Conflict, Protection, and Punishment: Repercussions of Violence in Eastern DR Congo

Abstract

How does armed conflict affect attitudes that tolerate violence against women? This article examines the effects of armed violence on preferences for punishing crimes against women using original quantitative data from 80 focus groups across 20 villages in Democratic Republic of Congo and a matched pair design. Challenging unidirectional logics within theories of violence against women, the data reveal that local exposure to armed violence increases how severely men prefer to punish rape while decreasing how severely men and women prefer to punish domestic violence. Building inductively, I develop a theory of protective masculine norms to account for armed conflict's gendered and crime-specific effects. When armed violence heightens demand for local male protection, crimes perceived to pose a community threat are affected differently from "private" crimes.Verification Materials: The data and materials required to verify the computational reproducibility of the results, procedures, and analyses in this article are available on the American Journal of Political Science Dataverse within the Harvard Dataverse Network, at: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/LBAV1Q.A large literature has demonstrated that harmful gender attitudes and practices emerge when armed group members organize, bond, and engage in war (Cohen 2013;Morris 1996;Wood 2018;Zurbriggen 2010). Studies also demonstrate that these harmful attitudes and practices spill over to the civilian population and unhinge social norms and sanctions that keep everyday violence perpetrated against women at bay (Haglund and Richards 2018; Østby, Leiby, and Nordås 2019; Zurbriggen 2010).Does armed conflict lead to more tolerant attitudes toward violence against women? Although the above-mentioned studies suggest increased attitudinal tolerance of violence against women, other studies have found that women can take on newly empowered roles during civil war (Berry 2018;Lazarev 2019;Wood 2008) with potentially opposite implications.This article examines the effects of community exposure to armed group violence on preferences for punishing violence against women in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo). I study preferences for punishing two forms of violence against women, rape (specifically, nonintimate partner rape) and domestic violence (specifically, wife beating), and focus on the mechanism of civilian self-protection efforts to explain attitudinal change.The findings show that men prefer to punish perpetrators of rape within the community more severely after exposure to armed violence. In contrast, both men and women prefer to punish perpetrators of domestic violence less severely after exposure to armed violence. These results are inconsistent with microlevel implications of established logics within theories of violence against women.Building inductively, I offer an alternative explanation: a theory of protective masculine norms. The theory begins with the need for community self-protection in the immediate aftermath of armed violence and then

Wartime Sexual Violence, Social Stigmatization and Humanitarian Aid: Survey Evidence from eastern Democratic Republic of Congo

“…28 Overall, our article demonstrates the value of micro-level quantitative approaches to address research questions informed by established qualitative work. To that end, our article joins and strengthens the novel field of research on gender and conflict that employs innovative micro-level data collection and quantitative analyses to investigate complexities within conflict-affected populations (e.g., Koos 2018;Traunmüller et al, 2019;Østby et al, 2019;Lindsey 2021;González and Traunmüller 2020).…”

“…Stigma can also extend beyond the victimized individual him or herself (Woldetsadik 2018; Jina and Thomas 2013). When sexual violence is perpetrated against a man’s wife or daughter, he may be stigmatized because of his failure to protect his family members, an expectation highly relevant for men in DRC (Lindsey 2021). Community members may also ostracize a rape victim’s husband (and family) for failing to reject his wife (Kelly et al 2012).…”

“…Few studies disaggregate forms of exposure to consider specific effects on post-conflict outcomes. 2 This is unfortunate, given variation in forms of violence across conflicts (Gutiérrez-Sanín and Wood 2017) and the need to tailor post-conflict humanitarian support interventions (Autesserre 2012; Koos 2017, 2018; Lindsey 2021).…”

Social Preferences: Measuring Private, Public, and Group Preferences through Focus Groups

“… 15 For discussions of levels of and tolerance for wife beating, see Tlapek (2015) and Lindsey (2022). …”

“…16 In addition, Congolese society is not considered highly individualistic, making it a case in which public and private preferences may be less differentiated in the first place. Shared experiences of civil war and insecurity may have also decreased variation in people's attitudes toward punishing crimes (Lindsey 2022). Such factors may make DR Congo a difficult case to observe differences in private and public preferences or to observe new focus group effects.…”