| Congratulations! |
Dr. Beth Catlett and Julie Artis in Sociology have been awarded the University Research Counsel Grant for "Community Responses to Intimate Partner Violence: Integrating Insights from Feminism and Psychology."
Dr. Laila Farah has been awarded two grants: The Stean's Centre Faculty Fellowship and Public Service Council Grant: for her work on analyzing and examining cultural mores and religious traditions as they impact young Muslim women's lives within the Arab American communities on the southwest side of the greater Chicago area. Her project will be useful in improving women's lives overall by assisting young women in the navigation between their personal goals and dreams and their religious traditions. Additionally, the output of the project will offer support and build empowerment for the female youth in the larger Muslim community in Chicago.
Dr. Beth Kelly has been honored as the new chairperson of Chicago's Gay Advisory Council. Mayor Richard M. Daley has appointed Elizabeth Kelly, professor of women's and gender studies, to serve a three year term as chairperson of the Advisory Council on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Issues. Kelly was a founding member of DePaul's interdisciplinary program in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender studies. She's been a member of the advisory council since 2006. As chairperson of the council, she'll also serve as an exofficio member of the Commission on Human Relations Board of Commissioners.
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Greetings!
Greetings!
As the spring quarter has progressed, we have been preparing for the transition in the leadership of the program. Professor Beth Catlett will be stepping up as Director of the Women's and Gender Studies Program shortly, and has already begun to anticipate her role in that capacity, taking a lead in key areas.
This quarter we have been conducting a job search. Out of over 150 applicants, the search committee narrowed down the pool to twenty front runners. After phone interviews, this pool was further narrowed down to a final shortlist. As a result of the search committee's deliberations, we decided to invite three candidates to visit campus to meet with faculty and students, to discuss how they see themselves contributing to the WGS program and to DePaul University, and to present their research. These visits have taken place over the past few weeks.
The first candidate to visit us, Sanjukta Mukherjee, holds a Ph.D. in Human Geography and a Certificate of Advanced Studies in Women's Studies from Syracuse University. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Department of Geography and Program in Planning at the University of Toronto. Having completed her Bachelors and Masters work in India, Sanjukta was well placed to focus the fieldwork on which she based her dissertation research in Bangalore, a center for India's hi-tech software industry. Her research presentation presented the contradictions underlying women's participation in India's information technology industry, and how these contradictions structure and facilitate the global imaginary that India has come to occupy with the emergence of this industry. In particular, Sanjukta addressed the ways in which policy makers exploited traditional ideologies of women as homemakers in their quest to represent women as visible participants in the highly successful emergent information technology industry. At the same time, she pointed out that the new-found visibility of middle-class Indian women, which, in keeping with neo-liberal ideology, is celebrated, is often won at the cost of lower-class women performing child-care duties, and thereby liberating middle-class women from such duties.
Two other candidates visited campus. While all three candidates displayed strengths, the members of the Advisory board and the program voted to offer the job to Sanjukta. We were impressed not only by her scholarship, but also by her energy, enthusiasm and dynamism. We are very much hoping she accepts the position.
The undergraduate thesis presentations were conducted in Cortelyou Commons earlier this quarter, as was a Brown bag lunch seminar, at which Kalyani Menon (Religious Studies) presented some material from her book, Everyday Nationalism: Women of the Hindu Right in India. The Awards and Scholarship Committee decided to award the Ballenger scholarship to graduate student, Anna Assenmacher, and undergraduate student Veronica Lozano.
Tina Chanter
Susan Leigh |
Book Review
Everyday Nationalism: Women of the Hindu Right in India
by Kalyani Devaki Menon | | |
Hindu nationalism has been responsible for acts of extreme violence against religious minorities and is a dominant force on the sociopolitical landscape of contemporary India. How does such a violent and exclusionary movement recruit supporters? How do members navigate the tensions between the normative prescriptions of such movements and competing ideologies?
To understand the expansionary power of Hindu nationalism, Kalyani Menon argues, it is critical to examine the everyday constructions of politics and ideology through which activists garner support at the grassroots level. Based on fieldwork with women in several Hindu nationalist organizations, Menon explores how these activists use gendered constructions of religion, history, national insecurity, and social responsibility to recruit individuals from a variety of backgrounds. As Hindu nationalism extends its reach to appeal to increasingly diverse groups, she explains, it is forced to acknowledge a multiplicity of positions within the movement. She argues that Hindu nationalism's willingness to accommodate dissonance is central to understanding the popularity of the movement.
Everyday Nationalism contends that the Hindu nationalist movement's power to attract and maintain constituencies with incongruous beliefs and practices is key to its growth. The book reveals that the movement's success is facilitated by its ability to become meaningful in people's daily lives, resonating with their constructions of the past, appealing to their fears in the present, presenting itself as the protector of the country's citizens, and inventing traditions through the use of Hindu texts, symbols, and rituals to unite people in a sense of belonging to a nation.
Kalyani Menon is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies as well as a member of the Women's and Gender Studies Committee and Advisory Board and an affiliated faculty in Women's and Gender Studies. Her research and teaching interests include Religious Conflict, Gender and Nationalism, and Religions and Cultures of Contemporary South Asia. She teaches a variety of courses at DePaul University including: REL 242: Hindu Thought and Culture, REL 260: Religion and Political Conflict in South Asia, REL 278: Women and Religion, REL 305/MLS 488: Topics in Culture and Religion: Religion and Violence, and REL 305/MLS 488: Topics in Culture and Religion: South Asia. Her book is a Volume in the Ethnography of Political Violence Series. |
Cynthia L. Bischof Conference on Youth Anti-Violence | | | by Sarah Goldstein
The DePaul University's Women's and Gender Studies Department is pleased to announce the Cynthia L. Bischof Conference on Youth Anti-Violence, which will take place on Saturday, May 22ndfrom 8:30-5:30 in SAC 254 and SAC 270. The conference will bring together community leaders, activists, students, faculty, and staff to engage in a dialogue about youth anti-violence initiatives and will seek to address the following questions: * How does violence impact the lives of young people?
* How do intersecting oppressions shape and perpetuate violence against and among youth?
*How are teachers, parents, activists and other adult community members and allies to youth challenging and interrupting violence?
*How are youth organizing and embodying resistance/resilience/healing?
The gathering will be interdisciplinary in nature and seeks to examine the ways in which anti-violence has been conceptualized, theorized, interrogated, and implemented in the lives of young people.
Some of the organizations that will be participating include AquaMoon, the Arab American Action Network, Gender Just, and Females United For Action.
In approaching the topic of anti-violence, this conference will work from the framework established by the group INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence in the following ways:
The conference was planned with an understanding that violence occurs both within communities and is perpetuated against communities. It is integral to acknowledge and make connections between interpersonal violence, state violence, and international violence in ways that challenge sexism, racism, classism, homophobia, and other forms of oppression (Information from INCITE! found on their website, http://www.incite-national.org and in Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology).
Please direct any questions or concerns you may have to youthantiviolence@gmail.com. Also, if you plan on attending, please RSVP to youthantiviolence@gmail.comby May 15th. Please feel free to join us at any time throughout the day! |
| Take Back the Night 2010 | | Experienced  by Chera Tribble
"MANY VOICES BREAKING SILENCE. DEMAND AN END TO SEXUAL VIOLENCE!"CLAIM OUR BODIES, CLAIM OUR RIGHTS, TAKE A STAND, TAKE BACK THE NIGHT!" These were just two of the many chants that reverberated through the streets of DePaul University's Campus and Lincoln Park on April 29, 2010 as the DePaul community reclaimed the streets and took back the night.
Beginning at 9 a.m. up until around 4 p.m. in the Student Center and in the SAC Pit T-Shirts of all different colors hung from stair cases and ceilings for curious passer by's to stop and question. The handmade T-shirts hung as testimony's to the issue of sexual violence. All the T-shirts were created by survivors of sexual violence or family and friends who had lost a loved one due to sexual violence. Information on the Clothesline Project was handed out to people passing by to inform them of what the shirts represented and that each color shirt represented a different form of abuse. The shirts are a way for people to break the silence while also informing people of their specific stories in relation to sexual violence. It is important for people to recognize the severity of sexual violence and become aware of the issue.
Starting at 4:45 p.m. students began to gather around the statue of the man with large hands located in front of the Student Center on Sheffield. Members of Feminist Front shouted chants as they passed out signs to students walking by that read "No Means No," "Men Can Stop Rape," and "Hands Are Not For Hitting," etc. As the crowd continued to grow, people from different organizations that spanned from Rape Victim Advocates to DePaul's new group, Student Sexual Health Advocates explained their roles in our community and purpose of TBTN, informing the followers that TBTN strives to create a safe space for survivors and allies to join a community in opposition of sexual silence.
Following the rally we took to the streets with hundreds of signs demanding an end to rape, sexual harassment, racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of intolerance. Students filled the streets for passer- by's to see and join in the march. As the march continued, the crowd continued to grow. Once the group arrived at Fullerton, there was no chance for the cars, protestors filled the street and refused to give it up. Cars honked in support of the cause, while others honked in anger that we had made it impossible for them to pass by. The march continued to grow stronger as it weaved through the streets and when we finally arrived back to the Student Center, the crowd had nearly doubled from when we first embarked on our journey. Even through we were unjustifiably harassed by the police for speaking through megaphones and banging on bucket drums, we transformed our anger into activism. (Please see below Lachrista Greco's response to the police which made the front page of feministing.com).
The crowd filtered into the multi-purpose room to begin the Speak Out. I welcomed everyone into the room and informed the group that the purpose of the Speak Out is to empower our community through speaking out against violence, while also aiming to empower survivors by publicly speaking out against their own personal accounts with violence. Our incredible key-note speaker, Misty DeBerry, took the stage and awed us all with her creative honesty and magnetic bravery through her words. I then showed a film I made in film school that I created as a medium for breaking my own personal silence. I discussed my experience with intimate partner abuse and expressed the importance of breaking the silence. My shared experience was immediately followed by incredibly brave and courageous individuals who broke the silence by sharing their own stories.
The openness and bravery people had in sharing their most intimate stories with a room full of strangers was an experience that has left me speechless... except not speechless at all. It has given me the courage to continue telling my story in hope that others will share their's. On April 29, 2010 a community was created. There are people that I may never see again, but I know, and they know that we are all out there. We are all connected and we will all continue to fight for the right to TAKE BACK THE NIGHT!
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"Bradshaw Made Me Fabulous"
by Chera Tribble
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Exactly one year ago I witnessed a person's life change at the click of a computer mouse. All it took was opening up a seemingly hopeful email to have one woman's life completely thrown into a downward spiral of injustice and inequality. It was spring quarter 2009 and I was sitting in Dr. Melissa Bradshaw's class, "Deconstructing the Diva." Even though it was the first class I had ever taken with Dr. Bradshaw, it had only taken a week or so for me to realize that it would certainly not be my last. Bradshaw was somehow able to incorporate literature, film, music, and scholarly work which spanned from reading Willa Cather's The Song of the Lark to listening to Dusty Springfield sing her heart out all for the purpose of studying the cultural phenomenon of the Diva as an icon throughout history. It wasn't just that Dr. Bradshaw was clearly one of the most brilliant and incredibly committed professors I had ever had in my college career, but also that she was so intensely passionate about what she was doing. I knew that no matter what the topic might be for the day I would end up immediately leaving class only to continue doing research on the list of poems, books, films or music that Dr. Bradshaw had introduced us to with such incredible enthusiasm and zeal. No matter how sick, stressed, or burdened by life I may have been, I always knew that everything would somehow disappear for an hour and a half upon walking into Dr. Bradshaw's classroom.
It has always intrigued me to try and understand how things can change so quickly at the blink of an eye and suddenly nothing appears to be what it once was. It was a day just like any other in our Deconstructing the Diva class; Bessie Smith's voice filled the room and our souls as we came to an end of that day's class. Suddenly everything changed. Dr. Bradshaw sat in front of her computer screen with a look of complete and utter despair. Dr. Melissa Bradshaw had received, through email, her letter of denial for tenure.
In the end, it doesn't matter how many letters were written, how many signatures were collected, or how many times we held protests; in less than five weeks one of the most incredibly dedicated, caring, engaging, knowledgeable, wonderful and all around fabulous professors I have ever had the pleasure of knowing will no longer be working at DePaul University. Those of you who have had Dr. Bradshaw will understand exactly what a tragic loss this will be and those of you who were never fortunate enough to have class with Dr. Bradshaw it breaks my heart to think that you have missed out on such an incredibly life altering experience.
I know that many people have said, "Bradshaw made me fabulous," well not only did Bradshaw make me fabulous she made me brave. She made me fight for what I believe in and follow my dreams at any cost. Dr. Bradshaw helped me become better and I will never forget her for that. We, as the Women's and Gender Studies community at DePaul, all must make sure to never forget Dr. Bradshaw and her wonderfulness. Thank you Dr. Bradshaw for all of the knowledge you have imparted upon me. I will forever be thankful that I was one of the people lucky enough to cross your path on our journey through life. I know that you will continue to change people's lives for the better and I wish you the absolute most in life. Thank you for being so fabulous, but most importantly... thank you for being you.
You will be missed.
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Alumni Profile: Jennifer Musto, PhD Candidate Women's Studies, UCLA
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Website:
www.womenstudies.ucla.edu/students_musto.html
What is your educational background?
I graduated from DePaul University in 2002 with a B.A. in Women's and Gender Studies (WGS) and a minor in Theatre Studies. As a DePaul student, I had the opportunity and institutional support to combine my studies with antiracist and transnational social justice activism and research. In fact, as a result of engaged and supportive mentorship from WGS faculty and DePaul's Junior Year Experiential Learning requirement, I synthesized my research interests on sex work and prostitution in the United States with service learning projects with community based organizations like the Young Women's Empowerment Project. The research questions I pursued as an undergraduate student at DePaul - questions such as how divergent societies and cultures discursively constitute and legally manage commercial sex - led me to investigate the legalization of prostitution in the Netherlands and further shaped the direction of my dissertation research which compares Dutch and US non-governmental and law enforcement efforts to address human trafficking and prostitution. My undergraduate training in WGS at DePaul provided both a theoretical framework and scholarly fluency to pursue interdisciplinary research, training which has proven invaluable to me a PhD candidate and teaching fellow in Women's Studies at UCLA. My undergraduate training in WGS at DePaul no doubt influenced my current interests in transnational feminist knowledge production, engaged and interactive pedagogy, and community action research.
What is your dissertation research about?
Interdisciplinary in scope, my dissertation research traverses the intersections of Women's Studies, Sociology, and Law, and broadly explores the transfer of feminist, human rights, and social justice discourses into professional anti-trafficking practices. What began in 2002 as a Fulbright-supported research project aimed at mapping the legal and sociological effects of the Dutch government's lifting of the ban on brothels on Dutch and non-EU prostitutes, has segued into a multi-year comparative study that investigates professional interventions initiated on behalf of trafficked persons, prostitutes, and irregular migrants living in the Netherlands and the United States. My dissertation draws attention to the possibilities and limitations of anti-trafficking and anti-prostitution interventions imagined via the criminal justice system and contributes to feminist research that seeks to understand how transnational human rights discourses are integrated and redefined in advocacy and law enforcement settings.
What else are you working on?
In addition to my dissertation research, I am also currently working on a collaborative writing project with five other PhD candidates and junior faculty who received or who are pursing their doctoral degrees within the field of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. As a working group, we are examining the development and institutionalization of WGS PhD programs in the United States over the course of the past ten years and mapping how PhD students trained in WGS doctoral programs understand, negotiate, utilize and re-image feminist methodologies as well as the limits and possibilities of interdisciplinarity. Chief among our interests is gauging how and to what extent WGS doctoral programs align with and remain distinct from traditional disciplines with concentrations in WGS and other allied interdisciplinary PhD programs.
What courses have your taught? What is your approach to teaching?
To date, I have taught WGS courses at UCLA, California State University, Long Beach, and Utrecht University in the Netherlands, including "Introduction to Women's Studies," "Bodies and Borders: Feminism and Globalization," "Gender, Violence, and Social Suffering," and "Feminist Theories and Methodologies." The classroom environment I seek to create is highly interactive and strives to promote students' active participation, diversity, creativity, and agency in the learning process. Taking a cue from my own undergraduate experiences in WGS at DePaul, my pedagogical approach to teaching balances student-centered learning with sustained attention to the ways in which course concepts and ideas interface with everyday issues, struggles, and inequalities, and where students have the opportunity to participate in a scholarly environment that is mindful of and accountable to the communities in which they live.
What are your goals after completing the PhD?
Upon completion of my doctoral studies in the upcoming months, I look forward to continuing my research and teaching as a professor in Women's and Gender Studies! |
Francesca Royster, Director of African and Black Diaspora Studies, Comments on Misty DeBerry's Solo Performance of Milkweed
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What was it like for you to see Ms. De Berry perform?
I first had the chance to see Misty DeBerry perform in a small theater on Northwestern's campus. I was sitting in the front row, and I found it very powerful to watch her at work so closely: watch her facial expressions, hear her breath, really listen close to the nuance of her word and the music that she makes with words. The show is very emotional, very powerful. She really puts her body on the line by exploring difficult stories about survival, which she presents as an ongoing struggle that she interprets through words and movement. I think because she presents multiple stories with such compassion and openness and complexity, she really won over the audience. She asks, "How do you continue to evolve, live your life, remain open, when you've been hurt? What are the forms of protection and healing that you find in every day life?" For Misty, its really storytelling and movement that help us to survive. She really captures this through evocative, poetic language, and sometimes through her movements. Her sets are simple, domestic spaces, and she uses small details to illustrate how we make spaces as a form of protection: a chair and a journal, a small lamp that warms a corner, a dishrag, a beautifully colored orange scarf. She really got me thinking about how the experience of sexual violence is always being processed in the body. And that sometimes experience that can't yet be put into words can be put into movement.
How does her work relate to your own life experiences, particularly as Director of African and Black Diaspora Studies?
What Misty DeBerry's work, Milkweed captures is the resilience and humor that are part of the culture of black women in every day life-- the ways that we use things like fashion, dance, food, poetry and song, to provide richness in our lives that have been drained because of violence. The ways that creativity has always been a form of resistance for black women. I love that there are things in this show that are familiar- shared experiences that reach across cultures, and also particular things that speak to black women's experiences in the early 21st century. And then she adds her own, quirky, complex analysis of events that are also her own. For me, it speaks to the richness of black women's culture and also reminds me of how that culture is always renewing itself and reinventing itself.
Does her performance have a feminist approach?
Misty's show definitely has a feminist approach in her interest in resiliance and survival. She allows her characters to have complex inner lives and allows for the complexity and contradictions that are produced out of the survival of violence. She also brings a lot of compassion and love to the women of her performance- personnas that she's created in part from her own experience and in part from that of other women. Moreover, Misty brings an intersectional feminist analysis in her choice of subjects. She "becomes" four different women, from distinct historical and socio-economic circumstances, and she pays attention to how those different aspects of identity shape their experiences of violence.
Her work, Milkweed, connects to Take Back the Night. When you saw her perform, did she address issues of gender based violence? In what ways did her work impact you?
One thing that's quite powerful is the ways that Misty captures multiple experiences - that consider the effect of sexual and gender based violence against young women, of gender queer people, of working class women, middle class women. We see women struggling to define for themselves the experiences that they've survived. It really impacted me by reminding me that surviving violence is lifelong and changing, and can also be a tremendously creative act. That the struggles and contradictions and self-doubt can also produce amazing insight and beauty. It also reinforced something that I've always felt: that performance and theater can be a community building event- that the experience of witnessing the characters' metamorphosis is a sacred act, where we're all changed by the experience of watching it together.
Is there anything else you want our readers to know about Misty De Berry?
Here's a great website, that includes her bio and artist's statement and a little more about "Milkweed":
http://mistydeberry.org/Misty's_bio.htm |
| Results of the WGS Newsletter Survey | | |
We interviewed 67 students in women's and gender studies classes. Forty-two of these students are women's and gender studies majors, minors, and grad students. Forty-nine consider themselves a feminist. One respondent said, "I believe in the empowerment and equality of women and marginalized groups." Another said, " I am committed to fighting oppression in many forms." Another respondent said: "I only use this term when it is politically advantageous in conversation or context. Otherwise, I don't feel the need to self-identify."
Favorite Feminists. The respondents identified many great feminists as their favorite! These include: 9 bell hooks, 6 Angela Davis, 6 Audre Lorde, 3 Gloria Steinem, 2 Emeline Pankhurst, 2 Judith Butler, 2 Susan B. Anthony, Frieda Kahlo, Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz, Gloria Anzaldua, Catherine MacKinnon, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Rosa Luxenburg, Jacqui Alexander, Nancy Frasier, Holly Hughes, Susan Bordo, Annie Lenox, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Adrienne Rich, Patti Smith, Eva Hesse, Rikki Wilchins, Nicholas Kristof, Alice Walker, Mary Wolstonecraft, Simone De Beauvoir, Daisy Hernandez, Christine Di Pizan. All these and more were mentioned. A few of my personal favorites from the surveys were: "My old English Teacher," "My Mother" and "Missy Bradshaw."
Feminist Frameworks. Our feminists identified with many different frameworks and some identified with a combination of frameworks. In summary, we had: 17 Liberal, 6 Radical, 5 Womanist or Black Feminist Thought, 5 Marxist, 4 "a mix," 3 Eco-feminists, 2 Modern, 1 Queer, 1 Moderate, 1 Conservative and many "not sure."
Feminist Films. Some must see feminist films include: Thelma and Louise; Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead, Juno, Little Miss Sunshine, Amelie, Real Women Have Curves, Ameerka, Whip It, Coraline, Iron Jawed Angels, My Life in Pink, Now and Then, Precious, Too Wong Film, Business of Being Born, Go Fish, Antonias Line, Four Women of Egypt, Ma Vic en Rose, and Nine to Five. Many respondents didn't know of any, so now you do!!!
Feminist Families. On a more serious note, we asked students how women's and gender studies is viewed in their family. Among the respondents, 32 famillies were supportive or very supportive, 11 were unsupportive, 12 were indifferent or don't understand women's and gender studies. 6 were worried about future careers in WGS. One respondent said, "My family largely equates it with lesbianism, or people who are 'outside' of society."
Feminist Magazines. Some great feminist magazines to check out include: IRAN/EFL, The Sun, Mother Jones, The Advocate, Jezebel Online Mag, Colorlines, Ms., blogs, Bitch, Ready Made, Feministing.com, Curve, and Bust.
Male Feminists. We asked our respondents what they think about male feminists. There were many varied answers. Most respondents (51) said, "Great!" "We need more!" and "Love 'em." One respondent thoughtfully said, "Male allies are needed and play an important role in my life, but they often get rewarded more than other female identified, trans-identified, or genderqueer feminists." Another respondent said, "Not sure why they are, but would like to know." Two wonderful respondents said, "I am one." |
| Graduate Student Research Titles: Presentations will be held on June 1st at 4pm in Student Center rm. 314 A&B | | Titles may change.
Alice Rollins: "Bringing In the Spirit: Using Womanist Theology As A New Medium to Further the Discussion of Black Women's Lives in Feminist Classrooms"
Abbey Fox: "Analyzing Representations of Young Females in Select Young Adult Literature"
Caroline Smith: "A Feminist Analysis of Mental Health Providers' Perspectives of Latina Women."
Latina women involved in the mental health system are often viewed as at-risk. This study challenges traditional pathological views using a feminist analysis to examine the providers' perception of Latina women. This research is part of a growing body of feminist research on resilience and strengths based perspectives. Ultimately, this study argues that Latina women should be understood from nuanced, resilience, and strength based perspectives which could greatly impact recovery and treatment.
Julie Koslowsky: "Feminist Children's Literature: A Work in Translation"
I have produced my own work of children's literature dealing with identity formation and fluidity influenced by Aimee Carrillo Rowe's notion of relational belonging. The basis of my work is that children are intelligent and thoughtful human beings and with a little bit of guided translation can grasp feminist theory.
Nikki Lawson: "Food for Thought: A Critical Analysis of Gender Construction on the Food Network"
My research focuses on the predominant form of food television today: The Food Network. I first examine the subject with a chapter that focuses on the hypersexualization of female hosts on The Food Network. My next chapter concentrates on a comparative analysis of male hosts on the network and the way programs have constructed masculinity in relation to dominant cultural norms. My analysis closes with a chapter which details an exploration of several hosts on the network who I believe currently undermine dominant gender identities.
Lachrista Greco: "Restraining Domestic Violence: Questioning the Effectiveness of Restraining Orders in Domestic Violence Contexts"
This paper first looks at the issue of domestic violence as a social change movement, termed Battered Women's Movement in America, beginning in the 1970s. One of the major outcomes of this movement was for the legal system to acknowledge the perpetrator's accountability for domestic violence by recognizing it as a crime. Out of this recognition, the option to obtain a restraining order against an abuser was enacted. Prior to 1970, women were unable to do this. Pennsylvania was the first state to offer restraining orders. Though victims and advocates pushed for these orders, research has shown that restraining orders aren't protecting those who need it. A research study in 2000 found that "approximately one-half of the orders obtained by women against intimate partners who physically assaulted them were violated" (NCADV, 2000). This paper focuses on two main questions: 1) How do restraining orders contribute to and/or limit women's physical safety? and 2) Are there other tools that can be supplemented with a restraining order? The purpose of this paper is to investigate and locate the effectiveness of restraining orders through a feminist lens as well as to find another tool that may be paired with these orders to keep women safe. |
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