The Cost of Power

Women, geopolitics and structural violence across Vachathi, Darfur, Partition and the Epstein case

Power is usually discussed through states, institutions, borders, military strength and economic influence. Yet these conventional measures rarely reveal who bears the human cost of acquiring and maintaining power.

Across history and contemporary politics, violence against women has too often been treated as a secondary consequence of conflict or institutional failure. A gendered analysis suggests something more fundamental: women’s bodies, labour and security are frequently among the terrains upon which political, economic and social power is exercised.

This article examines that pattern through four very different contexts: the violence in Vachathi, India; the conflict in Darfur, Sudan; the 1947 Partition of India; and the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein and the institutional scrutiny surrounding his network.

These cases differ significantly in scale, geography, history and legal context. Comparing them does not make them equivalent. Instead, it allows us to ask a recurring question: when power is pursued, protected or consolidated, whose suffering is pushed to the margins?

Vachathi and the abuse of institutional authority

In June 1992, officials entered Vachathi, an Adivasi village in Tamil Nadu, during an operation connected to alleged sandalwood smuggling. Villagers were assaulted, property was destroyed and women were subjected to sexual violence.

The case came to represent more than the criminal actions of individual officials. It demonstrated how public authority can become a source of violence when institutions treat marginalised communities as obstacles to control rather than citizens entitled to protection.

Justice took decades. In 2023, the Madras High Court upheld the convictions arising from the case and ordered compensation for the women who survived the violence.

Vachathi therefore raises a central question about state power: what happens when the institutions expected to protect people instead use their authority to intimidate and silence them?

Darfur and violence as a method of war

The continuing conflict in Sudan has placed women and girls at particular risk. United Nations investigators have received credible reports of rape, gang rape, abduction, forced marriage and other forms of sexual violence committed during the conflict.

In this setting, gender-based violence cannot be dismissed as an accidental by-product of war. It functions as a means of terrorising communities, breaking resistance and driving people from their homes.

This changes how conflict must be understood. Territory is not controlled solely through military advances or political negotiations. Control can also be established through fear, displacement and attacks on the social fabric of communities.

Women are central to this geopolitical reality, yet their experiences are still frequently treated as peripheral to the “main” story of war.

Partition and the gendered construction of nations

The 1947 Partition of British India led to the creation of India and Pakistan, mass displacement and widespread communal violence. Women were abducted, raped, forcibly married and subjected to violence presented as an attack on the honour of entire families or communities.

Women’s bodies became symbolic borders upon which competing ideas of nation, religion and communal identity were inscribed.

The response following Partition also exposed a tension between state action and women’s agency. Recovery and repatriation programmes sometimes sought to return abducted women to their communities without sufficiently considering what the women themselves wanted. Protection could therefore reproduce the same assumption underlying much of the violence: that women belonged to families, communities or nations rather than to themselves.

A gendered history of Partition does more than add women to an existing political narrative. It changes our understanding of how states, borders and national identities were formed.

The Epstein case and the protection afforded by influence

The Epstein case presents a different expression of power. Jeffrey Epstein was charged in 2019 with sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking. The case, subsequent proceedings and later document releases have generated intense scrutiny of the relationships and institutions surrounding him.

The existence of a person’s name in a released record does not, by itself, establish criminal conduct. The broader case nevertheless demonstrates how wealth, status and institutional access can create environments in which exploitation remains concealed or insufficiently challenged.

Here, power operates not through territorial conquest or armed conflict, but through access, social influence and the capacity to avoid scrutiny. The central issue is not celebrity or public spectacle. It is whether institutions listen to victims, investigate allegations and hold powerful people accountable.

A recurring structure of power

Taken together, these four cases reveal a recurring pattern: women are often treated not as autonomous political actors but as representatives of a family, community, nation or institution.

In Vachathi, sexual violence accompanied the abuse of state authority. In Darfur, it has been used amid conflict and displacement. During Partition, women became symbols of national and communal honour. In the Epstein case, vulnerability intersected with wealth, access and institutional protection.

Political narratives often focus on leaders, armies, negotiations, borders and economic interests. These perspectives can render women’s experiences invisible even when their suffering is central to how power is exercised.

Violence also has an economic dimension. It can support the control of land, resources, labour and political influence. Women’s paid and unpaid work helps sustain societies during periods of instability, but it is frequently excluded from conventional assessments of political and economic power.

From formal equality to lived justice

International commitments to gender equality are important, but legal recognition alone is not enough. Formal equality can coexist with violence, exclusion and institutional silence.

According to UN Women, almost one in three women worldwide has experienced physical or sexual violence at least once in her lifetime. This is not a marginal social concern. It is a persistent human-rights and political challenge.

Gender justice therefore requires more than presenting women as beneficiaries of policy. Women must participate in designing political, legal and humanitarian responses. Survivors must be heard, institutions must be accountable and gender-based violence must be recognised as a central factor in conflict, governance and international relations.

Rethinking the cost of power

When analysing a conflict, political transition or institution, we should ask more than who gained authority, territory or influence. We must also ask whose labour supported that power, whose experiences were excluded from the official account and whose bodies bore its consequences.

Placing women at the centre of analysis changes how we understand geopolitics. It reveals that the personal is not separate from the international: individual experiences of violence, survival and resistance are connected to institutions, economies and systems of authority.

The cost of power is therefore not only measured in resources spent or territory contested. It can also be measured in suffering normalised, voices silenced and accountability delayed.

Recognising that cost is an essential step towards building political systems in which women are not treated as instruments or symbols, but as autonomous participants in shaping a more just international order.