Compliant Women, Constitutive Violence: Rethinking the VAWIP Counterfactual

The literature on violence against women in politics (VAWIP) has made substantial contributions to understanding how gender shapes political exclusion. Foundational work by Krook and Restrepo Sanín (2016; 2020) defined VAWIP as a form of hate crime and as systematic backlash against women’s entry into political life. This conceptual scaffolding informs Krook’s (2022) subsequent attention to semiotic and symbolic harm, extending the VAWIP framework beyond physical violence to encompass the representational strategies through which female politicians are delegitimized. Bjarnegård and Zetterberg’s (2023) edited volume extends the framework further, recognizing that gender-based political violence operates across a broader range of contexts and along a “psychological-physical continuum” (7) that is neither temporally nor institutionally confined to election cycles or legislative chambers.