Legacies of Violence: Examining the Relationship Between Gender and Ethnic Cleansing

Traditional examinations of genocidal violence tend to focus on ethnic divisions and often fail to consider the impact of gender with respect to conflict. Building from the work that critical gender studies has made in post-conflict peacebuilding, this paper will look at cases that illustrate how targeting women within specific ethnic groups is an effective means of achieving genocidal goals. It will pay particular attention to the well-known events of the Rwandan genocide and draw comparisons to the legacies of the Indigenous genocide in Canada. Moreover, it will argue that the current crisis of murdered and missing Indigenous women in Canada is related to a project of genocide fuelled by settler colonialism.