NCJ Number
191665
Date Published
2001
Length
11 pages
Annotation
This paper explores the nature of domestic violence and needs of women and children experiencing violence and abuse.
Abstract
The Australian movement against domestic violence is 25 years old. There is now greater awareness of domestic violence and many services and legal reforms have been initiated in response to the seriousness of this social problem. This paper reviews the challenges arising from the nature of domestic violence and the “unintended consequences” of previous domestic violence interventions. The nature of domestic violence was clearly understood by the feminist movement. The movement recognized that domestic violence was both a personal and social issue. The movement, while providing shelter for individual women and children escaping violence, also took political action to address what was seen as the underlying social causes of domestic violence—gender inequality. In working with individual women, refuge workers linked the women’s individual experiences with the experience of other women—effectively addressing the isolation and self-blame that women experience when they do not locate their experiences within the wider context of gender relations. Yet this understanding of domestic violence, as both a social and personal problem, raised dilemmas and debates about the proper level to focus intervention: the individual, family or social/cultural level. The most effective intervention would address all levels and contexts. Some of the strongest debates in the field center around the level at which interventions are best targeted. Some examples of the impact of inadvertent consequences of interventions include the stereotyping of women who have experienced domestic violence, and an overemphasis on the familial level of intervention, relative to interventions at the wider institutional level. References