Special section editorial

Arts activisms and gender-based violence through transnational perspectives

Abstract

This editorial focuses on the potential of arts activist practices to raise awareness about gender-based violence (GBV) against women, which is one of the most pervasive human rights violations. It contextualises the discussion by the contributors to this special section of Image & Text, who attend to diverse instances of GBV: from everyday domestic violence, rape and sexual violence, feminicide, institutional misogyny within caste and army, to online abuse. GBV affects women across all socioeconomic and educational backgrounds, class, age, race, ethnicity, religion, culture, and/or sexuality. And yet there is an increasing global backlash against gender equality and an intensification of GBV, both of which are intimately connected to the rise of exclusionary politics and the widespread anti-gender and far-right rhetoric. This editorial outlines the relationship between violence against women and human rights, arguing for the urgent need to expose the systematic, structural heteropatriarchal conditions around GBV at a time when at least one in three women worldwide has experienced physical, sexual, or psychological abuse in their lives.