Introduction
| DOI | 10.1177/026975800000700301 |
| Author | Edna Erez,Kathy Laster |
| Date | 01 January 2000 |
| Published date | 01 January 2000 |
Domestic
Violence:
Global
Responses,
pp.
1-4
©
2000
A B
Academic
PUblishers
Printed
in
Great
Britain
INTRODUCTION
EDNA
EREZ*
and
KATHY
LASTER
t
*Kent
State
University,
Kent,
OH
44242,
USA
t
lA
Trobe
University,
Bandoora,
Victoria,
Australia
Violence against women has been one
of
the central concerns
of
feminists over
the last two decades. Against the odds, feminist activism succeeded in bringing
this endemic problem out
of
the private sphere and into the public domain. At
least formally, and with varying degrees
of
enthusiasm, the feminist domain now
'owns' this pervasive social problem. Along with this new interest have come
demands for definitive 'facts and figures', 'causes' and 'policy interventions'.
Yet the one certainty
of
feminist engagement with violence against women is that
the problem defies all attempts at neat closure.
Violence against women is not an 'It'. Rather, its prevalence, nature and form
is a marker
of
a range
of
so
problems which resist easy classification and
stock policy cures. A comparative perspective allows us to see more clearly that
in this area, activists and researchers alike are constantly challenged by a diffuse
and moving sociological target.
Violence against women
is
a universal, but not unitary, phenomenon.
It
is
ingrained in diverse cultural forms and structures, that change over time and
space. It therefore requires forms
of
analysis that take account
of
the specific
cultural contexts
in
which it occurs. As many
of
the articles in this special issue
of
the Review illustrate, the intersection
of
gender, class, race and ethnicity
requires a flexible and reflexive approach to the subject. A 'one size fits all'
preventative and remedial strategy
is
not only ineffective but likely to prove
counter-productive.
In the early days of the feminist struggle there was no choice but to keep the
take-home message simple: violence against women is unacceptable. The easiest
way to communicate this radical position to the wider community was to demand
that violence against women be acknowledged and treated as a 'crime'. While
this proposition may have been a necessary political strategy, the devil soon
becomes apparent in the detail. Increasingly, comparative studies reveal that
prescriptive and heavy-handed solutions such
as
the article by Giselle Hass,
Mary Dutton and Leslye Orloff, either often ignore or exacerbate the problems
encountered by marginalized sections
of
the community. Immigration status, for
example, all too often overrides the needs of vulnerable women coping
in
impossible circumstances.
2
One
possible reading of these diverse
articles
is
as
a 'warts
and
all' account of
various
societies' efforts
to
come
to
grips
with
cultural
strains
manifesting
themselves
as
violence against
women.
As
the
article
by
Nawal
Ammar
illus-
trates, violence against
women
in
contemporary
Egypt
reflects
the
tensions of a
society purporting
to
modernize
and
democratize
its
social
and
political
systems.
At
the
same
time,
powerful former colonialist
values
grafted
onto
indigenous
patriarchal
ideology
thwarts
reform
endeavors.
Similarly,
according
to
Nadera
Shalhoub-Kevorkian, even well-intentioned
interventions
for
Palestinian
women
living
in
Israel
go
awry
because of
the
indigenous
community's mistrust of
any
form
of state intervention
by
a power
they
regard
as
alien
and
colonialist.
The
aim
of
this
collection,
though,
is
not
to
chronicle
the
particular (or
'strange') practices
in
'Other'
parts
of
the
world.
As
the
article
by
Chris
Cuneen
and
Julie
Stubbs
highlights, it
is
no
longer
possible
to
talk
in
a simple-minded
way
about
'domestic violence'
in
'the
West'
and
'elsewhere'.
In
a globalized
economic
order,
interlocking
systems
of
power
allow
Philipino
women,
for
example,
to
be
deliberately
traded
as
commodities
in
the
international market-
place.
Western
men's gender
and
race
fantasies
are
supported
by
international
money
market
pressures that encourage
the
exploitation of
women
from
develo-
ping
countries
to
meet
national
foreign
currency
deficits.
And,
as
Merry
Morash,
Hoan
Bui
and
Anna
Santiago
demonstrate,
gender
relations
are
adversely
af-
fected
by
migration patterns,
which
in
tum
reflect
the
global
push
for
the
relocation of
labor.
A second
way
of reading
the
articles
in
this
collection
is
not
so
much
as
evidence about what
is
taking
place
in
different
parts
of
the
world,
but
as
indicators of how
feminists
choose
to
study
this
complex
problem.
The
research
design of
many
of
these
articles attest
to
marked
differences
between
feminist
and
non-feminist research orientations
and
methods.
Tammy
Landau's article,
for
example,
poses
the
fundamental,
but
frequently
overlooked,
research
ques-
tion:
'What
are
our criteria of "success"
in
dealing
with
violence
against
women?'
Too
often,
the
measures
adopted
by
researchers
and
policy-makers
are
confined
to
system oriented, instrumental
outcomes.
As
Kathy
Laster
and
Roger
Douglas
argue,
traditional criminal justice
indicators,
such
as
sentencing
out-
comes,
are
far
too
crude a standard
by
which
to
assess
'progress'.
In Canada,
as
in
the
United
States,
for
example,
mandatory
charging
policies
have
not proved
to
be
the
hoped-
for
panacea
for
women
battering.
As
Edna
Erez
and
Tammy
King
discovered, court
officials
charged
with
the
implementation of
new
'enlightened' policy initiatives still entertain
and
reproduce
gender
stereo-
types
that cause
them
to
excuse,
even
tolerate,
violence
against
women.
The
failure of well-intentioned
remedies
is
then
explicitly
or
implicitly
blamed
on
women
who
refuse
to
fully
'co-operate'
in
their
own
rescue.
The
more
optimistic
message though
is
that a
more
and
more
flexible
criminal justice response might
make
agencies
more
sensitive
and
tractable.
Findings
by
Joanne
Belknap
and
Jennifer Hartman,
for
example,
indicate
that
although
many
police still
do
not
3
treat woman battering seriously, their preparedness to act is influenced by their
familiarity and trust in the judgement
of
the referring agency.
Increasingly, as a number
of
the articles in this collection highlight, feminist
research is concerned with uncovering the more elusive, but critical, factors
which make or break policy interventions. True to feminist principles, the
starting point for such inquiries is the way in which women themselves conceive
the problem and respond to the remedies on offer. The article by Ruth Lewis,
Russell Dobash, Rebecca Dobash and Kate Cavanagh illustrates that it is wrong
to think
of
women as helpless and misdirected in their deployment
of
resources
and survival strategies. Rather, as a number
of
the articles dealing with the
response
of
women to violence in developing countries also point out, women
make sophisticated choices in their use
of
the panoply
of
less than satisfactory
interventions to maximise their own and their children's safety. This does not
mean that we are thereby free from the burden
of
improving public responses to
their dire predicament. Rather, the findings suggest that public policy initiatives
which fail to acknowledge and take due account
of
women's common sense, are
destined to miss their mark. Women's own understandings and experience
of
woman battering remains the feminist beacon, guiding developments in this
field.
Lest the reader comes away with the feeling that a feminist perspective's only
contribution is as tireless critique, this collection can also be read as guide for the
perplexed policy maker desperate to know, 'what,
if
anything, "works"?' In her
study
of
the prevalence
of
domestic violence in the London Borough
of
Hackney,
Elizabeth Stanko provides a model for estimating the extent
of
women battering
in a given area with a view to informing the intense political debate about the
allocation
of
scarce resources.
Her
conclusion, that the creative, flexible and
pro-active provision
of
services is not only a necessary but also a cost-effective
strategy in tackling men's violence against women, echoes a theme implicit in
many
of
the other papers in this collection.
We confess to some defensiveness in bringing together a collection from
around the globe dealing with feminist research about woman battering.
The
cynical reader might greet another collection on 'domestic violence' with ennui:
'Not
another feminist diatribe on the topic?' The obvious response is that while
so many women all over the world daily live their lives with violence, and with
the threat
of
physical and sexual abuse from their menfolk, we cannot rest on our
reputed 'success'. Such evaluations also fail to recognize that what distinguishes
the most recent feminist engagement with violence against women is not only its
mature assessment
of
'the problem' but its willingness to question its own
assumptions, methods and political strategies. We need sophisticated insights
into the complex problem
of
violence against women.
We
must be both sensitive
and respectful
of
the different circumstances faced by women throughout the
world, while acknowledging their links. We should
be
wary
of
homogenized
political and policy responses, but be committed to developing practical
strategies that support women. As this collection demonstrates, feminism's
4
reflexive
praxis
makes
it
an
increasingly
profound
and
pervasive
force
for
social
change.
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