Women in Times of Crisis: Rethinking the Extraordinary and the Everyday

This literature review was conducted in preparation for a conference with the same name, held online on 18 October 2024. The conference brought together researchers and staff members from Columbia University, Sciences Po Paris and the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. The literature review examines crises (economic and political crises as well as states of war in particular) going back to the 1990s, which have sometimes been described as a "holiday from history" in "the West", following the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) and the peaceful breakup and transition of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe to more market-based regimes and varying degrees of political pluralism. It should however not be forgotten that the 1990s also witnessed the Rwanda genocide, the wars in Yugoslavia and the start of the Great War of Africa (1998-2003). The literature review pursues by examining the succession of crises in the 21st century, including the global financial crisis (2007-2009) and the Covid pandemic (2020-2021), along with more "persistent states of crisis" related to climate change, migration and national populism. By carrying out a series of case studies, the literature review strives to analyse how crises specifically impact women, be it through economic disadvantage, poorer or inappropriate access to support and public services, and, above all, the increased violence women experience during crises (ranging from intimate partner violence to systematic rape as a tool for breaking the personalities of victims and the cohesion of social groups). The literature review was disseminated prior to the conference to support participants' subsequent work.