Women’s Solidarity during Patriarchal Backlash: Gendered Civilian Agency in Putumayo, Colombia and Atenco, Mexico

This paper adds to a burgeoning conversation about the ways in which civilian protective agency is gendered by examining women’s solidarity during moments of patriarchal backlash, which I define as violent and gendered retribution for (i) contesting (militarized) social orders, and (ii) transgressing accepted gender norms. Building off existing research on High-Risk Feminism, this paper will compare the cases of women’s organisations in Putumayo, Colombia and Atenco, Mexico. In the former, women are being threatened and attacked by non-state armed groups for their open support of the country’s peace process and their promotion of women’s rights more broadly. In the latter, women who were sexually abused by state forces during protests in 2006 have come together, despite attempted silencing in the context of the war against narcotraffickers and extreme levels of feminicide, to take their abusers to the Interamerican Commission. Drawing on existing and incipient fieldwork, the paper will focus on women strategies to create resistant collective identities and social capital, despite forces that try to prevent such solidarity. It will use the comparison of cases to draw preliminary conclusions about what can be learned about resistance to patriarchal backlashes in violent contexts. In doing so, the paper will offer insights on how to operationalize “high-risk” not only in conflict and postconflict settings (i.e. Colombia), but also in contexts of high violence that do not easily fit within traditional definitions of “war” or “conflict” (i.e. Mexico).