Title: What's the link between feminist movements and Violence Against Women? - From Poverty to Power
Headings: What’s the link between feminist movements and Violence Against Women?
What’s the link between feminist movements and Violence Against Women?
Content: women’s status agencies, international norms, and other factors further strengthen feminist efforts…
Women’s autonomous organising has played a critical role for three reasons. First, women organising as women generate social knowledge about women’s position as a group in society. The problem of violence surfaces as an issue of primary concern when women come together to discuss their priorities as women. Second, the issue of violence against women challenges, rather than reinforces, established gender roles in most places. In contrast with ‘maternalist’ issues such as maternity leave or child-care, for which women can advocate without straying too far from traditional gender scripts (that is, conventional ideas about women’s role in society), addressing violence against women requires challenging male privilege in sexual matters and social norms of male domination. It is difficult for legislative insiders (members of legislatures and bureaucrats) to take on social change issues without the political support of broader mobilisation. An example of the costs to individuals of taking up these issues isolated from broader support is that of a bureaucrat in Sweden who lost her position when she was unwilling to attribute male violence against women to individual pathologies, such as alcoholism, rather than to gender inequality and widespread tolerance of violent male behaviour. Third, as suggested earlier, women can more easily get violence against women and other gender issues recognised as priorities in autonomous feminist organisations. When women are organised within broader political institutions, ‘women’s issues’ such as violence against women or equal pay are commonly perceived as being of importance ‘only’ to women, and arguing for the relevance of their concerns in relation to a defined set of priorities is made much more difficult.” The importance of domestic feminist movements also applies to whether international and regional treaties have much impact (pay attention, post-2015 types):