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

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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: [email protected] 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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