Abstract
This chapter provides an overview of how and why narratives that shape national collective memory of past atrocity neglect gender – a neglect that many find shocking given the ubiquity of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) in all recorded wars and mass atrocities. These silences transform into contemporary inequalities as who a society remembers and values as a victim shapes access to resources such as education, financial support, and social capital. I suggest ways for scholars to remedy this oversight in research on gender and cases of contentious memory, and how to integrate a feminist lens in various stages of the research and writing process. This includes oversampling strategies, choosing subjects, qualitative data collection strategies, and approaches to analyzing data, including the analytical vitality of listening to the silences and gaps present in qualitative data. Finally, I address the personal cost for the researcher who adopts a feminist interpretive lens when studying gender and memorialization in the context of mass atrocity and SGBV. Gendered gaps in collective memory projects have significant consequences, including devaluing women’s place in the nation and delimiting their roles in the future (regarding leadership opportunities, decision-making positions, economic prosperities, and governing posts).