Anticarceral Feminisms, Penal Violence Against Women, and the Limits of Human Rights: Grassroots Knowledge from Ecuador

Abstract Drawing on participatory research with grassroots organisers, activists, and legal practitioners, this article offers a pioneering account of how anticarceral feminists in Ecuador understand, negotiate, and resist international human rights (IHRs) amid severe prison violence and endemic violence against women (VAW). Key findings include the participants’ widespread scepticism towards IHRs as a tool for emancipation, which is influenced by the distinctive impact of penal violence on their survival strategies and reproductive labor. Notably, the penal apparatus criminalises women’s precarious livelihoods and extracts care work from those supporting incarcerated relatives and friends. Building on these findings, the article presents an anticolonial feminist critique of IHRs, demonstrating how rights-based frameworks can reinforce a penal system that causes gendered and racialised harm through human rights penality. The article then theorises “penal violence against women,” referring to a systemic harm inflicted on many women who encounter the penal system, even if they are not incarcerated or involved in a penal process. In response, participants prioritise community support, cooperative projects, and the redistribution of labor and resources over rights-based penal remedies. The article recommends considering penal violence in rights-based responses to violence against women (VAW) and calls for a fundamental rethinking of human rights commitments to penality.