Gender, Conflict and Coercive Control: A Feminist Phenomenological Expansion of Conflict-related Harm

Introduction

GENCOERCTRL is the first transnational empirical theoretical qualitative study of the gendered phenomenon of conflict-related coercive control. Responding to flourishing multi-interdisciplinary interest in physical and sexual forms of conflict-related violence against women (CRVAW) over the last two decades, it reorients scholarship towards the less observationally evident harm of coercive control.

Background

Preliminary evidence shows that in conflict settings, women may experience coercive control in the context of informal armed group governance and through the coercive realities of conflict transition. Transitional justice mechanisms are critical to making such harms visible for engagement.

The Concept of Coercive Control

‘Coercive control,’ as an invisible but insidious harm, and ‘coercive control’ as a lens through which to understand women’s experiences of conflict, has received little to no scholarly examination. GENCOERCTRL gets ahead of its pending travel into interdisciplinary fields on conflict violence by establishing the basis for the theoretical and empirical expansion of a new field of study of the gendered phenomenon of coercive control.

Research Question

The central research question addresses the multi-dimensional nature of the coercive realities in which women experience coercive control in conflict and transition:

• How is coercive control in conflict-affected contexts lived and understood by women for whom it is already co-constitutive of their socially coercive realities?

Research Phases

This question is addressed across four phases:

1. Development of a new feminist phenomenological methodology for studying the lived experience of the gendered phenomenon of conflict-related coercive control.
2. Generation of unique empirical phenomenological understanding of coercive control in Colombia, Northern Ireland, and Sri Lanka.
3. Analysis of transitional justice mechanisms in those sites through a coercive control lens.
4. Synthesizing to develop the first ecological framework for the gendered phenomenon of conflict-related coercive control.