through their mediation role NGOs reconstruct the women’s experiences in order to align with the priorities of the international donors and states in which they operate. Consequently, the contrasts between the work done by NGOs in each country are clearly visible, despite the similarity of the war crimes experienced: Rwandan NGOs actively seek to increase women’s empowerment within their social community, while the Bosnian NGOs actively aim to increase the women’s voices within more explicit political agendas. The thesis’s key theoretical or intellectual contribution, therefore, concerns its relevance to intersectional scholarly work on post-conflict and gender studies. More specifically, my findings suggest that a shift occurred immediately following the end of the armed conflicts, where the women who had experienced wartime sexual violence and who were socially located outside the scope of justice of their ethnic enemies, suddenly found themselves outside the scope of justice of their own ethnic or national communities. Extending Mann’s (2004) and Opotow et al’s (2005) typologies of ethnic violence and moral exclusion, I then develop a specific framework for understanding the underlying moral shifts experienced by the survivors of sexual violence. In doing this, I seek to capture this gendered moral and social relocation and its consequences on the everyday lives of the women and the NGOs that work with them. This forms the basis for my theoretical contribution that the women moved from ethnic women to moral outcasts in the aftermath of the ethnic violence, and that this exclusion is contextually shaped since the priorities for social reintegration are different in Rwanda to BiH. Addressing these priorities then requires different forms of post-conflict inclusion.

CoordenaÃÃo de AperfeiÃoamento de Pessoal de NÃvel Superior / A violÃncia sexual caracteriza-se como um grave problema de saÃde pÃblica que acarreta distÃrbios no desenvolvimento biopsicossocial e sexual de suas vÃtimas, principalmente quando essa agressÃo ocorre na fase da adolescÃncia, pois esses sujeitos se encontram numa etapa da vida marcada por mudanÃas e adaptaÃÃes, especialmente no Ãmbito da sexualidade. Portanto, as crenÃas e valores das vitimas de violÃncia sexual precisam ser compreendidas para promover a adoÃÃo de comportamentos sexuais saudÃveis. Objetivou-se compreender como as crenÃas e valores das adolescentes vitimas de violÃncia sexual influenciam no comportamento de prevenÃÃo das DST e da AIDS com base no Modelo de CrenÃas em SaÃde (MCS) . Trata-se de uma pesquisa qualitativa, descritiva, realizada numa InstituiÃÃo de Acolhimento no Municipal de Fortaleza, no perÃodo de maio a julho de 2011, com oito adolescentes vitimas de violÃncia sexual. Foram utilizados como instrumentos e procedimentos para a coleta de informaÃÃes: a observaÃÃo participante de todos os encontros, que foram registrados no diÃrio de campo; todo o material produzido durante os grupos focais, como cartazes, desenhos, entre outros; e a transcriÃÃo da gravaÃÃo dos diÃlogos durante as estratÃgias de grupo e do roteiro de entrevista semiestruturada. As informaÃÃes foram organizadas conforme as dimensÃes do MCS. Todos os aspectos legais e Ãticos da pesquisa envolvendo os seres humanos foram respeitados. Inicialmente, foi necessÃrio caracterizar as participantes do estudo e observou-se que as histÃrias de vida dessas adolescentes estavam condizentes com a literatura. Em relaÃÃo Ãs categorias criadas conforme o MCS: as adolescentes tem um dÃfice de conhecimento em relaÃÃo a essas doenÃas e nÃo se consideraram susceptÃveis as DST/AIDS por acreditarem que nÃo irÃo se relacionar sexualmente com homens, mesmo identificando a maior vulnerabilidade da mulher a essas patologias; em relaÃÃo à percepÃÃo da gravidade, elas classificaram essas doenÃas como graves, incurÃveis e que alteram o convÃvio social, demonstrando medo de contrair uma dessas patologias; identificaram como benefÃcios e barreiras do mÃtodo preventivo ser de fÃcil acesso e utilizaÃÃo e prevenir tanto doenÃas como gravidez, mas interferem no prazer sexual; e seu uso està relacionado com questÃes culturais e sociais, ressalta-se tambÃm, que o abuso de Ãlcool e drogas intervÃm na adoÃÃo de comportamentos saudÃveis. Conclui-se que as crenÃas e valores dessas adolescentes as tornam vulnerÃveis a DST/AIDS, sendo necessÃrio refletir sobre as consequÃncias da violÃncia sexual na vida dessas adolescentes para a elaboraÃÃo de estratÃgias e aÃÃes preventivas voltadas para esse publico-alvo no que concerne ao desenvolvimento da sexualidade de forma segura, minimizando traumas e sofrimentos advindos dessa experiÃncia na vida dessas adolescentes, tornando-as conscientes dos seus direitos sexuais e reprodutivos. / Sexual assault is characterized as a serious public health problem that leads to disorders in the bio-psychosocial and sexual development of the victims, especially when the aggression happens in adolescence, because these subjects are in a stage of life marked by changes and adaptations, especially concerning sexuality. Therefore, the values and beliefs of the victims of sexual assault must be understood to promote the adoption of a healthy sexual behavior. It was aimed to understand how beliefs and values of adolescent victims of sexual assault influence the behavior of prevention of STD/AIDS based on the Health Belief Model. It is a qualitative descriptive research carried out at a Host Institution in the City of Fortaleza from May to July 2011 with eight adolescent victims of sexual assault. Using as tools and procedures for data collection: participant observation of all meetings, which were registered in a field diary; all the material produced during the focus groups, such as posters, drawings, among others; and the transcription of the dialogue recording during the group strategies and semi-structured interviews. The information was organized according to the Health Belief Model dimensions. All legal and ethical aspects of researches involving human beings were respected. Initially, it was necessary to characterize the study participants and it was found that the life stories of these adolescents were consistent with the literature. Regarding the categories created according to the Health Belief Model: the adolescents lack knowledge about these diseases and don't considered them susceptible to STD/AIDS because they believe that they will not relate sexually with men, in spite identifying the greater vulnerability of women to such pathologies; concerning the perception of gravity, they classified these diseases as serious, incurable, and that changes social life, demonstrating fear of contracting these diseases; they identified as benefits and barriers of preventive method: it is easy to access and use, and prevents both diseases as pregnancy, but interferes with sexual pleasure; and its use is related to cultural and social issues, we also emphasize that the abuse of alcohol and drugs interferes in the adoption of healthy behaviors. We conclude that the beliefs and values of these adolescents make them vulnerable to STD/AIDS, being necessary to reflect on the consequences of sexual violence in their lives to build strategies and preventive actions aimed at this target audience in terms of a safe development of sexuality, minimizing trauma and suffering resulting from this experience in their lives, making them aware of their sexual and reproductive rights.