This article contributes to recent analyses of gendered violence in Latin America by highlighting the relative neglect of women's experiences of violence in the discussion of ‘new violence’. In Latin America, women are consistently missing from mainstream debates about violence, which concentrate on urban crime, youth gangs and the police. With a focus on urban Brazil, this article argues for a gendered approach to the range of different forms of violence in order to render visible the variety of roles that women play in the context and in specific incidents of urban violence. It also explores the gendered impacts of various forms of violence and the gendered socialisation of violence. The article challenges the un-gendered concept of new violence, questioning its ability to capture the full gamut of violences that men and women experience, and the connections between these various forms. By adjusting the parameters of the debate, this article highlights the complexity of the gendered social relations and processes that reproduce violence, and adds a further dimension to the discussion of violence and security.

This paper argues for a situated politics of women’s agency in enduring intimate partner violence (IPV) in contexts of extreme urban violence. We contend that interrogating agency as dynamic and lived facilitates an acknowledgement of the multi-scalar entanglements of violence across urban spaces. Recognising the complexities in human agency holds the potential for a radical gendered urban politics to emerge whereby people are neither simplistically victims nor pawns of violent processes, but located within dynamic ‘webs of social relations’ (Cumbers A, Helms G and Swanson K (2010) Class, agency and resistance in the old industrial city. Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography 42(1): 54). Drawing on feminist theory, our conceptualisation of agency serves as a lens through which we can examine the dynamic and gendered nature of urban violence as rooted in multiple social relations (McNay L (2010) Feminism and post-identity politics: The problem of agency. Constellations 17(4): 512–525). The paper draws on research in the urban peripheries of Rio de Janiero and San Salvador.

Violent acts are not random, but are infused with meaning: those intended by the perpetrators and those ascribed by others. This article explores how dominant gangs in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro attempt to manipulate the meanings of violence to maintain their control of territory, presenting themselves as protectors of the community. Gangs impose violent punishment on residents who have breached their rules and behavioural norms. The messages they send out regarding the (un) acceptability of violence against women is highly ambiguous, however, which reduces women's options and increases levels of insecurity. Despite the ambiguity and unpredictability of gang rule, residents refrain from challenging gang control, preferring to moderate their own daily routines as a means to feel secure in the face of high levels of insecurity.

T W " I J justice mechanisms, in the broadest sense, to have transformative outcomes upon gender relations and the position of women in countries with histories of violence, whether that be political violence, post-conflict, chronic criminal and / or social M experiences during and following periods of extensive violence are informed by pre-existing, peacetime, inequalities. The specific gendered harms suffered by women, such as sexual violence and exploitation, are grounded in understandings of gendered roles in society and the perceived links between reproduction and community. Thus, as the growing body of feminist research into processes of transitional justice show, women have vital stakes in post-conflict transformation, rather than reconstruction (Chinking and Charlesworth 2006 cited in Reilly 2007, Ní Aoláin 2012). Likewise, the (often far less visible) expectation that women sustain their caring roles in the everyday of war providing food, shelter, and care for dependents, or soldiers, in often desperate contexts constitutes specifically gendered experiences associated with existing inequalities and expectations (Reilly 2007). With this knowledge in mind, it is increasingly obvious that for women periods of societal transition have to aim for the transformation of the underlying inequalities that provided the conditions in which these specifically gendered harms were possible. Consequently, it is ina if this results in more of the same just under different circumstances.The essays in this Special Issue on Transformative Gender Justice 1 build on this emerging body of work that emphasizes the need for a transformative approach to the opportunity that transitions can pose in the aftermath of mass violence. This means that we are not only interested in the structures of inequality and injustice, and how these relate to violence, but in the institutional processes that silently and, often contrary to intentions, reproduce those same inequalities. Ultimately, we are interested in investigating strategies rooted in different disciplinary traditions that challenge such structures. In other words, we are interested in how different justice strategies and mechanisms can contribute to the reconfiguration of power beyond individual experiences of violence and injustice, but rather, at societal level. This Special Issue, therefore, is a contribution to this emerging debate, which explicitly aims to bring together a range of disciplinary perspectives with gender analysis at the heart. Gender, and transformationIn recent years there has been a global momentum in thinking about and responding to violence against women (VAW), originating with the early research into domestic

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