Learning From Each Other

Introduction

The articles in this special issue of Violence Against Women have been developed in a dynamic way in response to each other, arising out of our international DelPHE Link between the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) and the various U.K. partners. This article has been written as a companion to the discussions of the activities of the Special Cell for Women and Children on Violence against Women, and the comprehensive coverage of its history, development, and evaluation, elaborated by Anjali Dave in the previous article. It looks at the Special Cell in the context of other domestic violence projects that originally developed out of women’s movement activism, and that have taken different routes in various countries and regions of the world.

The article is designed as a generalized discussion and does not contain detailed policy analysis or the development of new theoretical conceptualizations about activism against violence against women in different countries. Rather, it provides a broad, brush-stroke overview as an anchor to inform more detailed discussions.

The article will respond to the Special Cell, which began 26 years ago in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India, and will discuss other women’s activist responses in comparison, in the United Kingdom and internationally. It will briefly describe a small selection of similar civilian-based domestic violence projects in different parts of the world, set up in police stations, as a result of women’s movement activity. The article will then discuss activist responses to domestic violence in the United Kingdom, which have traditionally developed via (initially at least) a noncriminal justice route. U.K. women’s services have principally established refuges/shelters, together with outreach projects and multiagency projects (Hague & Malos, 2005), rather than projects developed jointly with the police (although close work with criminal justice responses has taken place in more recent years).

Indian activist responses have been various and diverse, and have included direct action, feminist community-based projects, organizations offering support and counseling (but not accommodation) and some multiagency responses, as well as projects like the Special Cell (see Mitra, 1999; Poonacha & Pandya, 1999). In the main, however, activist responses have differed in India and the United Kingdom, with the latter being far more focused, at least initially, on shelter provision. The Indian women’s movements have not generally established refuges/shelters, known as shelter homes in India (as further discussed later). Shelters in other countries will be briefly covered in this broad discussion article. The article will conclude with a short overview discussion of the contentious issues around shelter usage in non-Western contexts and of recent developments across the world, in so far as these have occurred, specifically as a result of movements and services on violence against women.

Indian Activism and a Tribute to the Special Cell for Women and Children

The Special Cell for Women and Children occupies a unique position in India and has offered a model of good practice on gender violence in the Indian context for many years, building on women’s activism (Ganesh, 2006; Special Cells, 2004). There is nothing to compare with it in the United Kingdom.

In India, as noted in the Guest Editors’ Introduction to this collection, vibrant and forceful activist movement(s) on women’s rights have existed for over 25 years, often working on violence against women issues and engaging in direct action (Gangoli, 2007; Mitra, 1999; Poonacha & Pandya, 1999). These powerful movement(s) have developed with little reference to the West and certainly not as “sub-movements” reliant on input from Western feminism, although of course making use of Western feminist literature and other international material, when helpful (see Gandhi & Shah, 1992; Naples & Desai, 2002).

We worked according to these understandings during the complex India/U.K. Link, which has given rise to this collection. Analyses derived from feminist collaborative, trans-national research have elaborated fears of a “new imperialism” inherent in (a) the exporting of Western feminist ideas to other countries, (b) the possible power differentials between collaborators from Western and Eastern contexts, and (c) the limitations of imposing feminist or political consciousness from another context (Gaskell & Eichler, 2001; Hague, Gangoli, Joseph, & Alphonse, 2010; Hester & Gangoli, 2005). However, we attempted very specifically to guard against these issues in our collaboration. Led by the Indian partners, the participants in this DelPHE Link consciously tried to avoid the imposition of Western ideas, while all contributing, learning from, and sharing our own varied expertise, where helpful.

It was clear to all of us in the partnership that the complex Indian women’s movement has developed independently and often with a vigor not seen in the West for many years. For example, the public shaming of individual perpetrators with “naming” posters in village contexts has occurred widely in the past (International Center for Research on Women, 2002), in a way that Western feminists would not have dared to do, even at the height of women’s liberation.

The Special Cell offers ideas and a resilient model to the West, similar to some Western projects, as discussed later in this article, but offering something unique in itself. Arising from activist perspectives and commitments, and catalyzed by an academic institution and School of Social Work, it has developed systematically over the years, steered by feminist and women’s activists, some of whom lay claim to the term “feminist,” and some who do not (Dave, 2013; Special Cell, 2004; see also Jung Park [with Peters & De Sa], 2000).

The Special Cell developed, then, out of activism in India although—vitally—it was facilitated, resourced, and encouraged throughout by the TISS, without which it would not have existed. TISS gave institutional academic support, which facilitated the project in gaining further resources that would not have been as easily accessible to a women’s NGO on its own. The support of TISS also improved the status of the project in the eyes of the police. The principal staff of the Special Cell, including the overall TISS coordinator, and particularly its practice director of services (who has taken responsibility for developing the project on the ground), have been activists par excellence in the Indian context. The project they have led in a determined and principled way, through thick and thin, offers many examples of empowering and previously untried approaches to violence against women in Mumbai and the State of Maharashtra.

The individual Special Cells have developed a good relationship with the police overall over the years, although often situated in originally unsympathetic police stations, especially in rural areas, which have not always taken kindly, initially, to having women’s activists in their midst. However, the project benefited from the strong support of the Mumbai (Bombay) Commissioner of Police and of the police leadership from the outset. A large amount of work was then required, both to establish and to embed it more widely systemically, and to get individual police stations to accept its presence. The application of consistent effort over time and the refreshing attitude of the project have led to gradual acceptance. Now, the Special Cell, offering both support services to women coming to the police for help and also professional training to agencies, has been accepted both in Mumbai and across the State. It is established in about 50% of police stations in Maharashtra. In an unprecedented development, the project has now been rolled out to many other Indian States as well as Maharashtra, itself the size of a small country.

This article starts, therefore, by paying tribute to the Special Cell project, which has worked against the odds for more than a quarter of a century to embed itself and to establish violence against women as a serious issue requiring societal attention in wide areas of rural and urban India. The author recently had the opportunity, as part of this Link, to work with the present employees and volunteers of the Special Cell, who offer support, advocacy, and counseling to victims and also training to professionals. During our several days together, these professionals from across Maharashtra interspersed every meeting with rousing activist songs, engendering enthusiasm and laughter to kindle the spirit.

Examples of Other Support Services in Police Premises

In a few countries as well as India, there have been a variety of different types of direct support services set up for abused women within police stations. More generally, feminist and “violence against women” activists have attempted, of course, to engage with the police in various ways in many localities, working, for example, on ways to improve police data collection on gender violence and the handling of individual cases. They have conducted research on police responses, attempted to achieve improvements in prosecution rates of offenders and to decrease attrition, and worked in multiagency partnerships with police officers (see, for example, Hester & Westmarland, 2005). These attempts have had varying, but considerable, success over recent years with improved (but still patchy) police responses being recorded in many countries (see, in the U.K. context, Hague & Malos, 2005; Humphreys & Thiara, 2002).

The U.K. police, for example, now themselves provide (usually) supportive “domestic violence liaison officers” and specialist domestic violence officers working in police domestic violence units, or assimilated into wider child protection, family support, community support, or hate crime units, whose specific task is to support and assist victims while their cases are being investigated and possible prosecutions are carried out (Hague & Malos, 2005; Hanmer & Griffiths, 2000). Taking such an approach much further, the dedicated women’s police stations in Brazil, and also those in Mexico as well as those in India itself, have been important developments in this type of police approach to violence against women (MacDowell Santos, 2005; Women’s eNews, 2006).

However, the innovation of having violence against women services provided within a police station by nonpolice civilian specialist officers (as in the Special Cell) has been attempted less often. The idea of these sorts of projects has been to try out an innovative, activist-derived response to domestic violence from within the very locus of State power and enforcement: the police force. Often critiqued for a “masculinist” culture and attitude to combating crime and enforcing law and order, police stations and premises have tended to be viewed, certainly in the past, as a milieu in which women’s concerns and interests have rarely previously taken root (Dave, 2013; also Dave & Dharmadhikari, 1987; Dunhill, 1989). Thus, the projects across the world, like the Special Cell, which have tried this method have been pioneers and have sometimes been regarded with surprise by other activists (Hague & Malos, 2005). To work right inside these milieus as civilians—and, even more provocatively, as feminists—has been a challenge indeed, wherever it has been tried.

A few examples will be discussed in this article, allowing for comparison with the Special Cell, including the London, Ontario, projects, principally the Family Consultant Service working on domestic violence from within the city’s main police station; Domestic Violence Matters in London, UK, which took inspiration from the Ontario model; and the somewhat different but related approach of the Brazilian women’s police stations, noted above.

Domestic Violence Services Deriving From Activism in the United Kingdom and Elsewhere: The Coming of Shelters/Refuges

The development of initiatives in police stations, like those discussed in the preceding sections, by women’s activists has not happened everywhere. Parallel developments in activist responses to violence against women took a different path, at least initially, in many Western countries, as noted in the introductory sections of this article.

In general, then, the women’s movement responses in different countries, which undertook to challenge male violence in the 1970s and 1980s, took various routes, dependent on their different structural, political, and social contexts. For feminists in the United Kingdom, setting up shelters or refuges was generally seen as the first activist response—the project of trying to establish safe spaces to which women and child victims of domestic violence could escape and where they could access help (Dobash & Dobash, 1992), along with outreach and support projects (Humphreys & Thiara, 2002).

In India, activist responses took a variety of different forms, and shelters, often known as “shelter homes,” were not established by feminists, except in a very few cases. The main shelter homes that currently exist are usually run by State agencies or by different charitable or religious groups, and may operate an institutional regime. Feminist activists initially, and to some extent still, regard shelter homes as not their province, viewing them as sometimes institutional and repressive, and not appropriate for abused women steeped in family, economic, and cultural commitments from which they cannot easily escape to seek refuge from abuse (see, for example, International Center for Research on Women, 2002; Mitra, 1999).

The comparison between these types of responses across countries is instructive. While in recent years Western responses to violence against women have become, of course, multilayered and complex, it is worth considering why the domestic violence activist movements in many Western countries came, at least initially, to consider the establishment of shelters as of critical importance. In terms of wider societal and cultural factors, some non-Western critiques have suggested that such projects can be associated with ideas of Western liberal individualism and freedom, providing individual responses for women and children, rather than more “structural” ones (see Jung Park [with Shaik & Rasool], 2000; Taylor, n.d.).

Thus, in the West, critiques of the normative heterosexual family and of gender relations within it, and the necessity for abused women to leave individually violent families to live independently, have been emphasized (see Dobash & Dobash, 1992; Hague & Malos, 2005; Taylor, n.d.). Indian responses, on the other hand, have tended to emphasize working more widely with the police or with counselors to try to change the woman’s situation within her community, and to adopt a cultural focus on women’s relatedness within families and the value of the (often joint) family in finding solutions to the violence being experienced. While such families may add to the problem of violence in many cases, they remain a dominant social institution that women might leave at their peril (Gandhi & Shah, 1992; Mitra, 1999; Simister & Mehta, 2010).

In Maharashtra, responses to domestic violence, alongside direct action, include support and counseling projects (e.g., in Mumbai, Sneha, and Dilaasa), as well as the Special Cell for Women and Children, but generally speaking, it is not expected that abused women coming to them will leave home to live in independent safe accommodation (Apte, 2004; Ganesh, 2006).

Activist Responses in the United Kingdom and Other Western Countries

In the United Kingdom and other Western countries in the 1970s and 1980s, the feminist movement against gender violence was for a long while suspicious of the police and unenthusiastic about working closely alongside them (Dobash & Dobash, 1992; Hague & Malos, 2005; Schechter, 1982). At the time, responses by the police to domestic violence were very poor and the issue was not taken seriously (Dunhill, 1989; Edwards, 1989).

The new women’s liberation movement of the period in Western activist contexts established women’s centers, support projects, and consciousness-raising groups on violence against women (see, for example, Schechter, 1982). Out of these beginnings came attempts to start to do something about domestic violence in practical, concrete ways, which rapidly gained momentum and led to the idea of providing alternative housing for victims and survivors of men’s violence in the home (Dobash & Dobash, 1992). These were heady and sometimes passionate days, which participants in many Western countries have always remembered, as they were also in the different activist contexts of India, Brazil, and elsewhere (Hague & Sardinha, 2010). In the words of the renowned violence and homicide researchers, husband-and-wife team, Rebecca and Russell Dobash (Dobash & Dobash,1992), in all countries where the women’s liberation cause took off, “The great mobilization of women began with a vision, supported by action. The vision was of a world transformed” (p. 15).

Drawing mainly on the United Kingdom for this comparative article with India, the women’s liberation movement there evolved quickly and had established large numbers of refuges (shelters) by the late 1970s and early 1980s (Hague & Malos, 2005). These were secret locations to which women experiencing domestic violence from their husbands or partners could escape.

Thus, in family and cultural contexts that were very different, of course, to those in India, abused women could suddenly leave their marriages and husbands, and go to a safe place run usually by other women. While commonplace today, as Violence Against Women readers will well know, this was a revolutionary idea at the time and it took off like wildfire with hundreds of refuges being set up over just a few years, in a 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 feminist zeal, and sometimes they faced hostility and extreme opposition (Hague & Sardinha, 2010; Yarram, 2003). It is true to say that without them, we would not be where we are today in terms of domestic violence services in the United Kingdom.

Women’s Aid was established quite quickly as the national U.K. body, coordinating refuges and domestic violence projects. These included, as time went on, projects for women from black, minority ethnic, and other diverse minority communities, 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, and so on, together with a few projects for women with learning difficulties and mental health challenges (Dobash & Dobash, 1992; Gill & Banga, 2008; Hague & Malos, 2005). Women’s Aid now works strategically with government on domestic violence, maintains a strong national presence, and produces guidance and policy, handbooks for survivors, accreditation courses, and national standards for domestic violence services (see www.womensaid.org.uk). The organization also provides services for children, including a pioneering website, The Hideout, specifically for children who have experienced domestic violence against their mothers (www.thehideout.org.uk; see also Hague, Mullender, Kelly, Malos, & Debbonaire, 2000).

Women’s Aid now coordinates over 500 local domestic violence shelters and other services in England (with approximately 100 more coordinated by the other U.K. Women’s Aid federations in Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland) and assists around 250,000 women and children annually (see Women’s Aid, 2010). Furthermore, policies, national standards, domestic violence training, and good practice guidelines exist in almost all social, justice, health, and welfare agencies, alongside legislative developments, coordinated community responses, interagency projects, and improvements in the criminal justice and police response (see Hague & Sardinha, 2010; Taylor-Browne, 2001).

In other Western nations, the setting up of shelters spread similarly fast. In Australia, for example, the first project was Elsie House in Glebe in 1974, and around 300 refuge projects were in operation by the early 1990s (in a Western Australia context, see Murray, 2002). Later, innovative criminal justice and interagency responses began to be established, together with domestic violence crisis and outreach services across localities (Breckenridge & Laing, 1999) and services in some Indigenous communities (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women’s Task Force on Violence, 2000; Yarram, 2003). In North America, activist domestic violence services have of course a long and redoubtable history. In the United States and Canada, shelters have existed for many years, with later activist developments (as noted earlier) in terms of coordinated community responses, as famously in Duluth, Minnesota, London, Ontario, and other similar initiatives stemming originally from the shelter movement (see Pence & Shepard, 1999).

Although activists have given the impetus to the development of such coordinated responses and of various criminal justice and community innovations over the years, the key original activist response in North America, and in almost all Western countries, has always been the provision of shelters/refuges: the potentially revolutionary response of enabling victims of male intimate violence to leave home and live in a safe space with, and run by, other women (see Dobash & Dobash, 1992; Hague & Malos, 2005; Schechter, 1982). However, this has not been the case everywhere, as the Special Cell and other Indian initiatives and support projects demonstrate.

Activist-Inspired Shelters Are a Western Concept? Controversy and Context-Specific Projects

How much, then, do shelters/refuges remain a Western idea? Although they now exist in many countries globally, it is true that there has been controversy about their usefulness in non-Western countries and suggestions that they represent a Western solution that cannot be imposed in other parts of the world (see e.g. Jung Park [with Peters & De Sa], 2000). As noted earlier, they can be viewed as fitting with Western concepts of individualism and personal freedom, but not fitting within the varying contexts of different family structures and cultural ways of life in non-Western “Majority World” countries. These diversities may make the establishment of a confidentially situated shelter impossible to achieve in close-knit rural districts in many countries in Africa and Asia and within traditional cultures. For example, Taylor (n.d.) suggests that the difficulties may include the possibly all-embracing embeddedness of extended families and of informal support networks for women, and the difficulty of intervening in such structures and ways of life—factors that are likely to strongly militate against the success of a shelter project.

Similarly, the impossibility of keeping domestic violence shelters or safe houses private and out of the public eye is emphasized in rural communities in many cultures, where everyone knows each other, where the extended family is of enormous importance, and where it may be very hard for women to survive independently of men. The renowned Musasa Project in Zimbabwe, for example, while now regarding context-specific shelters more favorably, has previously cautioned against removing abused women from their social and economic links to their extended families and communities (Taylor, n.d.; Taylor & Stewart, 1991). Thus, there is a widespread argument that women should not be separated from their networks and “shut away” in shelters, when it is the men who should leave or be made to control their violent behavior (Jung Park [with Peters & De Sa], 2000). It is within the latter framework that work in police stations to support victims (as provided by the Special Cell) sits. A further argument is that funding to provide shelters may not exist in many countries, and that scant or limited resources would be better spent in other ways (Dangor, Alderton, & Taylor, 2000; Taylor, n.d.).

Rebecca and Russell Dobash, the well-respected Western domestic violence and homicide researchers quoted earlier, produced a history of refuges in the United Kingdom and shelters in the United States in 1992. They usefully suggested that there were four types of shelters: (a) professional and bureaucratic projects, (b) philanthropic and religious services, (c) therapeutic models, and (d) activist (or feminist) projects (Dobash & Dobash, 1992). However, it has been suggested that shelters in many developing countries do not fit any of these categories, but instead need to be adapted in culturally specific contexts so that they tailor their services in creative ways to the communities they serve. Many shelters are run, as is often the case in India and Pakistan, as institutions, divorced from the women’s movements (International Center for Research on Women, 2002; Mitra, 1999), but a few Indian examples do exist of shelter-type projects that have similarities with the activist model proposed by the Dobashes (Dobash & Dobash, 1992). This model remains the shelter type most used by non-Western women’s NGOs and campaigns, but not in its Western feminist sense.

Organizations in the countries concerned have adapted the idea of activist projects—for example, in Uganda and South Africa—to provide culturally appropriate and effective shelter responses rather different from the Western model. A new shelter has recently been established by Mifumi, a Ugandan NGO working on violence against women and on poverty alleviation both at the grassroots level and internationally (see Mifumi, 2010). The shelter at a known location in a small town (where it is to be expected that people know each other and have wide-ranging, multiple family connections) features worker presence, outdoor communal cooking, and careful security. It is always over-subscribed and tends to be used as a last resort, not—as often in the West—as a first response. Rather, frontline services are advice centers, providing basic services, legal and medical help, support, advocacy, and instant assistance to strengthen the woman and improve her position, given that she is likely to then return to her marital home.

Most shelter projects outside the West would probably not identify themselves publicly as “feminist,” a word that can be associated with Western or previous colonial enterprises (Jung Park [with Peters & De Sa], 2000). This new generation of non-Western shelters adapt themselves to their own contexts, perhaps taking on extended family or HIV issues, and may also be part of a network of local women’s NGOs. New-type shelters in Africa and various Asian and Latin American countries appear to have learned from the experiences of the West and to be providing projects tailored to specific environments, usually community based, developed by and for women in the community concerned (Jung Park [with Shaik & Rasool], 2000). Thus, this latest generation of non-Western shelters adapts the Western model and is attempting to create unique, indigenous projects (in South Africa, for instance, see Dangor et al., 2000).

It is also the case that even in close-knit communities where family networks are the foundation stones of society and women rarely live without male relatives, many women’s projects have now come around to the position that at least a few emergency shelter places are useful to have available (Dangor et al., 2000; International Center for Research on Women, 2002). This can be the case even for NGOs and activist groups previously opposed to the way in which Western consultants and visitors have tended, in the past at least, to be wedded to the idea of shelters.

Thus, developments in the 1990s and 2000s in many non-Western countries have changed how we all view shelters, and have moved away from Western models, but retained the concept. Women’s empowerment may be developed in a variety of ways, including economic empowerment projects for abused women to enable some self-sufficiency, but which may retain some access to safe, temporary accommodation.

Examining empowerment strategies, Dangor et al. (2000) assess these developments stemming from women’s movements in the various countries concerned, which may provide safety and shelter in a wider strategic way. The “space” they enable for women experiencing domestic violence to work out their options and attempt to end their abuse may not even be physical space. Thus, complex routes to empowerment, possibly with a collective element, but still under the “shelter” rubric, may be developed, rather than necessarily establishing private physical spaces. This means that sheltering is being regarded in a wider, more holistic, and culturally specific way in these newer projects.

The First International World Conference on Shelters

Bringing together activist domestic violence projects and shelters sometimes happens in regional or countrywide networks (e.g., the National Network on Violence Against Women in South Africa, WAVE in Europe, the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence in the United States, or Women’s Aid in the United Kingdom). However, there have only been occasional attempts to hold international activist get-togethers to look at shelters and other frontline responses. In a pioneering development in September 2008, the First World Conference of Women’s Shelters, named “Discovering the Common Core: Practical Frameworks for Change,” was held in Edmonton, Canada, the first such gathering that could be seen as global. The Conference made attempts to take on the issues noted above.

The conference was attended by 800 representatives from over 60 countries, including many trying to establish domestic violence services in difficult economic and political situations and who receive financial support from Canadian organizations to attend (Harwin, 2009). Although there was a large number of North American delegates, participants also attended from Armenia, Australia, Botswana, China, Ecuador, Egypt, many European countries, Georgia, Ghana, Guatemala, Honduras, Iceland, India, Israel, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Mexico, New Zealand, Nepal, the Palestinian Territories, the Philippines, Russia, Serbia, South Africa, Vietnam, and Ukraine.

The conference apparently fulfilled its objectives and presented a new opportunity for family violence prevention workers in Canada and around the world to network, to share proven innovations, and to learn internationally from each other (see www.womensshelter.ca). Aiming to exchange and evidence good practice internationally, ideas were presented from 150 projects. Outcomes include attempts to track best practices across the world, the development of international data collection of global shelter statistics, the international dissemination of the conference findings, establishing more networks, and increased media and public awareness.

One of the most important outcomes was the Global Shelter Data-Count initiative, which is presently collecting data internationally to create a global picture of the work that shelters do and to identify existing shelter networks. Participants made an expression of commitment to the establishment of a Global Network of Women’s Shelters, building on initiatives from other venues, and this is also in progress. A second World Conference was held in February/March 2012 in Washington, D.C., and the further elaboration and documentation of global ideas for good practice are now in process. This conference led to more fully developed initiatives to establish cross-country coordination and collaboration on shelter provision.

Activists Pushing for Legal and Policy Change

As well as establishing services, women activists have attempted in the United Kingdom, India, and elsewhere to pressure governments to respond appropriately to violence against women in a coordinated way. In these attempts, they have faced dangers in terms of losing their tenacity. In a historically interesting treatment of the issue, Diane Mitsch Bush (1992) has discussed women’s movements and State policies on domestic violence specifically in the United States and India. She outlines how movements aimed at combating violence against women often have two aims: to protect and support individual women and structurally to change the conditions that lead to such violence (Mitsch Bush, 1992). The article compares the social movement mobilization that led to reforms in judicial and police handling of domestic violence in the United States to the movement ideology, organization, and tactics that resulted in analogous policy reform in the processing of dowry burnings and beatings in India, showing how both movements redefined violence against women in families as a public issue (Gangoli, 2007; Mitsch Bush, 1992).

However, Mitsch Bush (1992) proposes that social movements theory sometimes assumes, perhaps naively, that entry into the political and policy-making processes of liberal, democratic states constitutes success in the sense of leading to social change. Confirming other discussions of the dilemma facing feminists trying to change state policies that have been rehearsed over many years as noted earlier, she warns, specifically in both an Indian and Western context, against faith in government responses. She notes how such government initiatives may co-opt women’s movement activism and provide protection of victims without empowerment. This has sometimes been the case in the United Kingdom as well as in the United States and India, and has continued since the article was written. The Special Cell represents a good-practice Indian example of trying to work with the local State and to provide activist-inspired services, without being co-opted by that State.

Despite these documented dangers, women’s movements have worked in many milieus to promote policy and legal changes and to push for specialized legislation. Domestic Violence Acts have been passed in many countries, including Uganda, Iraq, Kurdistan, and South Africa, the latter forming a particularly effective example. In India, as discussed elsewhere in this collection, domestic violence legislation has been under development for a long time, but remained stalled in the process for many years. However, the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005 was finally adopted, and it incorporated suggestions from the feminist-inspired Lawyer’s Collective of Women to improve previous proposed bills (Lawyers Collective, 2010). This has been rightly viewed as a success for the violence against women movement in India.

Nevertheless, there are anxieties that cases are not being brought under the Act. A monitoring and evaluation by the Lawyers Collective Women’s Rights Initiative (LCWRI, 2008) showed that, since its implementation, there had been massive variation in numbers of cases brought forward between several of India’s large and often very populous States, with some recording less than (an unfeasibly low) 100 in 1 year. Similarly large variations were found in awareness of the legislation and in numbers of Protection Officers in post under the Act. The report identified multiple loopholes and the need for substantial awareness-raising campaigns (LCWRI, 2008).

In the United Kingdom similarly, while the Domestic Violence, Crimes, and Victims Act of 2004 has built on previous Acts to improve services, it has done so in a massively reduced manner to those recommended in the previous 2003 Government consultation paper, Safety and Justice (Home Office, 2003), concentrating almost exclusively on criminal justice measures, and now being accompanied by huge cutbacks in domestic violence provision. These developments confirm Mitsch Bush’s assertion back in 1992 that governments tend to engage in protection, at best, without the simultaneous empowerment of victims. Resources remain minimal in most countries and inadequate across the world.

Conclusion

This deliberately broad, brush-stroke overview on activist responses to domestic violence has considered, first, the Special Cell for Women and Children in India and other similar civilian projects on domestic violence that developed out of women’s activist movements and are set within police stations. Second, it has reflected on some of the activist responses in other countries, which have often involved the establishment of refuges/shelters. Thus, there is no one way forward in combating domestic violence, but rather diverse and context-specific approaches across the world, which can, nevertheless, learn from each other and share knowledge and expertise.

Wider attempts both to set up networks of helping women’s projects and to pressure governments and agencies into coordinating policies, services, and legal responses have been made in a variety of countries, including Australia, Canada, China, Malaysia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States (see Hester, 2000; Hester & Gangoli, 2005). However, these attempts to provide coordinated responses only work where there are developed services, and they can appear impossibly ambitious in places where resources are scarce and services thin on the ground or almost nonexistent—which is most places across the world. Services in many apparently richer Western countries also remain fragile in current austerity climates.

However, the development of the leading good practice projects and their replication across relevant regions have been vital in moving forward. Thus, the contribution of the Special Cell and of the networks which it is establishing across India are useful and provide a well-established base on which to build and which needs to be made sustainable. The shelter networks globally similarly need preservation, expansion, and protection from cutbacks. In non-Western countries, pioneering projects such as the Special Cell in India, the Musasa project in Zimbabwe, and Mifumi in Uganda are leading the way in developing context-specific, non-Western solutions that are effective within the specific cultural, social, and political environments in which they operate, but adequate funding for these initiatives can be hit and miss. As a result, there continue to be international calls for response to violence against women to be financed properly, especially since the empowerment of women forms the third of the Millennium Development Goals (UNIFEM, 2008-09; World Bank, 2003). The UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, has committed the world to take on the issue:

Violence against women and girls makes its hideous imprint on every continent, country and culture. It is time to focus on the concrete actions that all of us can and must take to prevent and eliminate this scourge . . . it is time to break through the walls of silence and make legal norms a reality in women’s lives. (United Nations Secretary-General’s Campaign, 2008)

Thus, there have been advances despite the resource difficulties. The various activist-inspired projects and networks set up in different countries over the last 30 years, a few of which have been discussed in this overview article, together with examples of good practice such as the Special Cell for Women and Children in India, are leading us forward in these advances.