Women’s Perspectives on Men’s Engagement in Practice and Activism to Address Men’s Violence Against Women

• In Event: Gendered Stagnation, or Gendered Transformation? State, City, and Activist Responses to Gender-Based Violent Crime

Abstract

Drawing on data from a UK survivor-led study, this paper explores the views of women domestic abuse victim-survivors (n=25) and practitioners (n=18), regarding men’s involvement in efforts to address violence against women. Participants were aged 22 to 74 years and identified as cisgender. There was a limited degree of racial, ethnic and sexuality diversity across the sample. This paper intervenes in debates on women’s safety and gender-based violences, engaging with questions regarding the role(s) men (should) occupy in tackling men’s violence. It also examines men’s function in challenging public discourse which responsibilises women and survivors for managing men’s violence, both in public and private spaces. Using an intersectional feminist theoretical framework, and drawing on coalitional politics, men’s varied relationships to gender-based violence are interrogated. Discourse analysis reveals the epistemological, political, and material challenges men’s involvement in the field can entail. It also substantiates that men’s involvement is endorsed and necessary, despite a lack of consensus regarding the nature of their role(s). In this, the function of trauma and fear in survivors’ conceptualisation of men’s participation in anti-violence against women efforts is discussed, underscoring the need for a practice and policy approach to men’s engagement which is nuanced, and victim-survivor informed.

Author

• Jessica Wild, Newcastle University