Femicides in Guatemala - A study of gender based violence and the construction of female identities.

Abstract: Femicides, the crime where women are murdered because they are women are increasing in Guatemala. Everyday two women are brutally killed in the country, without almost any efforts to stop it or find the perpetrators. It is my opinion that conceptions and notions surrounding the gender identities are crucial in trying to understand the murders, motives and impunity which the murders are characterized by. That is why I have chosen to take a closer look on the femicides in Guatemala and especially it's relation to the female gender identities in the country. Placing femicides in a gendered continuum of violence gives me the opportunity to discuss the crime in terms of social, economical and political violence. Together with theories surrounding gender, nation and identity femicides can be connected to the notion of female identities through power discourses surrounding gender. It becomes highly visible that the Guatemalan civil war is crucial in understanding today's gender identities because wars affect identities fundamental, and especially a conflict that lasted for over three decades. During armed conflicts the perception of ?manhood? and ?womanhood? becomes essential in discourses related to the nation and the national identity. But as my thesis will show, the Mayan people, and especially the Mayan women came to symbolise the enemy through her breeding of ?difference? which resulted in brutal assaults by the Guatemalan army. In my thesis I will show how gender identities can become visible through placing femicides in a wider perspective and by analysing the power and gender discourses surrounding the crime.