Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Power, Responsibility, And Sexually Violent War Tactics: A Theoretical And Empirical Analysis Of Rape During Civil War, Jennifer L. Clemens

Theses and Dissertations

Broadly, this dissertation asks, why rape? In address, this research posits a leadership preference-based strategic theory of rape during war; marking the first large-N, quantitative exploration of leadership preferences on the use of rape in civil war. Using an original dataset, preferences of armed group leaders are evaluated against the level of rape across all civil conflicts between 1980 - 2009. The results highlight three critical findings. First, evidence suggests that rape is distinctive from other human rights violations and is permitted or controlled differently than are more common forms of extra-combat violence (i.e., torture, extra-judicial killings, disappearances). This work …