Gender, Sovereignty and the Rise of Sexual Security Regime in International Law and Postcolonial India

This article analyzes the protests and discourse on violence against women that was triggered by the 2012 case of the 'Delhi rape'. In particular, the author examines the shift away from traditional gender norms through increased demand for women's rights to bodily integrity and sexual autonomy. She also notes a simultaneous shift toward a neoliberal political rationality that increasingly characterizes the conception of gender within the global context and international legal arena. Although the protests themselves were political in nature, they also reflected the demands of a new model of consumer citizenship that called for greater efficiency to facilitate participation in the market arena. The article cautions against neoliberal conceptions of gender and the illusory belief of a non-coercive market; such beliefs are unlikely to disrupt existing normative understandings of socio-political control in ways that empower those who demand recognition and action.