ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the relevance of Mary-Anne Warren's concept of “gendercide” to the study of mass violence against females and males alike. “Gendercide and Genocide” examined the selective targeting of women and girls in both political–military and institutional genocides, coined the term gendercidal institutions and extended that concept to include institutional forms of anti-male gendercide such as corvee (forced) labour and military conscription. Female victims are likely to assume primacy, however, when genocidal and especially gendercidal institutions are foregrounded. Even if one limits the analysis to genocidal campaigns as traditionally understood – that is, temporally bounded “events” – it is hardly the case that females are exempted from slaughter. Few topics in the study of gender and genocide have attracted more attention in recent years than the phenomenon of rape-as-genocide. Both genocidal outbreaks and the devastation caused by genocidal and gendercidal institutions appear to have declined in recent decades and centuries.
