Violence Against Women

The Offender Focused Domestic Violence Initiative (OFDVI) represents for the first time anywhere the application of the evidence-based focused deterrence policing approach to combat intimate partner domestic violence (IPDV). Through holding offenders accountable, the strategy has resulted in 20% reductions each in IPDV-related calls for police service and arrests. Victim injuries have been significantly reduced and the 1-year IPDV offender recidivism rate is about 16-17%. The backbone of the OFDVI strategy is the multidisciplinary collaboration of law enforcement and community partners which has resulted in identification and resolving system issues which have historically allowed offenders to repeat IPDV without consequence.

We used a community-based participatory research approach to develop, implement, and evaluate one of the first health curricula for female intimate partner violence (IPV) survivors residing at a transitional housing program. The curriculum comprised 12 workshops that were developed based on the survivors’ experiences, needs, and interests. Evaluation participants included 20 of the 37 women who attended at least one workshop, 12 workshop facilitators, and two housing center staff. Participants found the curriculum to be engaging, interactive, and helpful in building a supportive community. Suggestions for curricular improvement as well as opportunities for further research and curricular development are discussed.

This qualitative study examined the “drivers” of intimate partner violence (IPV) against women in displacement to identify protective factors and patterns of risk. Qualitative data were collected in three refugee camps in South Sudan, Kenya, and Iraq (N = 284). Findings revealed interrelated factors that triggered and perpetuated IPV: gendered social norms and roles, destabilization of gender norms and roles, men’s substance use, women’s separation from family, and rapid remarriages and forced marriages. These factors paint a picture of individual, family, community and societal processes that exacerbate women’s risk of IPV in extreme conditions created by displacement. Implications for policy and practice are indicated.

Domestic violence (DV) affects over a third of Chinese women in a relationship. Focusing on ethnographic data from six staff members and six DV survivors at a rural, state-affiliated women’s center in China in 2010, this article relies on Henrietta Moore’s notion of the poststructuralist gendered subject to examine how the staff draw on discourses about gender and social harmony in persuading women to stay in their marriages, rather than on human rights discourses that emphasize survivor safety. It shows that DV survivors are frequently sent back to dangerous homes where their health is placed at risk.

The author provides a mixed-methods assessment of U.S. rape statutes to assess progress in reform. Contemporary statutes offer restrictive frameworks for distinguishing criminal from noncriminal sexual violence, many of which are grounded in gendered and heterosexist assumptions. Fourteen states retain gender restrictions in rape statutes. Twenty maintain marital distinctions that limit accountability for spousal rape. Furthermore, whereas explicit resistance requirements have been eliminated nationwide, implicit resistance expectations manifest through emphasis on physical force and involuntary intoxication. Analyses conclude with recommendations for further legal reform and a discussion of the potential for legislation to affect broader social perceptions of rape.

A recent trend in scholarship characterizes the anti-rape movement as founded with radical goals and achieving success at reforming rape laws, but then declining because of co-optation by the state. This article challenges narratives of decline in light of the history of the anti-rape movement and current anti-rape activism. By focusing their critique on criminal justice and therapeutic approaches to sexual violence, and failing to account for the diversity of the anti-rape movement, advocates for narratives of decline ignore parts of the movement that challenge the state and other parts that use broader cultural and community-based strategies to end rape.