Risking women's lives: comparing the tolerance or risk to private and public terrorism

• In Event: Global Perspectives on Intimate Partner Violence

Abstract

This article contests the different categorization of intimate partner violence as a crime and terrorism as a national security priority. It contributes to a more direct theoretical contestation and comparison of the priority given to countering public terrorism over private terrorism. While intimate partner homicides in western countries far outweigh deaths from public terrorism, national security priorities identify the threat of public terrorism as more significant than intimate partner violence. Focusing on examples and cases from Australia it analyses contrasting constructions of risk and the priority given to preempting terrorism ahead of countering intimate partner violence. It contends that these differential constructions of risk and the exclusion of intimate violence from the national security agenda reflect and reinforce gendered notions of risk and value.

Author

• Jude McCulloch, Monash University