Violence against Women: Devastating Legacy and Transforming Services
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Violence against Women: Devastating Legacy andTransforming ServicesProfessor Gill Hague a & LynnMarie Sardinha aa School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol , UKPublished online: 09 Jun 2010.
To cite this article: Professor Gill Hague & LynnMarie Sardinha (2010) Violence against Women: Devastating Legacy andTransforming Services, Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 17:4, 503-522
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13218711003709410
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Violence against Women: Devastating Legacy and Transforming Services
Gill Hague and LynnMarie Sardinha
School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol, UK
This article deals with violence against women in an overview discussion. It first reflectson the devastating legacy of gender violence, with examples from across the world. Itgoes on to discuss the transformations that began to develop in both service provisionand in attention to, and public attitudes about, the issue in various countries, from the1970s onwards. There have been (a) transforming services, (b) transforming people and(c) transforming research. Illustrations are provided from the United Kingdom withadditional material from Australia and New Zealand. The paper celebrates both theachievements of activism and service provisions over the past 30 years on genderviolence, and also the first 20 years of specialized violence against women research,during which time it has moved from the margins to – almost – the mainstream.
Key words: sexual and domestic abuse; violence against women.
This article addresses the issue of violence
against women. In a broad-brush coverage,
it traces the worldwide reach of gender
violence and the history of local and global
attempts to do something about it. It is a
written version of a public lecture origin-
ally given as the R.G. Myers Lecture for
the Australian and New Zealand Associa-
tion of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law at
the national conference of the Australian
Community Support Organization in July
2009.
The article, in common with the lecture
on which it is based, can be viewed as a
tribute to Professor Myers, the first Pre-
sident of the Australian and New Zealand
Association of Psychiatry, Psychology
and Law, in whose honour the annual
R. G. Myers Lecture is given. Professor
Myers is remembered for his distinguished
contribution and his research, teaching and
practice work within the field of forensic
psychiatry.
Developed directly from the lecture,
this paper looks at violence against women
within a global framework, but, when
individual countries are discussed, the
United Kingdom is the principal example
used. Some information has been included
about Australia and New Zealand. Due to
its origin as a public lecture, the article is
relatively non-academic in scope. It does
not discuss a specific research study or
theoretical perspective. Rather, it elabo-
rates on the lecture to present an overall
perspective of the enormous topic of
violence against women and the often
pioneering or transforming attempts to
develop services, responses and campaigns.
The paper also reports briefly on the
work of the Violence Against Women
Research Group (VAWRG), School for
Correspondence: Professor Gill Hague, School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol, 8 PrioryRoad, Bristol BS8 1TZ, UK. Email: gill.hague@bristol.ac.ukPresented as the R. G. Myers Lecture, July 2009.
Psychiatry, Psychology and Law
Vol. 17, No. 4, November 2010, 503–522
ISSN 1321-8719 print/ISSN 1934-1687 online
Ó 2010 The Australian and New Zealand Association of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law
DOI: 10.1080/13218711003709410
http://www.informaworld.com
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Policy Studies, University of Bristol in the
United Kingdom (now being renamed the
Gender and Violence Research Centre),
which conducts a wide range of national
and international research on gender vio-
lence, within an activist frame wherever
possible.
Violence against women is a disturbing
and upsetting subject, and large sections of
the population have experienced it, either
as adults or as children (both as girls and,
for both sexes, in terms of violence against
their mothers, family members or care-
givers), as readers of Psychiatry, Psychol-
ogy, and Law will be well aware. The
lecture and paper are dedicated to all
the survivors of violence against women
with whom members of the Group have
worked, or whom they have consulted,
over the last 20 years and who have
generously and sometimes heroically given
their time, effort, expertise and advice in
the hope that their contributions might
improve services for other violence victims
in the future.
What is Violence Against Women?
Violence against women is an issue of
global concern highlighted, for example,
within the United Nations 1979 Conven-
tion on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination against Women and the
historic 1993 United National Declaration
on the Elimination of Violence against
Women. Gender violence is defined by the
United Nations as follows.
Any act of gender-based violence thatresults in, or is likely to result in, physical,sexual or psychological harm or sufferingto women, including threats of such acts,coercion or arbitrary deprivation ofliberty, whether occurring in public or inprivate life. (www.un.org/rights)
Violence against women is now widely
regarded as a violation of human rights
and, thus, as an issue for human rights
work worldwide (Kelly, 2003; Unicef, 2000;
United Nations, 2006). It includes domestic
violence, rape, sexual assault and abuse,
violence on the grounds of ‘‘honour’’,
human trafficking, sexual harassment
and stalking of women, genital and other
forms of mutilation, and aspects of pros-
titution and of forced marriage (e.g., Kelly,
2003).
Domestic violence is one of the princi-
pal forms of gender violence. This type
of abuse needs to be understood as extend-
ing beyond physical violence, and as
including abuse by partners and ex-part-
ners, as well as by adult family members in
some cases (Gangoli, Razak, & McCarry,
2006; Hague & Malos, 2005). Domestic
violence is not generally thought to include
inter-generational abuse (e.g., child abuse
and cross-generational elder abuse) but is
likely to have profound impacts on children
experiencing violence between the adults in
their lives (Hester, Pearson, Harwin, &
Abrahams, 2007).
In the United Kingdom, Women’s Aid
is the national domestic violence charity
and defines domestic violence as follows.
The physical, sexual, psychological orfinancial violence that takes place withinan intimate or family-type relationshipand forms a pattern of coercive andcontrolling behaviour. This can includeforced marriage and so-called ‘honour’crimes. Domestic violence may include arange of abusive behaviours, not all ofwhich are in themselves inherently ‘vio-lent’. (www.womensaid.org.uk)
Thus, so-called honour-based violence
(HBV; carried out in the name of protect-
ing the honour of a family or community)
and forced marriage (as opposed to ar-
ranged marriage in which the parties
consent) are also currently regarded as
issues of domestic violence itself (Gangoli
et al., 2006; Gill, 2006). Many definitions
now contain a reference to coercive control
(sometimes continual and long term) by the
abuser over the abused (Stark, 2007).
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There is some agreement among orga-
nizations addressing gendered violence
across the world, including Women’s
Aid, that women may experience intimate
violence regardless of ethnicity, religion,
class, caste, age, sexuality, disability or
lifestyle. Domestic violence can occur in a
range of relationships including those
that are heterosexual, gay, lesbian, bisex-
ual or transgendered, and also within
extended families (www.womensaid.org).
In same-sex relationships, for example,
recent United Kingdom research shows
that, compared with heterosexual relation-
ships, it is likely to be experienced in
different ways and have different impacts,
including in terms of help-seeking. The
experiences and impacts of intimate abuse
for lesbian women were found usually to
be different from those for gay men, with
the former experiencing more emotional
abuse and the latter more sexual abuse
(Donovan et al., 2006; Donovan & Hester,
2008; in the Australian context, see also
Irwin, 2008).
Most researchers and policy-makers, as
well as specialist agencies, agree that the
vast majority of intimate violence is ex-
perienced by women. Perpetrators are most
commonly men, although abuse can also
occur the other way round (e.g., Gadd,
Farrall, Dallimore, & Lombard, 2002).
Thus, although individuals requesting as-
sistance from helping agencies will over-
whelmingly be women, this is not to belittle
the need of male victims for appropriate
help and support. For a discussion of
domestic violence experienced by men, see
Gadd et al. (2002), Hester (2009) and
Robinson and Rowlands (2006). Violence
against women extends, of course, beyond
domestic violence, especially in terms of
sexual assault and rape. Addressing these
issues, in Australia, the National Council
and National Plan to Reduce Violence
against Women and Children adopted by
the Government and discussed later, notes
violence against women as follows.
Sexual assault and domestic and familyviolence are among the most persuasiveforms of violence. The Government’sposition on domestic violence and sexualassault is one of zero tolerance – onecrime of violence is one too many. Sexualassault and domestic and family violenceare crimes often perpetrated by menagainst women. This violence is usuallyperpetrated by men who women know, intheir own homes and often repeatedly.(Commonwealth of Australia, 2009)
Overall, then, in this article, violence
against women is discussed, rather than
violence against men or children.
Devastating Legacy
It is difficult to assess how much violence
against women there is across the world.
As a global issue, it represents a devastat-
ing legacy, stretching across almost all
countries and back across the ages (e.g.,
Dobash & Dobash, 1980; Pleck, 1987). One
of the difficulties in arriving at definitive
figures for the extent of gender violence is
the sensitivity and the often hidden nature
of the issue. Further, although effective
survey methods are now being developed in
some countries (e.g., for Canada, Johnson,
1996; Johnson & Sacco, 1995; internation-
ally, Johnson, Ollus, & Nevada, 2008), it
has, over many years, proved hard to
involve public authorities, universities or
governments in developing robust techni-
ques to measure violence against women
and effective responses (Hague & Malos,
2005; Kelly & Lovett, 2005).
Despite improvements in the awareness
of these issues in many countries, women
still fear to report intimate violence against
them. In a 2007 survey of violence against
women in various countries including
Australia, Mozambique, the Czech Repub-
lic, Denmark, the Philippines, Poland and
Costa Rica among others, substantially less
than one third of women in these countries
experiencing relevant abuse reported the
violence against them, with consequent
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arrest/charging following in a very low
percentage of these reported cases
(Johnson et al., 2008; UNIFEM, 2008/9).
Reporting was 7% of eligible cases of
partner violence included in the study in
Mozambique, 8% in the Czech Republic
and 14% in Australia. Australia scored the
highest in regards to the reporting of non-
partner physical violence, but this figure
was still only 27% of eligible cases.
Domestic Violence Specifically
Domestic violence is only one part of
violence against women, although it is a
major one (Heise, Pitanguy, & Germain,
1994; Kelly & Lovett, 2005; Krug,
Dahlberg, Mercy, Zwi, & Lozano, 2002).
Most studies in a variety of countries find
that around one in four women experience
physical domestic violence across a life-
time, with one in eight to one in 10
experiencing intimate abuse of this type at
any one time (Hague & Malos, 2005; www.
womensaid.org.uk).
As discussed in the above definitions,
this type of violence includes physical,
sexual and emotional violence and other
types of abuse. Physical domestic violence
itself ranges from bruising and cuts, to
black eyes and lost teeth and broken bones
to much more substantial injuries. Most
domestic violence is not as serious as the
following examples, but the most extreme
cases do include sexual and other forms of
deliberate mutilation; fistulas, miscarriages,
women disabled by violence, children
disabled by violence against their mothers
either after birth or in the womb; perma-
nent maiming of victims, attempted mur-
der, and murder (Hague & Malos, 2005).
A pioneering international study
of domestic violence in many countries
of the world, the Multi-country Study of
Health and Domestic Violence Against
Women, has recently been conducted by
the World Health Organization (WHO),
completed in 2005 (WHO, 2005). The study
was based on interviews with 24,000
women by carefully trained interviewers
over 15 sites and 10 countries, namely:
Bangladesh, Brazil, Ethiopia, Japan, Peru,
Namibia, Samoa, Serbia and Montenegro,
Thailand and the United Republic of
Tanzania. The research was also replicated
by New Zealand, with closely related
surveys in Chile, China, Indonesia and
Vietnam.
The study documented the prevalence
of intimate partner violence and its asso-
ciation with women’s physical, mental,
sexual and reproductive health. Data were
included on non-partner violence, sexual
abuse during childhood and forced first
sexual experience. The report proposed
15 recommendations to strengthen natio-
nal commitments and action on violence
against women in individual countries, and
concluded that violence against women is
extremely widespread and demands a pub-
lic health response across the world (WHO,
2005).
Physical Violence
This study showed very high levels of
physical domestic violence globally, being
experienced by 29–62% of women with
wide variations between settings. The
proportion of ever-partnered women who
had suffered physical violence at any time
by a male partner ranged from 13% in
Japan, to 38% in New Zealand, to 53% in
Bangladesh, to 61% in provincial Peru.
The severity of a physically violent act
was ranked in the study according to its
likelihood of causing physical injuries, and
being slapped, pushed or shoved were
defined as moderate physical violence.
The most common act of violence experi-
enced by women was being slapped by
their partner, ranging up to 52% in Peru.
Being hit with a fist, kicked, dragged,
threatened with a weapon, or experiencing
an attack with a weapon were defined as
severe physical violence. According to this
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definition, in most countries, between 13%
and 26% of women reported being hit by a
partner with his fist.
The WHO study found that, if women
have ever experienced partner violence,
it is highly likely that at some time an act
of more severe violence will occur. Far
from being an isolated event, the study
findings were that most acts of physical
violence reflect a pattern of continuing
abuse, with the majority of women experi-
encing acts of violence more than once,
and sometimes frequently. With the excep-
tion of the most severe types of physical
violence, which included choking, burning,
and the use of weapons, more than half
of women in each site who had experienced
a violent act in the past 12 months had
experienced that act more than once
(WHO, 2005).
Sexual Violence
A particularly distressing form of violence
against women is sexual violence, sexual
mutilation and rape, and the WHO Study
provided one of the first cross-cultural
examinations of patterns of partner vio-
lence including such sexual violence.
In most sites studied, between 30% and
56% of women who had experienced any
violence by an intimate partner reported
both physical and sexual violence occurring
together.
Overall, the study showed very high
levels of sexual violence: often more or less
normalized in the society and sometimes
extreme. For example, 30% of women in
Thailand and up to 59% in Ethiopia
reported such violence. In the majority of
settings, the percentage was between 10%
and 50%. Nearly one third of women in
some African countries reported being
physically forced by a partner to have sex
against their will within the past 12
months. This high rate of forced sex is
particularly alarming in the light of the
AIDS epidemic and the difficulty that
many women have in protecting themselves
from HIV infection (WHO, 2005).
Rape in war has attracted considerable
publicity in recent years with, for example,
studies finding estimates of between 20,000
and 50,000 Muslim women raped by
Serbian soldiers in the Bosnian conflict of
1992–1995 (Amnesty International, 1993;
Aryeh, 1993; Niarchos, 1995; Watts &
Zimmerman, 2002). The full number of
women and girls who experienced rape in
the Rwanda genocide is unknown and it
is not surprising, given the difficulties in
collecting accurate dates, that estimations
of the total number raped vary widely
(Hamilton, 2000). The United States Com-
mittee for Refugees states that ‘‘thousands
of female survivors, including young girls,
were raped during the genocide’’ (Drumtra,
1997, p. 39). The Director of the Clinic of
Hope, however, a Rwandan non-govern-
ment organization (NGO) providing med-
ical services, psychosocial counselling,
economic empowerment activities and shel-
ter to women, estimates that the number is
higher, with between 250,000 and 500,000
women being raped and often mutilated
during the 1994 genocide (Balikungeri,
1999). It is estimated that more than 400
Iraqi women were raped within the first
4 months of United States occupation
(Agence France-Presse, 2003). Another
recent example from 2009 has been the
world publicity about the hundreds of
thousands of women continuing to be
raped in conflict situations in the Demo-
cratic Republic of Congo (Human Rights
Watch, 2009; New York Times, 2007).
Overall Figure
From more overall evidence, the WHO
informs us that between one in five and
one in three women worldwide experience
physical violence from their intimate part-
ners: from the person with whom they
share perhaps their closest most tender
moments and who may profess to love
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them (WHO, 2005). It is worth reiterating
this extremely high percentage: one in three
at least of the world’s women experience
some form of intimate violence, as esti-
mated by the most prestigious health
organization in the world.
This figure is echoed by the Australian
Government in the documents produced
for the (now adopted) National Plan to
Reduce Violence against Women and Chil-
dren 2009–2021 (Commonwealth of Aus-
tralia, 2009), which reported that one in
three Australian women will experience
physical violence and one in five will be a
victim of sexual violence in their lifetime,
according to the Australian Bureau of
Statistics (2005). Similarly, the United
Nations General Assembly reported in its
extensive 2006 study of violence against
women and girls that: ‘‘one in every three
women around the world has been beaten,
coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her
lifetime . . . with the abuser usually some-
one known to them’’ (United Nations
General Assembly, 2006).
Wider Forms of Violence Against Women
Domestic violence and sexual assault are
serious public health and criminal justice
issues, as accepted by the governments of
the United Kingdom and of Australia
(www.homeoffice.gov.uk; www.australia.
gov.au). The phenomenon of violence
against women, however, stretches much
wider. For example, the complex cultural
practice of female genital mutilation is
experienced by the staggering figure of
approximately 138 million women across
the world, with estimates in the United
Kingdom from the Government Depart-
ment of Health of between 64,000 and
74,000 (www.doh.gov.uk). Figures for
Australia and New Zealand do not seem
to be readily available currently.
Other forms of violence against women
include forced marriages of young women
and abusive marriage rites that often
involve the categorization of women as
property in some way (e.g., Bhopal, 2007;
Gangoli et al., 2006; Thiara & Hague,
2009). The burning of brides and the
throwing of acid at women who transgress
against the wishes of male relatives, ex-
tended families or either actual boyfriends
or young men who would like to be
boyfriends, are common in some countries
(InfoChange India, 2008; Joseph, 2004).
Throughout the world, there are devas-
tatingly high levels of forced trafficking of
women from one country or city to another
(Human Rights Watch, 2009; International
Organization for Migration, 2001). Traf-
ficking, of course, is not always forced.
Nevertheless, huge numbers of often very
young and vulnerable women are trafficked
within and between countries specifically
for sexual purposes – sexual purposes of
which they are frequently completely una-
ware when they undertake the massive
journey to leave home and move countries
(e.g., Eaves, 2009).
HBV is defined as violence usually
against younger women in the family by
close male family members – their fathers,
their brothers, their uncles – in the name of
protecting or restoring family honour.
Younger brothers are sometimes delegated
by families in such cases on the grounds
that, if arrested, they are likely to attract
lesser sentences (Welchman & Hossain,
2005). Often this form of violence takes
the form of murder.
HBV is usually differentiated from
other forms of violence against women on
the grounds, first, that it occurs within the
framework of collective family structures,
of community customs and of specific
cultures and societies, and, second, that it
involves a premeditated act designed to
restore a societal construction of ‘‘honour’’
as a value system, norm or tradition
(Welchman & Hossain, 2005). It is fre-
quently viewed as based on putative rights
to control women’s sexual and social
choices and the perception of women as
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male property (Gill, 2006; Sen, 2003;
Welchman & Hossain, 2005).
This form of violence is very common;
it has existed throughout history and in
a wide variety of societies across the
world from white European to African
cultures, from South and East Asia to
Latin America. The most extreme form of
HBV – honour killing – is tragically wide-
spread and in no way confined to particular
cultures. Reports submitted to the United
Nations Commission on Human Rights
(2002) documented the continuing occur-
rence of the practice in Bangladesh, Brazil,
Britain, Ecuador, Egypt, India, Iran, Iraq,
Israel, Italy, Jordan, Pakistan, Morocco,
Sweden, Turkey, and Uganda as just some
examples.
The presenter of the lecture on which
this paper is based is now working with a
Kurdish and a South Asian expert on
honour crime, Dr. Nazand Begikhani and
Dr. Aisha Gill, to conduct a pioneering
study of such violence in Iraqi Kurdistan
(outside the disrupted areas of the Iraq
war). The study was provoked by an
incident of honour killing: the stoning to
death of a teenage Yazidi girl in April 2007,
killed because she was friends with a
Muslim boy. During the stoning, official
agencies were filmed failing to intervene
(Stop Honour Killings, 2008). Her case
sparked off a national and international
reaction because the scene was filmed by
mobile phone cameras and the footage
was then broadcast across the Internet
(website reference excluded). As a result,
the Government of Kurdistan Region
commissioned our team to conduct this
new study, the first of its kind, designed
to result in an action plan for Iraqi
Kurdistan.
A final example of these various upset-
ting manifestations of violence against
women is the ‘‘missing women’’ of the
world: statistically, the numbers of women
and men in the world should be equal, but
they are skewed statistically in favour of
men. The reasons for the missing statistics
on women are, in this context, infanticide:
that is, killings of girl babies and children;
feticide: that is, abortion or forced abor-
tions of girl fetuses; and femicide: that is,
killings of adult women. Disregarding
deaths due to war and conflict, the figure
for the missing women is not a mere
few hundred thousand or even a million.
Rather, UNICEF tells us that the figure
is 60 million (Bunch, 2006), with some
estimates as high as 100 million. The reality
of this distressing figure, then, is that 60–
100 million women are not alive across the
globe at the very moment that the reader is
reading this paper for these reasons.
Overall, then, the legacy of violence
against women facing the world today is
enormous in scope. But this truly devastat-
ing legacy, which could well be regarded
as a stain on human history and human
endeavour and human progress (Kelly &
Regan, 2006; WHO, 2005), is accompa-
nied, returning to the title of this paper and
lecture, by the transforming struggle to
combat it and to set up services and policy
to assist victims and to hold perpetrators
to account. These transformations can be
thought of in at least three categories as
discussed below: transforming services,
transforming people, and transforming
research.
Transforming Services
Some services, even if only a few, now
exist in most countries of the world in
response to violence against women,
although it is widely recognized that these
services are almost universally inadequate
to the task (Kelly & Regan, 2006; WHO,
2005). It is unlikely, however, that these
services would have developed as they
have without the transforming impact of
the social movements for women in
many parts of the world that have
campaigned to bring the issue to public
attention, to persuade governments to
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take it on and to establish supportive
services for victims (Gangoli, 2007; Kelly
& Regan, 2006).
Social Movements of Empowerment
From the 1970s onwards, grassroots wo-
men’s organizations and movements have
blossomed in many parts of the world
(Dobash & Dobash, 1992; Schechter,
1982), and have been by no means limited
to Western countries. These various move-
ments take different forms in different
places, involving many thousands of wo-
men across the globe, and increasing
numbers of supportive men. In India, for
example, vibrant and forceful activist
movements on women’s rights have existed
for 4 25 years, often working on violence
against women issues and engaging in
direct action (Gangoli, 2007; Mitra, 1999;
Poonacha & Pandya, 1999).
Frequently, then, concern about gender
violence has led to the setting up (not
without resistance in some cases) of cam-
paigning or social action groups in diffe-
rent countries, providing pioneering
women’s services or engaging in direct
social action to promote women’s rights.
One example is the international grassroots
campaigning in many developing countries
including the Philippines and other coun-
tries in South East Asia, as well as in
Australia and elsewhere, which occurred in
the process of beginning to get rape
accepted as a war crime by the United
Nations. Campaigning from 1998 onwards
took place in village after village in an
example of ‘from local to global’, in
which local action led to change at the
international level (Pittaway, 2009; www.
peacewomen.org).
Empowerment of women has been the
watchword of these various women’s acti-
vist movements working against gender
violence, which have now been campaign-
ing, setting up services and developing
good policy and practice (to varying
extents across the world) for more than
35 years (Hague, Mullender, & Aris, 2003).
Their aims have always included the
transformation of victims’ lives and the
provision of empowering, and culturally
specific, sensitive responses, together with a
commitment to self-determination and
personal strengthening for those beaten
down by personal violence, abuse and
humiliation (Dobash & Dobash, 1992;
Hague & Malos, 2005). Most of these
activist organizations have a positive and
stated commitment to raising the voices of
survivors of abuse and their children within
service provision and policy development,
and as part of the political project of
insisting that the abuse of women is taken
seriously (Dobash & Dobash, 1992; Hague
et al., 2003; Mullender & Hague, 2001).
Without these activist struggles across
the world on violence against women, we
would not have all the services and policy-
making we have in different countries
today, including within the psychiatric
and legal professions. The connection is a
direct one, although sometimes forgotten
by professionals today.
Some History
Historically, then, the issue received some
attention in the late 19th century women’s
rights movements and there has been the
odd safe house established throughout
history in various countries to which
women fleeing personal violence could
escape (e.g., Pleck, 1987). But it was in
the early 1970s that these attempts gained
momentum, with the setting up of the
first refuges and domestic violence services.
These were heady and sometimes passio-
nate days that participants have always
remembered, in Australia and New
Zealand, as well as in the United Kingdom
and elsewhere (Hague & Malos, 2005).
In the words of the renowned violence
and homicide researchers, husband and
wife team, Rebecca and Russell Dobash:
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The great mobilization of women beganwith a vision, supported by action. Thevision was of a world transformed’.(Dobash & Dobash, 1992, p.15)
There were of course setbacks, false
starts, mistakes and arguments. Some
projects were unable to get set up at all
and others were closed down or failed to
get funding or to take off, but overall this
grassroots movement in many countries
has led us to where we are today in terms
of services (Hague & Malos, 2005). Wo-
men’s groups continued to come together
throughout the late 1970s and 1980s to
break the silence about violence against
women issues, to set up campaigning
groups and specifically to establish re-
fuges in the United Kingdom, the United
States, Australia, and in other countries.
These were secret locations to which
women experiencing domestic violence
from their husbands or partners could
escape. Abused women could suddenly
leave their marriages and husbands, and
go to a safe place run usually by other
women. While commonplace today, this
was a revolutionary idea at the time and
it took off like wildfire, with hundreds of
refuges being set up in only a few years,
in a whole variety of (initially) mainly
Western countries. They were often
housed in poor properties with very little
in the way of support, and almost all
were run by collectives. These efforts were
achieved with virtually no finances or
resources – out of contagious enthusiasm
and commitment and feminist zeal, and
sometimes they faced hostility and ex-
treme opposition (Hague & Malos, 2005;
Keel, 2004; Yarram, 2003). It is true to
say that, without them, we would not be
where we are today.
Services Established
In the United Kingdom, in the domestic
violence sphere, Women’s Aid was estab-
lished quite quickly nationally as the main
body, coordinating the new refuges and
domestic violence projects. These included,
as time went on, projects for women from
Black, minority ethnic and other diverse
communities (e.g., a project for women
with intellectual disabilities, the network
of refuges and empowerment projects for
women of South Asian origin, Latin
American women’s organizations, Jewish
women’s projects, Chinese women’s
groups, etc.).
For a time, however, in the United
Kingdom and almost all countries, no one
else was interested, and statutory and
voluntary sector agencies turned their
back on the women’s movements and the
new projects. It has been argued many
times that the police, for example, con-
tinued in Australia, New Zealand, the
United Kingdom and elsewhere, to regard
a man’s home as his castle and to respond
extremely poorly, if at all, to men’s wives
and partners asking for help (Hague &
Malos, 2005; Murray, 2002). Gradually
over time, however, the struggle took place
to bring violence against women and
rape into the public eye, to get domestic
violence at least accepted as a crime as it
is today in many countries, and to raise
the profile of these issues in the activist
belief that women together can help
each other become stronger and can both
resist personal intimate violence and move
towards violence-free lives (Dobash &
Dobash, 1992). Now, after 30 years of
work, domestic and family violence have
moved substantially but shakily into the
mainstream, into policies and practice
advice, into TV programmes, into govern-
ment departments, into the public con-
sciousness, and into the work of almost all
relevant agencies in many countries.
In the United Kingdom, Women’s Aid
is now recognized as the national body
working strategically with government on
domestic violence, maintaining a strong
national presence, conducting consulta-
tions for the United Kingdom Government
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and producing guidance and policy for
refuge organizations, handbooks for survi-
vors, accreditation courses and national
standards for domestic violence services
(www. womensaid.org.uk). Women’s Aid
also provides services for children, includ-
ing a pioneering website The Hideout
specifically for children who have experi-
enced domestic violence against their
mothers (Hague, Mullender, Kelly, Malos,
& Debbonaire, 2000; www.thehideout.org.
uk). Women’s Aid provides more than
500 local domestic violence services now
in England (with approx. a further 100
coordinated by the other Women’s Aid
federations in Wales, Scotland and North-
ern Ireland) and assists around 250,000
women and children annually (www.
womensaid.org.uk). Policies, service level
agreements, national standards and strate-
gies exist in almost all social, justice, health
and welfare agencies, alongside legislative
developments and improvements in the
criminal justice and police response.
In the domestic violence field specifi-
cally in the United Kingdom, as well as
refuges, there are now outreach services,
inter-agency projects, perpetrator pro-
grammes, domestic violence training,
good practice guidelines in all relevant
agencies, education programmes in schools
to educate the next generation, partner-
ships, strategies, coordinated community
responses, and criminal justice innovations
(e.g., Taylor-Browne, 2001). The latter
include specialist domestic violence courts,
independent domestic violence advisers
and multi-agency risk assessment confer-
ences to deal with the most serious cases
through a coordinated response (Home
Office, 2005). Thus, practice in some
areas of the work, at least in the United
Kingdom, has actually been transformed
beyond recognition.
In Australia, the setting up of refuges
spread similarly fast in the 1970s, with the
first project being Elsie House in Glebe in
1974, and around 300 refuge projects in
operation by the 1990s (in a Western
Australia context, e.g., Murray, 2002).
Later, innovative criminal justice responses
began to be established, together with
domestic violence crisis and outreach
services across localities (Breckenridge &
Laing, 1999). More recently, key develop-
ments have taken place with services being
established in Indigenous communities,
some led by Indigenous women, some
mixed between mainstream funding and
Indigenous funding (Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander Women’s Task Force on
Violence, 2000; Department of Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander Policy and
Development, 2000; Thorpe, Solomon, &
Dimopoulos, 2004; Yarram, 2003). Exten-
sive services now exist in both Australia
and New Zealand, including the helpful
coordinating Australian Domestic and
Family Violence Clearinghouse, as well as
therapeutic and counselling provisions,
social and health services, and coordinated
community responses, a renowned example
of which is in Hamilton, New Zealand
(Pence & Shepard, 1999).
Historically from the 1970s, with a
favourable government at the time in
Australia, a high level of initiatives on
domestic violence were established very
quickly at both Federal and State levels,
with activist women entering State and
local governments (the well-documented
‘‘femocrats’’) (e.g., Pringle & Watson,
1992; Watson, 1990, 1992). With the
development of State and Federal strate-
gies, Australia became the envy of the
world in the field at the time, not only in
terms of domestic violence, but also of
(related) equalities strategies. There were
later retrenchments with change of govern-
ment, especially at Federal level, but
pioneering coordinated responses now
exist, most noticeably in Canberra where
the Australian Capital Territory (ACT)
Domestic Violence Prevention Council
(2009) enjoys some world renown in the
field. Civil justice reforms and the
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establishment of court-based services have
followed.
Under the Rudd Government, extre-
mely important new developments are now
in progress, with the establishment of the
National Council to Reduce Violence
against Women and Children. This Council
has developed the National Plan to Reduce
Violence against Women and Children
(Commonwealth of Australia, 2009; Natio-
nal Council to Reduce Violence against
Women and Children, 2009; www.fahcsia.-
gov.au). The Plan extends from 2009 to
2021. Although it has been critiqued as
accompanied by insufficient funding and
as overlooking some key areas of work
(Amnesty International, 2009), it repre-
sents a huge leap forward, which will have
positive repercussions throughout the
country.
Legal developments have occurred in
many countries with Domestic Violence
Acts being passed in, for example, Uganda,
India and South Africa. In Brazil, the
implementation of the pioneering Maria da
Penha Law on violence against women has,
encouragingly, been accompanied by sub-
stantial funding, initially $US590 million
(UNIFEM, 2008/9). In the United King-
dom, the Domestic Violence, Crimes and
Victims Act of 2004 has built on previous
Acts to improve services – although in a
massively reduced manner to those recom-
mended in the previous 2003 Government
consultation paper, Safety and Justice
(Home Office, 2003). In Australia, the
1975 Family Law Act and other legal
measures addressing domestic violence
(Alexander, 2002) and reforms to this Act
were implemented in 2006. In New Zeal-
and, The Domestic Violence (Enhancing
Safety) Act was passed into law on 21
October 2009. It aims to further protect
victims of family violence by strengthening
the responsiveness of criminal justice agen-
cies to victims of domestic violence. It
amends the Domestic Violence Act 1995
(NZ), the Sentencing Act 2002 (NZ), and
the Bail Act 2000 (NZ). The most sig-
nificant change is to the Domestic Violence
Act, with the introduction of police safety
orders. Judges will also be able to issue
protection orders at the time of sentencing
in the criminal court, with the consent of
the protected adult. These measures come
into effect on 1 July 2010 (www.nzfvc.
org.nz).
Services and legal advances, however,
remain fragile in many environments and
in some countries have scarcely com-
menced (Kelly, 2003; UNIFEM, 2008/9).
Encouragingly, the issue of violence
against women has begun to be main-
streamed in some mainly Western coun-
tries, but there have also been concerns
raised that women’s NGOs and grassroots
services have simultaneously begun to be
sidelined as government agencies take over
(Gill & Banga, 2008a,b; Hague, Malos, &
Dear, 1996; Kelly & Lovett, 2005). Re-
sources remain minimum in some countries
and inadequate across the world.
As a result there continue to be inter-
national calls for response to violence
against women to be financed properly,
especially because the empowerment of
women forms the third of the Millennium
Development Goals (UNIFEM, 2008/9;
World Bank, 2003). Currently, a larger
United Nations women’s agency is being
established, but UNIFEM (2008/9) noted
that the United Nations Trust Fund to End
Violence against Women received total
contributions of $US10 million from 1996
to 2004, with the total rising to $US40
million by 2008. At the same time, the
Global Fund on HIV and AIDS, Malaria
and Tuberculosis has received $US10
billion since 2002.
Nevertheless, the United Nations
Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, has
committed the world to take on the issue.
Violence against women and girls makesits hideous imprint on every continent,country and culture. It is time to focuson the concrete actions that all of us can
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and must take to prevent and eliminatethis scourge . . . it is time to breakthrough the walls of silence and makelegal norms a reality in women’s lives.(United Nations Secretary-General’sCampaign, 2008)
Thus, despite the difficulties, there have
been transformations, even if sometimes
contradictory ones and there will be more
in the future.
Transforming Professionals and Activists
Another way in which, to go back to the
title of this paper, work on gender violence
can be transforming and empowering, is
that the professionals and activists in-
volved in the work are often inspiring in
their own right. It appears from anecdotal
and personal evidence to be true that, if
you are a violence against women research-
er counsellor or activist, when you meet
others working on the issue across the
world, the connections made are often
profound. The powerfulness of these con-
nections can have a transformative feel,
as those involved come together to share
experiences of dealing with upsetting situa-
tions of gender violence.
While feminists, researchers, social
care professionals and other experts in
the field must pay attention to diversity
and difference, rather than making gen-
eralizations (in the research field (e.g.,
Naples & Desai, 2002), the experience of
the authors, working in different coun-
tries of the world and across cultural and
language gulfs and deep divisions relating
to social class, power, imperialist history,
wealth and poverty, is that working on
gender violence bonds people together.
Time and again, it proves possible to
stretch across those gulfs to join hands
with others committed to combating
violence against women.
Some examples of these remarkable
people across the world, whom we have
met, include an impoverished woman in an
African country, who has not finished
primary school, who lives in one tiny
room in a village and constantly takes in
other survivors of violence, sleeping in a
row across her mud floor. She is continu-
ally pursued by local men who do not like
interference in their marriages, to the
extent of attempts at murder, including
physical attacks and poisonings. Another
woman, also of great courage, from a
different African country has set up a
secret school deep in a rural area to which
teenage girls who have run away from
severe sexual abuse at home can escape
and secretly get an education. A further
woman from a third African country works
with young ex-fighters (who have pre-
viously led their lives by violence and
have held deeply misogynist views) to
enable them to hold their own demonstra-
tions against the rape of women. A
particularly disturbing example is those
activists and reformers, both men and
women, in various countries with funda-
mentalist regimes who are pushing through
changes on violence against women, and
who have death threats on their heads as a
result.
In India, attention could be drawn to
the courageous women and men who have
set up the Special Cell for Women, actually
a women’s project, across the State of
Maharashtra in India, and now being
rolled out across other States. They work
right within usually rural police stations
that do not, in general, have a reputation
for responding well to violence against
women. The Special Cell offers support,
advocacy and counselling to victims. At a
recent conference in India, these profes-
sionals from across the State interspersed
every meeting with rousing activist songs
and a raised fist, and much laughter to
kindle the spirit.
In the United Kingdom there are so
many examples that it is difficult to choose.
One is the pioneering disabled activists who
have struggled against the odds to bring
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domestic violence into the disabled peo-
ples’ movement as an issue, and disabled
women’s needs to the domestic violence
movement (Hague, Thiara, & Magowan,
2008).
Violence Against Women Research
From the 1980s onwards in Western
countries, it became increasingly clear in
the violence against women field that there
was a need for potentially transformative
research to support the new services. The
first author of this article has been involved
in the development of this research since
the late 1980s.
Research on violence against women
scarcely existed 25 years ago and the
importance of it was slow to be realized
by the activist movement (Yllo & Bograd,
1988). It gradually began to be understood,
however, that research evidence was
needed to support the growing interest in
violence against women, to inform the
development of policies, legislation, strate-
gies and women’s services, to provide evi-
dence as to what policy or practice works
best and to evaluate their implementation,
and, further, to evolve new theorizations
about gender violence.
Gender violence research from the
beginning was linked in some way to
activism and social change (Schechter,
1982; Yllo & Bograd, 1988), and this
tradition is continued today wherever
possible. Research techniques in the field
were also carefully developed as time went
on to improve robustness and reproduci-
bility. While initially mainly qualitative
in nature, this type of social science
research now uses all available methods,
both quantitative and qualitative, and
can no longer be contained in a single
methodological box (Jayaratne, 1983;
Kelly, Regan, & Burton, 1992; Oakley,
1981; Westmarland, 2001).
Violence against women researchers
within this trend have very much used
collaboration as a principle, for example,
between violence against women research-
ers in different institutions, localities and
countries. They have also made committed
attempts to make the research as equal as
possible, both within research teams and
between researchers and research respon-
dents (Harding, 1986; Yllo & Bograd,
1988), and to highlight the (otherwise
very often hidden) views of abused women
and children (Hague et al., 2003). More
recently there have been attempts to devel-
op transnational participatory and action
research on violence against women, led by
NGOs and local organizations in develop-
ing countries and avoiding Western dom-
inance (Hague & Thiara, 2009; Naples &
Desai, 2002).
The first author has been involved in
this type of gender violence research more
or less since its beginning, after many
years of working in the domestic violence
movement in the 1970s and 1980s. At the
beginning of the 1990s, Dr. Ellen Malos,
originally from the Melbourne area, and
the author set up the Domestic Violence
Research Group in the United Kingdom to
provide research backup and evidence
specifically to assist the growing women’
services of the period. At the time there was
almost no such research available and,
unlike today, there was little interest in it
from other social scientists. The group
members have worked as feminist-inspired
researchers since then, conducting project
after project, with the founder members
later joined by many others. Since 2003 the
group has been called the Violence Against
Women Research Group and has approxi-
mately 15 members including researchers,
research managers and PhD students from,
in total, approximately 11 countries. The
VAWRG (currently being renamed as
noted earlier) is now one of the principal
sites of gender violence research, both in
the United Kingdom and internationally,
and offers national and international re-
search, consultancies and training, working
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in an activist frame and raising the voices
of abuse survivors whenever possible
(www.bris.ac.uk/sps/research/centres/gen-
derviolence). The Centre conducts local
and national evaluations of policy devel-
opments and works closely with the
United Kingdom Government nationally.
Wide-ranging international collaborations
have been developed with NGOs, aca-
demics, women’s organizations and var-
ious governments, with projects being
carried out in approximately 12 countries.
Some of the research conducted by
members of the VAWRG (usually in colla-
borations with other institutions) includes
research on forced marriage (Gangoli et al.,
2006), on marriage rites (Hague & Thiara,
2009), on service provision (Hester et al.,
2007; Humphreys et al., 2000), on love
and violence in same-sex relationships
(Donovan & Hester, 2008; Hester &
Donovan, 2009), on programmes for
perpetrators of violence (Williamson &
Hester, 2009), on issues for children
and young people (Barter, McCarry, Ber-
ridge, & Evans, 2009; Mullender et al.,
2002), on domestic abuse of men (Hester,
2009), and so on. Three further examples
include (a) the first-ever research on
domestic violence and the mental health
of women in Libya, now in progress
(which may lead to the establishment of
the first violence against women centre in
Libya), (b) research on the long-term
emotional and counselling needs of those
who experience gender violence on the
lengthy road to recovery, including their
needs for psychological support (Abra-
hams, 2007), and (c) another first-time
project assessing schools in Mumbai, India,
in terms of responses to domestic violence,
which may lead to the use of education
packs on the issue with students (Sardinha
et al., 2006).
Recent studies led by the first author
include (with the Centre for the Study of
Safety and Well-being at the University of
Warwick) the first-ever national United
Kingdom study on women with disabilities
and domestic violence, managed by Wo-
men’s Aid, conducted by disabled and non-
disabled researchers working together and
advised by disabled consultants and acti-
vists. The findings of the study confirmed
those of research on women with disabil-
ities in other countries (for key contribu-
tions in Australia, see Chenoweth, 1997;
Chenoweth & Cook, 2001). All of these
various studies have found that women
with disabilities who are abused experience
more domestic violence, proportionally,
than non-disabled women, but are offered
fewer services, which are often also inade-
quate to the task. Abused women with
disabilities therefore lose out on both
counts (Hague et al., 2008). This research
also reinforces the findings of a recent
study in Victoria, Australia, by the Victor-
ian Network of Women with Disabilities
Network Advocacy Information Service
(Healey, Howe, Humphreys, Jennings, &
Julian, 2008).
A further large project within the (UK)
Economic and Social Research Council
Violence Research Programme assessed
how much the voices of violence survivors
and their children are heard in service and
policy development (Hague et al., 2003),
and developed practice guidance on how to
address this issue (Hague & Mullender,
2003). An example of a transnational colla-
boration is a piece of participatory action
research, also conducted with the Uni-
versity of Warwick and led by an African
poverty eradication and domestic vio-
lence grassroots rural project in Uganda.
This research, conducted by community-
based researchers in local villages, looked
at the traditional practice of bride-price
and its connection to domestic violence
and poverty in Uganda. It led to a
capacity-building programme of cascaded
training, community sensitization and
research development in impoverished
rural areas (developed in a participatory
way with local participants) and to
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recommendations at both the national
Ugandan and the pan-African level (Hague
& Thiara, 2009).
Other research groups working on
violence against women in the United
Kingdom include the Child and Woman
Abuse Studies Unit at London Metropoli-
tan University. There has been key research
conducted over many years in Australia
and New Zealand, including, among
many, the work of Jude Irwin, Fran
Waugh, Lesley Laing, Angela Taft and
Cathy Humphreys (e.g., Humphreys, Ross,
Frere, Healey, & Diemer, 2009; Irwin, 2008;
Irwin, Waugh, & Bonner, 2006; Laing,
2008; Taft & Watson, 2008; Waugh &
Bonner, 2002).
One of the aims of both the original
lecture and this paper was to recall and
celebrate for the future this first phase of
gender violence research that is now
completed, during which it moved from
being a marginal and ignored activity to its
present position of acceptance within the
field. Our own Centre, for example, is key
to the mission of the School for Policy
Studies in the University of Bristol, in the
United Kingdom, where once it was
completely marginalized.
Unrepeatable Stage of Development
Thus, despite contradictions in service
provision and enduringly inadequate pro-
vision across the board, the last 20 years of
research on gender violence – building on
35 years of activism – have indeed trans-
formed the field. This has been an un-
repeatable stage in the development of
violence against women research, the first
pioneering stage of breaking into the
mainstream.
When the first domestic violence re-
searchers started in the late 1980s, it was
possible to count the research studies being
conducted on one hand. Now, studies on
violence against women have become a
respected topic of academic research and
teaching. There are international colla-
borations, research studies in many coun-
tries and a broad provision of services,
policies, domestic violence strategies and
national government action plans.
For the first author of this paper, as I
near the end of my career, it has been a
great privilege to have played a part in this
unprecedented, historically unique and un-
revisitable period of research and policy
development, a privilege to have played a
part in that historical journey. This paper
and the lecture on which it is based can be
viewed, perhaps then, as a celebration and
marking of this important first 20 years of
research on violence against women.
For those who are old enough to
remember the 1960s when, worldwide, vio-
lence against women was rarely a topic for
social or caring services, nor for the legal or
criminal justice system to any great extent,
these changes can be hard to credit. It can
be difficult to believe just how much has
changed. The situation is indeed comple-
tely unrecognizable to those, like the
first author, who remembers even further
back to the 1950s when, everywhere in the
world, domestic and other forms of vio-
lence against women were silenced and
overlooked as anything to be interested in,
when there was no service provision, no
policy making, no coordinated responses,
no dedicated legislation, no therapeutic
services or counselling, no rape services,
no academic teaching on the issue, and no
research. It might be appropriate, then, to
remember how far the field has come.
A way of thinking about building
research and services on violence against
women and the enormity of the task, has
been elaborated by one of the foremost
feminist researchers and activists on gender
violence in the United Kingdom, Professor
Liz Kelly from the Child and Women
Abuse Studies Unit, and is used and
elaborated here with her readily given
permission. This is the concept that all
professionals in the field are building
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interwoven work on violence against wo-
men, as if contributing to a multi-stranded
multi-coloured weaving. In this way of
thinking, gender violence work can be
viewed as making a sturdy and flexible
tapestry with many different colours and
skeins winding together to make its
strength. The idea of this tapestry is that
professionals, researchers, lawyers, thera-
pists, social workers, indeed everyone in
the field of gender violence, each help to
contribute a coloured skein or thread to the
tapestry, so that it cannot then be undone
or un-knotted again. While some might
view this as a romantic metaphor or as
equally applicable to other fields of social
and community activity, many gender
violence activists, lawyers, researchers and
professionals have taken great sustenance
from the idea of the strength of bonded-
together tapestry as a metaphor for vio-
lence against women work that cannot be
easily unpicked again, once we have built
it. There is no going back now.
This article began with a discussion of
the devastating legacy of violence against
women worldwide. Indeed, it remains a
human tragedy, a distressingly prevalent
manifestation of gender inequality. But the
transformation is also part of the picture.
All those who work in the field have indeed
been building new historical ground, devel-
oping a new history. Thus, there can be
some optimism, in the face of the reality of
enduring and brutal violence against huge
numbers of women across the world. (It
might be worth here recalling the figure of
one in three of the world’s women experi-
encing intimate abuse, quoted earlier in this
paper from the United Nations and the
WHO.)
Nevertheless – and even though those
of us in the field often get frustrated, for
example if a new domestic violence policy
or therapeutic intervention gets mired in
bureaucracy as often happens, or if a
promised new government strategy or law
ends up as a pale shadow of itself, as it
often does – there can indeed be some
inspiration and sustenance. Throughout
the millennia, violence against women has
been sanctioned and ignored, human so-
cieties have with odd exceptions done very
little about it, victims have been unsup-
ported and silenced. Now for more or less
the first time in human history, in the
second half of the 20th century and in this
new millennium, it is not over-dramatic
to say that societies are starting to take on
the issue properly for the first time in
history.
This paper has reflected on the devas-
tating legacy of violence against women
and the transforming historic journeys
to address it. After the millennia of the
neglect and the condoning of violence
against the women of the world, we are
finally together making – at least some –
new history and moving slowly forward.
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