ABSTRACT
A gender analysis alerts to an intentionality in differentiation between the sexes. Feminist theory also helps us grasp how human agency is simultaneously social and individual; international and personal. There is little space to explore women as rescuers or as perpetrators; as noted by Adler and team, "Genocide is more often than not characterized as a male crime, the outcome of contemporary notions of masculinity". Women's constrained agency during the genocide was in part a result of deliberate gendered mobilization that normalized violence against Tutsi women. Research by feminist scholars Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon on the role of pornography in normalizing violence against women helps to frame in broader terms the treatment of women during the genocide in Rwanda. Combined with sociology and constructivism, this chapter addresses the dynamic nature of individual identity and women's collective identity. This interdisciplinary combination to analyze women's agency during the genocide in Rwanda offers a fresh approach.
