Forced Marriage and Gender Transformation: Feminist State and Civil Society Networks at the Local Level

This chapter shows how forced marriage arrived on the French political agenda; how it has been framed as a policy issue; how forced marriage policy is implemented; and what impact, if any, it has had on gender transformation. Data are drawn from policy documents, and 51 semi-structured interviews held with state and civil society actors. Fieldwork was conducted in Île-de-France, Montpellier and Strasbourg, selected because of the existence of networks explicitly focused on forced marriage. The chapter finds that French forced marriage policy is concerned more with protecting or rescuing individual women and girls than with changing gender relations or challenging the structures and power relations that enable violence against women and girls.