Authors

Discussion

We study the gendered effects of wartime sexual violence and other traumatic wartime experiences on political participation. We challenge the dominant discourse in the economics literature that associates an increase in political participation with a post traumatic growth. Instead, we argue that changes in political participation need to be understood in context, depending on the nature of the post-war political arena and in relation to changes in views on gender roles and other relevant attitudes. We use primary data collected in Kosovo in late 2023 and we demonstrate that while war violence increases political participation overall, it does so differentially across gender and depending on the type of violence experienced. We also evidence limited post-traumatic growth among the victims of violence of all genders, and challenging patriarchal gender norms as a potentially more fruitful way to increase the political participation of victimised women.