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Violence against women in politics (vAWp) is an issue that has rapidly gained notoriety in academic works as well as in the policy world, to the extent that Mexico's National Electoral Institute (ine), the Federal Electoral Tribunal (tepjf) and the Prosecutor Specialized in Electoral Crimes presented the "Protocolo para la Atención de la Violencia Política contra las Mujeres en Razón de Género" (hereafter, 'the Protocol, 2017) ahead of the most recent elections. The protocol aims to detect, prevent and mitigate gender-based political violence, which is a recurrent problem across Mexico and worldwide, including within political parties and even in the Chamber of Senators and Deputies. However, the scientific exploration on VAWP is still imperfect and emerging. This research note expresses reflections on one of the most challenging inquiry areas in this field, which has significant implications both for future academic directions in this field and for the practical applications of Mexico's Protocol and other similar laws under consideration across Latin America. This is the issue of what is -and what is not- an actual form of vawp.
Violence against women in politics is a pervasive and debilitating problem for democracies worldwide, as demonstrated in the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, its Causes and Consequences (srvaw) report A/73/301 (unga, 2018) in October 2018. The category of symbolic violence was adapted from sociology and appended to earlier typologies of gendered political violence1 by Krook (2017) and Krook and Restrepo (2016a, b).2 Although not included in the srvaw definition of vawp, the category of symbolic violence was rapidly integrated into other influential policy documents, most notably into the Ley Modelo Interamericana sobre Violencia Política contra las Mujeres (article 3) of the Follow-up Mechanism to the Belém do Pará Convention (mesecvi) of the Organization of American States, and into Mexico's Protocol. The introduction of symbolic violence to the growing conversation on vawp is important but fraught.
This research note deepens the examination of symbolic forms of vawp by situating the concept in relation to its theoretical origins, deconstructing it to provide further specificity and considering its value added in terms of conceptual contributions as well as legal and social attributes. This paper argues that, although symbolic violence impacting women is a serious issue, it should not...