Paper short abstract:

This paper argues that women’s citizenship is crucial to the broader success of anti-violence activism in the war-torn Mexican state of Michoacán. While their activism often makes women vulnerable to further violence, their achievements and collaborations offer much-needed hope.

Paper long abstract:

This paper argues that women’s citizenship is crucial to the success of anti-violence activism in the Mexican state of Michoacán, which continues to be strongly affected by the Drug War. In the same way as gender-based violence is linked to broader structures of violence in Michoacán, women often find themselves marginalized within anti-violence activism. Viewed from a feminist institutionalist perspective, it is clear that their activism often makes women vulnerable to further violence. This in turn represents an obstacle for the overall success of citizen responses to crime and violence. At the same time, women’s groups’ successes in drawing attention to femicide and other gender rights issues, as well as women’s key roles within environmental movements and in the search for missing persons offer much-needed hope that violence can eventually be overcome, despite the considerable challenges. I argue that creating safe spaces for women’s collaboration is key to enabling their effective, gendered civic participation.

The 2019 ethnographic research this paper is based on forms part of a larger research project (Citizen Responses to Crime and Violence) led by Trevor Stack at the Center for Citizenship, Civil Society, and Rule of Law (CISRUL), University of Aberdeen, UK, which was funded by the ESRC and the CONACYT (Mexico).