Is Genocide Gendered?

Nadia Deeb

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5. Is genocide gendered and how important is gender to our understanding of the phenomenon? What is the justification for rape being categorised now as a technique of genocide? Genocide is gendered and gender is extremely important to our understanding of genocide. Connections between gender and conflict, including genocide, are significant areas of enquiry in recent times.1 Gender is defined here as a ‘social process whereby divisions of labour, power and emotion, as well as modes of dress and identity are differentiated…between men and women’.2 For the purposes of this essay, the United Nations definition of genocide as ‘acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such’ is adopted.3 The gendered nature of genocide and the importance of gender to our understanding of gender is demonstrated by first examining the issue of rape, then the gender-­‐selective killing of men and of women, and lastly the importance of gender to the motivations of the perpetrators of genocide. This essay will focus primarily on cases in which there is considerable consensus among scholars that genocide has occurred.

References:  1995).    33  (2007),  (2009),  pp.  2004)  pp.