ABSTRACT
Focusing on the public formulation of violence against women as a policy problem in Nicaragua, this chapter sheds light on the interconnection between global and local politicization of gender. It concentrates on the catalyzing role of human rights rhetoric – nationally and then internationally – which simultaneously helped the theorizing of equality and freedom of self-determination connected to freedom of advocacy groups, and the proscription of violence. The chapter shows the extent to which the accelerated international spread of “women’s rights as human rights” language is captured in Nicaragua by a similar dynamic already underway since the Sandinista revolution, which had emerged with a second wave feminism. It then explains how the mobilization of international research consolidated the juridicization of intra-family violence in 1996, marking its establishment as an issue for public action in Nicaraguan society.
