Feminist Praxis and Gender Violence

This chapter discusses several theoretical explanations of gender-based interpersonal and structural violence. The chapter begins by examining how the reemergent feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s brought attention to the previously hidden problem of gender-based violence and reviews two theories that developed at that time, liberal feminism and radical feminism. The chapter then examines intersectionality as developed by feminists of color to account for how multiple, intersecting inequalities impact risk for gender-based violence. The chapter concludes with a discussion of a feminist political economic theory of gender-based violence. While most feminist theories to date have addressed interpersonal and structural violence as discrete entities, feminist political economic theory sees the two as interconnected, dynamic, and reinforcing.