Domestic Violence: Gendered State Rationality and Women’s Activism in Kosovo

What are the challenges when combatting domestic violence?

As an expression of power, domestic violence is a means through which people seek control over personhood and sexuality of less powerful individuals, which predominantly affects women. Thus, domestic violence is a profoundly gendered practice.

In Kosovo, having been considered too long a private issue, domestic violence has been translated into the realm of that which is forbidden and punishable by law. Yet, legislative measures to combat domestic violence have lagged behind in implementation resulting in increasing vulnerability and fragility of women at home.

This presentation explores the construction of intimate violence as a criminal offence in the legal framework of Kosovo. It shows how the legislation is one of the state rationalities that enables the gendered reproduction of the state. It draws on women’s movement responses to the limits of the law in practice to combat domestic violence and the collective struggle to disrupt the social, economic, political and interpersonal power that continues to reside with men.

The presentation concludes that prospects for combatting domestic violence rest on the interplay between formal state interventions and women’s civic activism that seek to transform entrenched patriarchal norms in the state relations, institutions and practices, as well as in the private sphere.

About the speaker

Dr. Vjollca Krasniqi, is a sociologist. She is the chair of the University Programme for Gender Studies and Research. Her research interests are gender, nation and collective memory, post-war reconstruction and post-war justice, and social policy.

She has been active in the women’s movement in the Balkans and organized/participated in a number of international conferences on political and gender issues. Additionally, she has led and participated in numerous international research projects.