Forced Marriage and Sterilization without Women´s Consent in Mexico: Prevalence and Factors Associated

This paper examines two forms of gender-based violence in Mexico, forced sterilization and forced marriage by using two recent surveys: the 2011 National Survey on Household Dynamics and the Survey on Indigenous Women’s Health and Rights 2007. The first part of the paper reviews the concepts of gender-based violence and violence against women. It discusses the relationship among gender, power and violence in the Mexican context and how different actors (family members, and doctors) perpetrate these silenced forms of violence against women: forced sterilization and forced marriage –including selling women. The second section focuses on forced marriage, its prevalence (between 1.79% and 4%) and factors associated are studied. In the third part, sterilization without women’s consent (27%) is examined. The conclusion underscores how gender interacts with ethnicity and socioeconomic status in order to explain these two forms of gender-based violence. The need of further analyses and data are discussed.