Is Anyone Listening?

Accountability and Women Survivors of Domestic Violence

Rosemary Aris, Gill Hague, Audrey Mullender

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781134512157
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

Domestic violence is in the public eye as never before, but how often are abused women consulted or involved in the new services and policies? This book investigates, and reveals that the voices of survivors of domestic violence are often simply not heard; silenced, the women themselves become invisible.
Is Anyone Listening? draws on the experiences of other service user movements to provide a strong conceptual framework for thinking about abused women's participation in policy and service development. It discusses empowerment issues and the women's movement against gender violence, exploring how far refuge organisations and other women's movement services have influenced statutory services and vice versa. It includes many practical ideas for involving women in the improvement of both policy and practice and gives examples of inspiring and innovatory projects.
Based on a study carried out as part of the Economic and Social Research Council's Violence Research Programme, Is Anyone Listening? offers a unique analysis of the sensitive and complex issues involved in developing service user participation within the domestic violence field. The insights it provides will enable policy-makers, activists, students, practitioners and women who have experienced domestic violence to move forward together.

Chapter 1

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Introduction

 

 

 

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This is not just another book about domestic violence. Indeed, to learn about the detail of men's violence to women in intimate relationships—what it is, the damage it does to women's lives, what we can do about it — it will be necessary to look elsewhere. Over the last twenty years, a great array of books and other publications has been produced on the subject, furthering our knowledge and providing evidence and ideas to inform the way that society, governments and helping agencies respond (see, for example, Dobash and Dobash, 1992; Mullender, 1996; Hague and Malos, 1998). This, however, is a book with a different message. The message is about raising the voices of abused women themselves.

In this book, domestic violence is defined to mean violence between adults who are, or who have been, in an intimate or sexual relationship. We know that domestic violence has impacts on children witnessing or otherwise experiencing it (Mullender and Morley, 1994; Hester et al., 2000). We also know that it is a gendered phenomenon. While such violence can occur in gay and lesbian relationships and can be committed by women against men, the overwhelming majority of incidents are perpetrated against women, often by the men with whom they are most intimate (see Dobash and Dobash, 1992; Humphreys et al., 2000).

We have attempted here to pay attention to what women who have experienced domestic violence say and feel, especially if they have made use of service provision. However, we have also included a consideration of the views of abused women more generally. In the text, we often use the term, ‘domestic violence survivor’, because, even though many are severely victimised by the violence they have experienced, surviving is what all women try to do. We use the term as one of respect.

The argument which underpins this book is that it is necessary to reframe the way we think about the women who use domestic violence services and to see them as part of a service user movement, similar to other user movements which have lifted the voices of their members in recent years. Women experiencing abuse may be part of the women's activist movement against domestic violence, and are quite likely to have used services provided by it, but they have not generally been viewed as part of a service user group in their own right. One question which this book asks is why not. We will discuss how we can change both the practice and policies of agencies, and also the way that this issue is thought about in theoretical terms, so that abused women service users can be both heard and heeded. Thus, our arguments will be contextualised within theorising about user movements and new social movements more generally, and will then be developed in practical, concrete ways. The book looks at how much the voices and views of domestic violence survivors are currently seen as contributing to the policy process and goes on to illustrate ways in which these voices can be more effectively involved in service planning, provision and delivery.

One of the aims of movements of service users in general is to take control of how they are defined by others, notably by service providers, policy-makers and the general public. All of these movements are currently struggling to combat negative attitudes and labels, to be involved in key decisions which affect them, to decide for themselves what is in their own best interests, and to take action together to resist models of service delivery that may be oppressive or discriminatory, encouraging instead those that enable and empower (Barnes et al, 1999). They also attempt to have some measure of direct control over the services they need to lead a full and rewarding life. One example concerns disabled people who have formed a powerful movement to argue for their rights. This movement has reframed thinking within society about disability to challenge a purely medical model in favour of an alternative social model and full citizenship for disabled people in every respect, as we will discuss further in Chapter 2.

The women's movement has similarly rethought and reframed issues in the specific context of discrimination against women and has, through the medium of feminism, changed almost everything about how we now view women. In the 2000s in the UK, very few people question women's right to work or to make choices about their own bodies and relationships. We can make a case that these basic arguments have been won after three decades of women's activism. Yet, women's everyday quality of life still leaves much to be desired and, in some respects, little seems to have changed at all. Gender violence remains a massive problem both in this country and across the globe, for example. In the UK, for an estimated one in three to one in four women (Mooney, 2000), violence is, at some stage, a part of their everyday lives and for many of them, as we shall see in Part 2, the services provided still do not meet their needs.

Above all, despite very serious efforts over many years in both the voluntary and statutory sectors, women who have experienced abuse and accessed services as a result, still do not feel safe. If services do not assist abused women to safety, one wonders what they do achieve. Further, survivors of domestic violence frequently do not feel able to speak freely about their experiences. They may feel blamed, silenced and stereotyped and, far from being seen as having expertise derived from what they have gone through, they are often blocked from full participation in service delivery as volunteers or as paid workers because they are seen as ‘in the experience’. On the plus side, there are some examples of very good, participatory services, women's projects and domestic violence multi-agency forums with well-developed models of user involvement, and we will explore these in more detail in Part 3.

The material for this book is drawn chiefly from a project, one of twenty within the Economic and Social Research Council-funded Violence Research Programme. This project, named ‘Abused Women's Perspectives: Responsiveness and Accountability of Domestic Violence and Inter-agency Initiatives’,¹ was conducted by the authors and by Wendy Dear, and was supplemented by knowledge from other research and from direct involvement with abused women. The multi-method study we conducted surveyed agencies and domestic violence forums on a national basis and also sought the first-hand views of domestic violence survivors. We will discuss, in the chapters that follow, the perceptions and opinions of the survivors we consulted about the direct services which they had received, as provided by statutory agencies, by refuge and outreach organisations and by inter-agency domestic violence forums. There is also much to learn from what abused women have to say about domestic violence policy and practice on a general level.

Overall, then, the book asks some very serious questions:

• To what extent are the voices of women service users heard in domestic violence policy development and service delivery and in inter-agency forums?

• Are services, practice protocols and policies responsive to these voices and informed in any way by service users?

• To what degree are services actually accountable to domestic violence survivors?

The immediate answers to such questions do not appear to be very encouraging. When asked to throw light on these rather hidden issues, one woman who had experienced domestic violence had this to say:

We have no influence in their decisions. Not really, just pretend! The agencies pretend!

Arguably, unless the above questions can be answered in a positive way, services risk doing more harm than good, and could even place abused women in greater danger since only they can know in detail what will help them to be safe. If we fail to listen, we may fail to be of help.

Thus, this book is about the voices and views of domestic violence survivors and about the need for these voices to be heard — and, more importantly, responded to — by professionals. If the negative view expressed by the woman quoted above is typical of other women's experiences, how can agencies in both the statutory and voluntary sectors improve their provision and make themselves more accountable to those to whom they offer services?

Nothing in this book should be taken as a criticism of, or detraction from, the huge achievements of Women's Aid and of a host of other women's organisations in the UK. The record of the Women's Aid Federation of England, for example, which co-ordinates and supports over 250 local domestic violence projects in England providing over 400 refuges, helplines, outreach projects and advice centres, speaks for itself (Women's Aid, 2001–2). We should be proud of all that has been achieved by women's activism over the last thirty years. But there is room for improvement in any service and success can bring its own challenges (for example, dealing with the strictures imposed by accepting state funding (Barnes et al., 1999: 47)). We will address some of these challenges in later chapters.

Under the impetus provided by the activist movement, many statutory agencies and inter-agency forums also now take on the issue of men's violence against women in a committed way and a wide range of new policy and practice has developed across the board. These initiatives are often very helpful. However, they frequently fail to go far enough owing to shortage of resources, and they may have no mechanisms whatsoever in place for hearing what service users and other domestic violence survivors have to say. The ideas that we will offer will, we hope, help to make this more possible in the future.

Note

1 The study was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council, Award No. L133251017.

Part 1

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Rethinking service user
movements in relation
to women survivors of
violence

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Chapter 2

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Women survivors of domestic
violence as service users

The silenced group

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Women survivors of domestic violence have been users of dedicated, specialist services for thirty years in Britain. Yet, despite the burgeoning of policy, practice, and academic and political interest in user involvement in general and the long history of women's activism around violence, it appears that the voices of women survivors of domestic violence have been strangely silent in the context both of demands and of acknowledgement that service users should be consulted and involved. This chapter and the next will consider this contradiction from a theoretical perspective, explore how it has come about and what it implies, and, with an eye to the pros and cons, make suggestions for reconceptualising women as users of domestic violence services. Later chapters will look at practical ways of moving forward in giving abused women a more effective voice in service design and delivery than is presently available to them.

We begin by considering women's early organising in a wave of activism that has been seen as one of the first new social movements and a forerunner of service user movements.

Women's early activism

Women's activism constituted one of the earliest of the ‘protest movements’ that originated in the latter half of the twentieth century. The Women's Liberation Movement (known popularly at the time as ‘the women's movement’ or somewhat derogatively as ‘Women's Lib’, and in scholarly literature nowadays as ‘second-wave feminism’¹) flourished in almost every Western nation, and in many non-Western ones, in the 1960s and the 1970s (Coote and Campbell, 1987; Gelb, 1990). This coming together of women to make key demands for major changes in their role and status in society occurred at a time of broader social unrest, when civil rights were being pursued by African Americans, when the anti-Vietnam War protests were at their height and when students and workers took to the streets. Socialism, feminism and a broader struggle for democracy and social justice were in the air (see summaries, focused on women's struggles, in Coote and Campbell, 1987; Gelb, 1990; Dobash and Dobash, 1992; see also McIntosh, 1996 for a social policy analysis).

Out of this ideological background, women arrived at some very practical, emancipatory goals, and always regarded these as more important than ideas alone. Those who were operating from an equal rights (liberal feminist) perspective and some socialist feminists who saw gender as particularly connected to wider class exploitation, made real headway over the years in relation to equal pay, sex discrimination at work and fairer treatment in related areas of benefits and services. On the other hand, women who stood for a more radical, liberation agenda, including those who defined themselves as radical or revolutionary feminists or as socialist feminists, felt, and still feel, that there is a long way yet to go. This extensive range of women of different backgrounds, who came together to pursue broader, anti-oppressive objectives — with a focus on consciousness-raising for women and an end to men's patriarchal domination in the home and in all areas of society. Women took collective action in order to become personally, financially and legally independent of men, they wanted control over their own bodies and minds, and they wanted more support with child-care and in the home. Now, women are equal citizens in the law, and birth control and abortion are more readily available, but they are still treated as sex objects in large sections of the media and still undertake the bulk of domestic chores, with access to affordable childcare still inadequate.

Running as a clear thread throughout the debating and campaigning of the formative years of the women's movement was the issue of violence against women. Early consciousness-raising groups discussed the impact of men's violence on their own lives, and on the lives of other women, and rapidly saw the need to establish refuges or safe houses (‘shelters’ in the US) to which abused women could escape. This was a revolutionary idea at the time. Although a few refuges had existed in the previous century (see Pleck, 1986; Hague and Malos, 1998), the publicly accepted account of the first modern women's refuge anywhere in the world was at Chiswick Women's Aid, established in 1972. Other refuges were, in fact, established in various cities at the same time (though they received less publicity) and, from then on, the movement expanded rapidly with much dedicated activity that continues to the present day. The US, Canada and other countries followed rapidly. The first shelter in North America was in Toronto, with others established very quickly, for example in Minnesota in 1973 and in many localities, including Boston, by 1974 (Dobash and Dobash, 1992; Hague et al., 2001a). Within the UK, as public awareness spread of what women were suffering at the hands of male partners, the topic was taken up nationally and regarded as part of a wider issue of male power. A seventh demand, added at the National Women's Liberation Conference in 1978 to those formulated earlier, was:

Freedom from intimidation by threat or use of violence or sexual coercion, regardless of marital status; and an end to all laws, assumptions and institutions which perpetuate male dominance and men's aggression towards women.

(Coote and Campbell, 1987: 18)

Refuges were organised under the banner of Women's Aid and, by the mid 1970s, existed in most areas in Britain, usually run by women's collectives (Hague and Malos, 1998). In 1974, they were organised into the National Women's Aid Federation. In keeping with the wider spir...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Is Anyone Listening?
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• Part 1 Rethinking service user movements in relation to women survivors of violence
• Part 2 Women's views and voices in domestic violence services
• Part 3 How to engage in survivor participation and consultation
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Index