Suchergebnisse

Documentation of life under militarization has mostly been done by "men writing about men." The need to have a gendered perspective of conflict and war was only recently introduced in the academic discourse after the collective violence against the women of Bosnia and Rwanda in the 1990s was given the attention it deserved by the international media. In Kashmir, women are subjected to violence through physical, sexual, and mental harassments. The very nature of the conflict has pushed Kashmiri women to the wall, putting the burden of violence on their shoulders. Women face physical and sexual assault at checkpoints, during raids, in detention centers, and prisons. Under these severe conditions, women have to assume the role of the breadwinners, while being the caretakers of the family. Women are in the context of a conflict as a "double-oppressed" category. They are at the receiving end of the violence directly, and their lives undergo a transformation indirectly as well. The psychological effects of the violence often result in the breaking of family ties, alienation, and various mental disorders such as anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), bipolarity, depression, etc. This paper presents a proposed study of gender-based violence in this conflict zone to understand the gendered organization of violence under military occupation. The study includes exploratory research and recorded testimonies of women, how they have maintained themselves, and managed to survive at all costs. Keywords : women, violence, armed conflict, Kashmir, sexual violence, depression, assault, military occupation , war.