ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the concept of structural violence and suggests that it can be useful only if it incorporates an understanding of how social relations are gendered. It describes the concept of structural violence by looking at some of the debates underlying the emerging discipline of peace research at the time it was proposed in the late 1960s by Johan Galtung, and examines the concept itself, introducing Galtung's violence triangle. Structural violence as a concept could be greatly enhanced by reflecting the wealth of feminist scholarship from a range of theoretical perspectives that addresses the construction of gender and the ways gendered hierarchies impact International Relations that is relations international as performed by gendered bodies. Structural violence was initially intended as a way to incorporate issues such as hunger or maldevelopment into the conversation about peace and violence; war was understood in the context of direct violence.
