A feminist challenge to the gendered politics of the public/private divide: on due diligence, domestic violence, and citizenship
This article examines the feminist appropriation of the legal principle of due diligence to politicize acts of violence at the hands of private actors within the private sphere. This move expanded traditional notions of state responsibility for violence against women under
international human rights law. Using frame analysis, we focus on the institutionalization of this feminist understanding of due diligence through its discursive incorporation in international human rights policy documents and its mobilization in cases of domestic violence litigated within
the UN and the Inter-American and European human rights systems. Through this discursive framing work and its institutionalization, feminists have challenged the gendered politics of the public/private divide to change the terms on which differently positioned women can engage with the state
and global governance institutions. We argue that this change can potentially reconfigure women's state-bounded and transnational citizenship. The implications of due diligence as a political and sociological concept require more careful consideration by citizenship and human rights scholars.
Keywords: domestic violence; gender; human rights; national and transnational citizenship; state responsibility
Document Type: Research Article
Affiliations: 1: Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada 2: Department of Political Science, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
Publication date: 18 August 2014
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