This book explores the gendered and gendering effects of violence against women in extreme situations such as major wars, genocides, famines, slavery, the Holocaust, mass rape and ethnic cleansing.

Case studies include: the female experience of methodical genocidal rape in the former Yugoslavia; women's coerced participation in the Rwandan massacre; Japan's comfort women system during World War II; the gendering of genocidal strategies during the Holocaust; nuclear testing in the Pacific; and China's reproduction policy in Tibet.

All are integrated into a wider framework, which uncovers the true consequences of identifying women as simultaneously sexual objects, transmitters of culture, and symbols of the nation.