Resisting Violence, Creating Dignity: Negotiating Violence Against Women and Girls Through Community History-Making in Rio de Janeiro

Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) remains one of the most pressing problems affecting women everywhere and its elimination is central to achieving Sustainable Development Goal 5 on gender equality, especially in cities. While information on the nature of VAWG is available in Brazil and elsewhere, the ways in which women resist it has received less attention. This project uses a co-created interdisciplinary approach to explore how women resist VAWG and create dignity through community history-making in Maré, Rio de Janeiro, a territory affected by persistent urban conflict. Extending long-standing research and civil society collaborations internationally, the project seeks to develop a multi-method framework to capture and map institutional and creative community histories developed by women as protagonists in resisting VAWG and building dignity as a way of ultimately reducing and preventing it. 

Research Team: Professor Catherine McIlwaine, King's College London; Dr Eliana Sousa Silva, Sao Paulo University; Professor Paul Heritage, Queen Mary University of London; Dr Miriam Krenzinger Azambuja, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro