Women and policing in Latin America: an annotated bibliography

INTRODUCTION

Writing on policing and violence against women from a gender perspective is a relatively recent and growing field in Latin America, although the history and richness of debate is much stronger in Brazil than in the rest of the region. Analyses have followed and contributed to actions by the women’s movement and later the state to first break the silence around violence against women and then develop a vast range of strategies to prevent and end it.

The most important strategy around violence against women in the juridical field are women’s police stations (WPS), specialized units within the police attended by all women staff. In the pioneer model of Brazil, there is limited participation of the women’s movement whereas in subsequent models, such as Peru, Ecuador and Nicaragua, there is an increased amount of participation of the women’s movement and other stakeholders in both service delivery and administration. Much more recently gender mainstreaming has been introduced to the police, usually as a separate initiative – both conceptually and organizationally – to the WPS. Mainstreaming has been introduced largely based on pressure from donors for the police to become more democratic internally so it can more effectively serve within the citizenship security framework that has emerged as part of the transition from authoritarian rule.

The materials collected here provide an introduction to the literature on violence against women and policing in the region. There are conceptual, policy, academic, and popular documents included, many of which are written either by academics or those who are directly involved in the police stations in some ways. The perspectives brought to their analyses reflect all these points of view, as well as differences between stakeholder groups: police, women’s movement activists and researchers, development cooperation, and academics. Although the format of the annotated bibliography does not allow an explicit debate between the works, the summaries of the pieces provide clear indications about the positions taken by the works and their contributions to the debates.