Violence as a Contemporary Barrier to Citizenship and Substantive Equality
Ashley D. Kitchen
Department of Politics and International Relations
University of Westminster, London, United Kingdom
Email: [email protected]
Paper prepared for the 66th Annual International Conference
Political Studies Association, 2016
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Introduction: the good life
Since the time of Aristotle and his writings, the concept of the good life (hereafter referred to
as the good life) has been interpreted using various language, including ‘living well’ and
‘freedom,’ and other associated words (Haslip 2003). If the concept of the good life is to be
synonymous with this language, important questions must be asked, including: the good life
for whom? Can anyone participate in this freedom? How is the good life able to be realised?
Admittedly, Aristotle wrote that there were barriers to this realisation, by way of one’s social
class, race, gender, or other obstacles (Haslip 2003). Meanwhile today, it is assumed that
society as a whole, as conceptualised in global terms, has moved beyond these barriers, in
terms of formal equality, where today we are assumed to be able to achieve this conception of
the good life, by way of individual rights, citizenship, and autonomy. However, is this the
case?
Using the language of the good life, it could be argued that for women, as a social category,
the realisation of the good life has never existed, and was never conceptualised with ‘us’ in
mind, especially when we combine the concept of justice with the ideal of democracy. As
Carole Pateman states, “[d]emocracy has never existed; women have never been and still are
not admitted as full and equal members and citizens in any country known as a democracy”
(Pateman 1989, 210). Specifically in terms of violence, this statement is arguably true.
Keeping in mind the evocation of the good life, this paper attempts to show how women as a
group, experience these barriers, explicitly in the context of England. To do so, this paper
will engage with the various literature on violence against women, with a rough focus on
domestic violence, and with attention to the historical context of women’s status in England,
in order to contextualise this continuing violence, and denial of the good life. Further, this
paper will engage with various literature concerning women’s rights as human rights, and
also the idea of substantive equality.
Defining Violence against Women
For some, gender-based violence and violence against women are interchangeable terms.
However, they should be understood as different for purposes of this paper. As Jacqui True
clarifies, gender-based violence:
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Captures women’s experience of violence due to unequal gender power relations but
not exclusively, since men are also victims of violence due to gender stereotyping and
denigration when they fail to live up to dominant forms of masculinity. Thus, GBV
[gender-based violence] affects both men and women, whereas VAW [violence
against women] embraces those violent acts that are primarily directed toward women
(True 2012, 9).
In this sense, violence against women is a subsection of gender violence, where in addition to
violence against men, gender-based violence encompasses same-sex violence, femaleperpetrated violence, and violence against gay and lesbian individuals (Elman 2013, 237).
Violence should be seen through the interpretation of gender and because women are more
likely to be victims of gender violence, the term violence against women will be employed in
this paper (Merry 2009, 1; Crowell and Burgess 1996, 9). Further to this, as Michael Messner
et al. state, “Creating gender-symmetrical language risks rendering women invisible—and
women are still by far the most common targets of sexual and domestic violence, still most in
need of support services” (Messner et al. 2014, 102).
An internationally-recognised definition of violence against women comes from the United
Nations (UN), described in General Assembly Resolution 48/104, establishing the
Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women (DEVAW) in 1993, the first
international declaration intended to address and deal with the issue of violence against
women (Penn and Nardos 2003, 9; Edwards 2010, 20). In this document, violence against
women is seen as an act (or series of acts) “that results in, or is likely to result in, physical,
sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion
or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or private life” (United
Nations General Assembly A/RES/48/104, Article 1). The acts that the UN recognizes under
this definition include: familial violence, which encompasses the sexual abuse of children,
marital rape, violence relating to dowry, battering, female genital mutilation (FGM), and nonpartner violence (United Nations General Assembly A/RES/48/104, Article 2). Including
familial violence, DEVAW recognizes violence occurring within the community, comprising
of sexual harassment, sexual abuse, rape, forced prostitution and trafficking (United Nations
General Assembly A/RES/48/104, Article 2). Any form of violence perpetrated by the state,
including physical, sexual or psychological is also recognized in the declaration (United
Nations General Assembly A/RES/48/104, Article 2).
Prior to DEVAW, definitions of violence against women originally only encompassed rape,
assault, and murder (Merry 2006, 20). Scholars studying violence against women have
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introduced issues with the DEVAW definition, however. For example, the DEVAW
definition does not reference economic or structural violence (or a type of violence that is not
personal per se, but instead is ‘built into structure’) (Galtung 1969, 170, 171). In addition, the
DEVAW definition “appears to create a hierarchy of harms, with the primary focus on family
violence, followed by violence within the general community, and finally violence
perpetrated or condoned by the state” (Edwards 2010, 20, 22; see also: Penn and Nardos
2003; True 2012; Holt 2014). Because of the discrepancies with the DEVAW definition, it
will be considered in conjunction with the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and
Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (PRWA) definition. The PRWA defines
violence against women as “all acts perpetrated against women which cause or could cause
them physical, sexual, psychological, and economic harm, including the threat to take such
acts; or to undertake the imposition of arbitrary restrictions on or deprivation of fundamental
freedoms in private or public life in peace time and during situations of armed conflicts or of
war” (African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights 2003, 4). In addition, sexual
violence can encompass intimate partner violence, current intimate partner violence, prior
intimate partner violence, and non-partner sexual violence (World Health Organization
2013). Additionally, the UK government definition of violence against women, specifically
domestic violence must be considered. Most recently, in 2013, the government definition of
domestic violence was updated to include the following:
Any incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive, threatening behaviour,
violence or abuse between those aged 16 or over who are, or have been, intimate
partners or family members regardless of gender or sexuality. The abuse can
encompass, but is not limited to: psychological, physical, sexual, financial, [and]
emotional (Home Office 2013).
Because this definition is not a legal one, some of the mentioned violence is either not illegal,
recently illegal, or only applicable to either civil or criminal remedies. Importantly, the
definition does not include structural violence. Although the definitions presented above are
not without obstacles, they are important to include in order to know exactly what is meant
by the contemporary definitions of violence against women and domestic violence, in the
international and the British-domestic context. The definitions above will be considered for
the remainder of this paper when violence against women and domestic violence are
discussed. The next section of this paper will detail some of the feminist theories on violence
against women, so as to contextualise the discussion about how this violence can be seen as a
barrier to women’s realisation of the good life.
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Feminist Theories on Violence against Women: “we’re all just people” 1
Today, violence against women is seen as one of the most visibly-recognised problems
plaguing women around the world. Various acts of violence against women are recognized as
crimes in most societies, and affect women regardless of citizenship, religion, race, age, class,
and ethnicity (Pickup et al. 2001; Dartnall and Jewkes 2013, 4). Because of the pervasive
nature of the problem, “[s]exual violence is a profound human rights violation and public
health concern. It cuts across class and race, and occurs in peace and conflict settings.
Perpetrators are most commonly men known to the victims, and often an intimate partner or,
in the case of child sexual abuse, a trusted family or community member” (Dartnall and
Jewkes 2013, 4). As a political issue, violence against women has shifted from the local
context to be seen as a more global social issue (Merry 2009, 25). Today, there are demands
for “public solutions, including the establishment of programs and services, including the
involvement of the criminal justice system to hold men accountable for their violence”
(McPhail et al. 2007, 818). In addition, those who study violence against women believe
there should be action at the policy and legislative levels, because it is now recognized as a
serious social problem (McPhail et al. 2007, 818). Feminist theories on violence against
women specifically focus on micro and macro-level experiences and how these experiences
interact in various settings (DeKeseredy and Schwartz 2011, 11; Ellis 1987). In general,
feminism has been defined in various ways, however for purposes of this paper, feminism
should be understood to mean: “political, ideological, and strategic confrontation with the
sex-class system—with sex hierarchy and sex segregation—and a single standard of human
dignity” (Dworkin 1983, 220). In the context of today, this sex-class system could be
categorised more broadly as a patriarchal system, to be discussed below.
Andrea Dworkin presents an important definition of what it means to be a ‘feminist’ in the
general sense, specifically using violence, or the threats of violence as a ‘common condition.’
For Dworkin: “To be a feminist means recognizing that one is associated with all women not
as an act of choice but as a matter of fact” (Dworkin 1983, 221). She further states, “[t]his
does not mean women first, women best, women only. It does mean that the fate of every
individual woman… is tied to the fate of all women whether she likes it or not” (Dworkin
1983, 220). While writing in the United States in the 1980s, Dworkin presents a certain view,
through her own lens. However, this common condition of women can be considered relevant
1
Written by Andrea Dworkin: “‘We’re all just people’ is a stance that prohibits recognition of the systematic
cruelties visited on women because of sex oppression” (1983, 217).
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for today when looking at the experiences of violence. For example, women everywhere do
not experience the same type of violence, in the same way. But it is well-documented that
violence against women occurs virtually everywhere, not just to ‘the rest.’
Specifically, feminist theories on violence against women emphasize how macro-level
powers, such as patriarchy, contribute to micro-level manifestations of everyday violence
against women (DeKeseredy and Schwartz 2011, 12). As Susan Brownmiller described in
1975, patriarchy has been seen as a system of power, where males enjoy superior privilege
and authority, simply by way of their prescribed gender (Eisenstein 1980, 16). Using this
definition, violence becomes a manifestation of patriarchy (Lawson 2012, 579; Dobash and
Dobash 1979, ix). Further, according to author Gwen Hunnicutt, patriarchy manifests not
only at the micro level between individuals, but also reveals itself at the macro level, such as
within the government and the law (Hunnicutt 2009, 558). Additionally, “male violence
within intimate relationships results from historic and current power differentials that keep
women subordinate, primarily through the use of control, including physical, sexual,
economic, and psychological abuse, comprising tactics of intimidation and isolation”
(McPhail et al. 2007, 818). Moreover, traditional gender roles, imposed at the macro level,
are said to play a part in how individuals manifest violent actions. For example, it is posited
that those with more traditionally masculine identities, are expected to be more violent and
show a range of ‘aggressive’ traditionally masculine behaviours (Woodin and O’Leary 2009,
43).
While there are varying feminist theories on violence against women, most of these carry the
following assumptions: gender, patriarchy, and power are core features of explaining men’s
violence against women (DeKeseredy and Schwartz 2011, 12; Woodin and O’Leary 2009,
44). These assumptions are furthered by introducing various aspects of control including:
victim blaming, male privilege, coercion, threats, emotional abuse, among others (Woodin
and O’Leary 2009, 44). In addition, “feminist theor[ies] emphasize the value of direct
experience as the place where theory should begin. The realm of personal experience, the
‘private,’ which has always been trivialized as unworthy of serious scrutiny, particularly for
women, is an appropriate and important subject of public inquiry” (Schneider 2000, 35). One
important criticism of feminist theories, primarily those focusing on elitist white women, are
the exclusion of women’s socioeconomic class, despite the findings that some women are
more susceptible to violence than others, and some men are more liable to commit violent
acts, and also the perpetuation of the idea that women as a social category have some sort of
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shared identity or ‘sameness’ (DeKeseredy and Schwartz 2011, 13; Messerschmidt, 1993).
Additionally, some “have challenged the primacy of gender as an exploratory model of
domestic violence and have emphasized the need to examine how other forms of inequality
and oppression, such as racism, ethnocentrism, class privilege, and heterosexism, intersect
with gender oppression” (Sokoloff and Dupont 2005). For instance, the construction of black
feminism in the United States and multiracial feminism elsewhere, where issues of difference
not only between women were spoken, but were also established in order to examine
structures of dominance which can create these differences (Zinn and Dill 1996, 321).
Because of this scrutiny, matters of difference have become important to consider when
thinking of employing feminism and the feminist method in research. Sandra Harding
exemplifies this point. She positions the argument stating that there are not necessarily
‘gender relations’ as a general category, rather, gender relations exist at an intersection
between gender, class, race, and other categories of difference (Zinn and Dill 1996, 322;
Harding 1991, 179). Patricia Hill Collins identifies this intersection as a ‘matrix of
domination’ where “People experience race, class, gender, and sexuality differently
depending upon their social location in the structures of race, class, gender, and sexuality”
(Zinn and Dill 1996, 326-327; Collins 1990). While there are identified diverging issues
within feminism, such as some of those above (though not exhaustive), there is however,
common ground among the strands. Lewis Okun’s assertion in 1986 continues to be relevant
where he stated feminism is “the most important theoretical approach to conjugal
violence/women abuse” (DeKeseredy and Schwartz 2011, 12; Okun 1986, 100). Okun does
not preference which theory of feminism is most central, rather, he identifies feminism in
general as the most important approach. For purposes of this paper, acknowledgement of
these differences is key, where diversity between the varying strands of the feminist theories
can be a strength.
While one theory regarding violence against women cannot explain every aspect of the topic
due to its widespread nature and overall complexity, at its root, feminist theories use gender,
patriarchy, and power as the main features in which women are subjected to violence, in
societies around the world (DeKeseredy and Schwartz 2011, 12). In addition, feminist
approaches to violence against women, specifically are “united by a common central
underpinning: Intimate partner violence is fundamentally a gender issue that cannot be
adequately understood through any lens that does not include gender as the central
component of analysis” (Lawson 2012, 579). Feminist theories are responsible for bringing
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violence against women from the private sphere of the family into the public realm, which in
turn has led waves of action in terms of legislative responsiveness and government action,
making the political representation of women even more important to study (Weldon 2002,
61-62). In terms of the political aspect of violence against women, “Feminist legal arguments
about gender violence have developed from feminist insights about the way heterosexual
intimate violence is part of a larger system of coercive control and subordination; this system
is based on structural gender inequality and has political roots” (Schneider 2000, 5). This
argument that violence is part of this larger system shows how even in the present-day
context, these barriers continue to exist, specifically because of violence, even within the
contemporary human rights discourse.
As Sally Engle Merry states, “Since the 1980s, human rights concepts have gained increasing
international credibility and support at the same time as a growing body of treaties and
resolutions have strengthened their international legal basis” (Merry 2006, 2). The 1980s
became the first time that violence against women, specifically domestic violence, was
recognized by the UN when it was mentioned in both the 1980 Copenhagen document and
the 1985 Nairobi Forward Looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women (Merry 2006,
78; Edwards 2010, 7). The central principles of women’s movements have been given credit
for this spread and internationalization of the issue of violence against women. As Kelly et al.
illuminate, “Creating and giving meaning to language in order to document the reality of
women’s lives has been a constant theme within feminist praxis. … It is through naming
various forms of victimization, and extending the limited definitions encoded in the law,
medicine and research that feminist work has challenged dominant discourses on sexual
violence” (Kelly et al. 1996, 77-78; Kelly 1988).
During this time, and still today, the societal impact and consequences of violence against
women became an important topic to discuss, both nationally and internationally, because of
various women’s movements around the world. The consequences of this type of violence
were spoken of and are considered unique because the acts themselves often overlap with one
another and cause unimagined and, sometimes overlooked, impacts on the survivor, therefore
having possible unintended impacts on society (Dobash and Dobash 1998). For example:
“[e]ach form [of violence] includes a range of acts/behaviours that are not mutually
exclusive. Sexual harassment encompasses visual, verbal, and physical forms of assault and,
in some instances, rape. … Rape, sexual assault, and harassment of women and girls can be
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committed in a wide range of relationships and locations” (Dobash and Dobash 1998, 58).
Not only can certain acts lead to others, physical violence most certainly causes
psychological consequences, as well as psychological abuse causing physical consequences,
such as fear of crime and the fear of subsequent acts of violence (Crowell and Burgess 1996).
This fear alone intimidates and controls women, causing economic effects, among others
(Crowell and Burgess 1996).
Because violence against women has been accepted to some degree by the international
community, at least on paper and in rhetoric, as a major global issue, the research which now
surrounds the topic focuses on human rights law and the implementation of such law. The
idea that violence against women is a human rights violation has been established by
international institutions such as the UN and the WHO. However, “There is a great distance
between the global sites where these ideas are formulated and the specific institutions in
which they are deployed” (Merry 2006, 3). Human rights law and international law often
create universal standards and recommendations, while sometimes ignoring the different
local contexts which exist (Merry 2006, 5). This becomes a problem during the adoption and
implementation of certain human rights law, bearing the question of whether the international
community can respect local context and culture, while still safeguarding women from
violence (Merry 2006, 24). In the European context, as Lovenduski details, “Britain is
perhaps the country in which institutions and structures have altered the least to
accommodate women’s demands” (Lovenduski 1986, 256). Further to this, “It is arguable
that the British political environment is one which is particularly resistant to the sorts of
policies on women which are necessary to the goal of sex equality” (Lovenduski 1986, 264).
While it cannot be described in detail here, the British political environment is important to
discuss, especially in an historical context, where the boundaries concerning women were
more overt, and where formal equality was non-existent. Therefore, the next section will
provide a condensed background to the idea of women as property and will illuminate the
idea that while women have formal equality in the basic sense, substantive equality continues
to be lacking.
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Historical Boundaries: women as property and ‘the angel in the house’ 2
Acts of violence against women have occurred in most societies throughout time, but its
recognition as a serious crime has only recently emerged in the law, specifically in the UK.
Historically, some of the most esteemed scholars often ignored the issue of violence against
women—while focusing on other social issues. According to Brownmiller, during this time,
“Women were wholly owned subsidiaries and not independent beings. Rape could not be
envisioned as a matter of female consent or refusal… rape entered the law through the back
door, as it were, as a property crime of man against man. Woman, of course, was viewed as
the property” (Brownmiller 1975, 18). Legal scholar Katherine M. Schelong affirms this
point by describing how women were classified as property under Roman and biblical law,
and also as recently as the 1970s in the United States where none of the states recognized
rape in marriage as a crime (Schelong 1994, 82, 83-85). In fact, rape in marriage did not
become a crime in England until 1991 (BBC News 2008). Prior to this, the law recognized
husband and wife as one person, where a wife could not disagree due to the concept of
‘implied consent’ in regards to married couples (Jackson 1994, 185).
Because of this, any laws that did recognize crimes of rape were considered crimes against a
man’s property, and were not considered crimes against a woman and her body (Bergen
1996, 3). Therefore, women were considered property on the one hand, and on the other hand
they did not exist at all outside of their husbands. It is important to grasp the significance of
such symbolism concerning women and their existence, or as it were their non-existence.
Being a member of the institution of marriage, these ideas and laws affected both men and
women: men in terms of power, and women in terms of powerlessness. This powerlessness is
exemplified by Dworkin where she states: “Neither men nor women believe in the existence
of women as significant beings. It is impossible to remember as real the suffering of someone
who by definition has no legitimate claim to dignity or freedom, someone who is in fact
viewed as some thing, an object or an absence” (Dworkin 1983, 21). The implication of this
statement is that women can feel this denial of existence and then internalize it. This
internalization can cause the violence that is committed against them to be seen not a crime,
but as something that simply ‘happens.’ In a recent Huffington Post article in regards to the
question of women as property, the author writes: “Property doesn't need to be consulted
about where it's put, what is extracted from it or forced into it. Property has no voice and
2
A poem written by Coventry Patmore in 1854, detailing his ideal wife, referred to as ‘the angel in the house’
(Martin Pugh, Women and the Women’s Movement in Britain, 1914-1999 (London: Macmillan Press, 2000), 1).
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cannot shape policy or choices. Property can be moved, discarded or demolished, and if it
breaks under the load, it can be easily replaced. And that's how it's been for women for a very
long time” (Hendricks and Hendricks 2012). The same threats to women’s autonomy
remains, including the everyday threat of violence or the ‘policing’ of bodies, among others.
While no means an exhaustive account of the idea of women as property, it is important to
understand these ideals and the impact of this ‘cultural memory’ as a way to recognize the
violence against women that continues to occur today. 3
Violence as a Contemporary Barrier
Given the above context, it is my premise that violence against women serves not only as
crimes and violations of individuals, but also as obstructions to citizenship and substantive
equality. If we conceive of the good life as the ability to live well and enjoy freedom,
violence serves the function to impede and obstruct. Violence, while sometimes physical,
does not have to be, as detailed above. Borrowing form Johan Galtung, if we see violence as
the violation of peace, we can understand that women have never known peace (Galtung
1969). The violence I am referring to does not have to be limited to physical violence, but
also includes psychological violence, the threat of this violence, personal/direct and
structural/indirect violence, whether intended or not and should be conceptualised as violence
in the broader sense (Galtung 1969, 171-172). The distinction between manifest and latent
must be presented as well, where manifest violence can be observed whereas latent violence
could ‘easily come about’ (Galtung 1969, 172). Using these conceptualisations, and the ones
presented above, this section will focus on the idea of violence being a contemporary barrier
to both citizenship and substantive equality.
As Dia Anagnostou stipulates, “[s]ubstantive equality is premised on the need for law to
redress the underlying sources of discrimination and hierarchy in order to promote gender
equality of results, rather than to merely insure equal opportunities as starting conditions”
3
In the general sense, authors Kevin Laland and Luke Rendell detail: “Culture depends on the passing-on of
learned knowledge between individuals, through teaching and copying. The duration of cultural memories
depends not just on the amount of social learning but also on the fidelity of information transmission (the
accuracy with which information passes between individuals)” (Laland and Rendell 2013, R737). This concept
is important because it shows the ways in which ideas and memories are transmitted throughout time. Learned
knowledge, such as the idea of women as property of their fathers and husbands, can be passed-on by family or
other members of society. These ideas, while seemingly of the past, have been able to transmit through time and
linger in the cultural memory of those in the UK. This is not to say that all men or women have learned these
memories, however it is important to be aware of the lasting impacts of the past, especially in regards to gender
relations. This learned knowledge is not necessarily intentional, but can be embedded and reinforced in various
social interactions.
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(Anagnostou 2013, 133). The introduction of this substantive equality is about the detection
and exposure of these inequalities, and also proposing measures to deal with them
(Anagnostou 2013, 134-135). Politically, the idea of substantive equality focuses on
constitutions and various measures that are undertaken in order to move from conceptions of
formal to substantive equality. For example, Anagnostou details that over the course of the
past 15 years, European countries have attempted to introduce ‘positive measures’ to increase
women’s substantive equality (Anagnostou 2013, 133). She further specifies that “[e]ven
though feminists have pointed out the limitations of constitutional reform and a rights
approach, they have recognized it as an indispensable component of a multipronged strategy
to promote more equitable gender relations” (Anagnostou 2013, 133). While substantive
equality is often referred to as the ‘equality of opportunity,’ it is my premise that we cannot
begin to theorise whether this equality exists, while violence against women remains a
prominent feature of many women’s lives. There will never be this sense of equality of
opportunity without first addressing one of the major underlying causes for why women, as
women, continue to be unequal in society and relationships. That is why it is important to
bring violence into this discussion of substantive equality, as violence lies at the heart of
gender inequality.
In terms of violence against women, human rights, and citizenship, Rashida Manjoo has
stated that “[v]iolence against women impairs and nullifies women’s realisation of all human
rights; prevents women from participating in their community as full, equal citizens;
reinforces male dominance and control; supports discriminatory gender norms; and also
maintains systemic inequalities between women and men” (Manjoo 2016, 12). In the case of
the UK, this can be exemplified by looking at various avenues. According to the Crime
Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), where over 31 percent of women in the UK
experienced some form of violence between 2011 and 2012, yet austerity cuts to the women’s
sector, specifically refuges, have been cut by 31 percent over the course of a few years (Jones
2014; Dar 2013). One a random day in April 2014, Women’s Aid found that 155 women and
103 children were turned away from refuges in the UK because of a lack of funding (Jones
2014). The chief executive of the charity stated: “We have reached a crisis, and the result will
be more women and children killed and hurt through domestic violence” (Jones 2014). These
cuts are example of why the UK is seen as going ‘backwards’ in the fight against domestic
violence, and violence against women more broadly, as stated by the media, charities, and
even the UN (Jones 2014).
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Using Manjoo, we can assert that a large number of women are prevented from participation
in society because of this violence, where autonomy, agency, and dignity are components that
are unable to be realised (Manjoo 2016, 12). As she details, violence “precludes women from
exercising their right to vote, the hold public office, to work, to education, to the right to a
secure livelihood, to access justice and to health, among others” (Manjoo 2016, 12). This
preclusion virtually eliminates any realisation for women to live a life free from violence, and
also the right to participate in society (Manjoo 2016, 12). It also stops women from realising
this idea of substantive equality, where if we want substantive equality, it requires
“recognition that full, inclusive and participatory citizenship requires that violence against
women be regarded as a barrier to the realisation of all human rights, and consequently to the
effective exercise of citizenship, is imperative” (Manjoo 2016, 24). As Ronagh McQuigg
details, violence against women and domestic violence are human rights issues (McQuigg
2016, 1010).
In the UK context, what remains interesting is that domestic violence was mentioned in the
major party manifestos prior to the 2015 parliamentary election, including comment from the
Conservatives, the Labour Party, the Green Party, and the Liberal Democrats (Neate 2015).
But still, the UK is lacking in terms of a departure from this sort of rhetoric to actual
progress. For example, the Conservative government promised to prioritise violence against
women and girls, yet there are no plans to slow down the austerity measures, despite the fact
that domestic violence costs the UK an estimated £23 billion a year (Walby 2004). Most
recently, the UN has criticised the British government for requiring a ‘consistent and
coherent’ approach towards ending violence against women, through protection and
prevention, and citing austerity measures as an impediment to that approach (Townsend
2015). The domestic violence that occurs within the UK context directly falls on the
responsibility of the state to protect its citizens. As Sanders-McDonagh et al. state, “female
victims of domestic abuse experience violence on two levels: first at the intimate/personal
level through their relationships with an abuser and, second, at the structural level, through
the state failing to provide adequate protection and provision for women who have
experienced violence in intimate relationships” (Sanders-McDonagh et al. 2016, 60). This
experience by way of the state is a direct impediment to the realisation of full citizenship,
exemplified by Manjoo, in addition to the failure of not achieving substantive equality, as
described by Anagnostou.
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Another way to conceptualise this violence is by acknowledging that it is more than an act
and is more of an experience (Bufacchi and Gilson 2016, 27). It does not begin or end at a
fixed place. Instead, violence can be conceived of more as ripples, as Bufacchi and Gilson
propose. They state that “an act is temporally determinate while an experience is temporally
indeterminate… violence has time-indeterminate intended and unintended consequences…
[w]hat starts as an act of violence, with a precise and starting point and an end point, evolves
into an experience, with much broader and unclear boundaries” (Bufacchi and Gilson 2016,
27, 38). Violence, as Galtung said, is not simply one act of physical violence, but must be
understood within the context of experiences. Because violence against women can be
conceptualised then as being time-indeterminate and have unintended consequences, this
denotes directly back to Manjoo in terms of barriers to citizenship, and the achievement of
substantive equality described by Anagnostou. This is especially important because it shows
how current approaches to understanding violence, specifically in terms of how the
government recognises violence, lacks an actual understanding about why violence occurs,
because it sees violence as an act, rather than an experience and this causes violence to be
continually perpetrated because the root causes are not tackled.
Conclusion: what can be done?
These realisations then beg the question of what can be done in regards to violence against
women, citizenship, and substantive equality. It is important that as a first step, the UK
creates a more integrated approach to dealing with this violence. Once this is achieved, only
then can other aspects be dealt with, such as citizenship and substantive equality. As Kelly
and Lovett point out:
The basic contours of an integrated approach must, in the short term, support and
empower women and girls and ensure sanctions for abusive men, whilst over the
longer term seeking to reduce and ultimately end violence. All of these tasks require
counteracting the legacies of permission, justification and victim blame. Achieving
this, and widening the focus beyond domestic violence, will require a strong steer
from the centre (Kelly and Lovett 2005, 26).
While overarching, and somewhat general, these goals exemplify that an overall new
approach much be taken in regards to violence against women in the UK. As the author’s
above have exemplified, it is important that we acknowledge the many facets and ‘heads’ of
this monster. We must see violence as a direct impediment to the good life, citizenship, and
substantive equality. The issue must also be seen as violence against women, and something
that affects women, because of their perceived social identity as women. For example,
14
“[t]reating men and women the same, as required by formal equality, overlooks the
underlying structures that differentiate and disadvantage women, and it may actually
exacerbate, instead of alleviating, social disparities” (Anagnostou 2013, 135). Again, we
cannot begin to theorise whether substantive equality even exists, while violence against
women remains a prominent feature of many women’s lives. In the year 2015 alone, there
were 120 women killed by their partners or ex-partners, or men in their families, between the
ages of 13 and 81 (Sims 2016). That equals a woman being killed every three days (Sims
2016). There will never be this sense of equality of opportunity without first addressing one
of the major underlying causes for why women, as women, continue to be unequal in society
and relationships.
15
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