Toward a feminist political economy of wartime sexual violence: The case of the Democratic Republic of Congo

Sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) has been a prominent feature in the conflict in the eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which is a weapon of war, an instrument of terror and perpetrated opportunistically by armed men from all factions of the conflict. While most feminist analyses identify the link between gender and SGBV, they have tended to privilege individual or cultural accounts of gender construction. This article develops a feminist political economy analysis of SGBV in the ongoing conflict that looks at the relationship between gender as an international structure and the processes of the international political economy that precipitate this violence in Congo's ongoing war. This article theorizes an important and overlooked relationship between the structures of gender hierarchy and international political economy that may provide insights into the widespread use of SGBV in the conflict in eastern DRC, which this article contends constitutes part of the global assembly line of capitalist production.