Intersectional Vulnerability to Criminal Violence

• In Event: The Intersection of Gender, Criminal Violence, and Politics in Latin America

Abstract

This paper studies the relationship between social inequality and criminal victimization, focusing on hierarchies created and upheld by patriarchal norms. I advance a theory of intersectional vulnerability to criminal violence, arguing that the same traditional structures which enable high collective action and social control of criminal violence can also lead to the preservation of stronger patriarchal norms. I suggest that these strong patriarchal norms lead to more criminal victimization of women relative to men. In patriarchal contexts, women’s relative vulnerability is increased community failure to apply social control to protect women from criminal violence, and exacerbated by women’s lack of recourse due to their political exclusion. I test this theory empirically in the context of the Mexican drug war. I use an original mea-sure of patriarchal norms drawn from household surveys on gender roles to identify empirical associations between traditional social structures and higher levels of patriarchal norms pre-drug war. Exploiting the shock of the onset of the drug war, I find that higher levels of patriarchy pre-drug war lead to substantially greater increases in women’s victimization relative to men’s following the onset of the war. I find strong evidence that this victimization is non-domestic, reflecting how community control of violence fails to protect women from criminal victimization, and that women are most at risk when they are politically excluded. These findings speak to how social and political inequalities shape vulnerability to criminal violence, particularly in contexts where the state fails to provide security.

Author

• Elena Barham, Columbia University