This project aims to challenge hermetic constructions of war and peace by analyzing practices traditionally considered as “war strategies” and their impacts on women’s lives in non-war contexts.  This focus has roots in the results of a previous study on women and girls in contexts of armed violence in Rio de Janeiro Although not the main focus, one of the conclusions of that project was that violence perpetrated by armed groups and gender-based violence presuppose the use of strategies and have consequences strikingly similar to those experienced in situations of conventional war. Thus, this project is a comparative study that will look at women’s (in)securities and continuums of violence in specific contexts within three Latin American cities with notoriously high levels of gun crime and the strong presence of armed groups: Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Medellín (Colombia), and Guayaquil (Ecuador).