CentralEuropeanUniversity
Department of Public Policy
Winter 2012/2013
THE POLITICS OF GENDER BASED VIOLENCE
Course instructor:Andrea Krizsan, Center for Policy Studies;
Credit number:2
Office hours:TBA; Nador u.11, room 316
Course level:M.A.
Course objectives and overview
Gender based violence is one of the main social forces producing and reproducing gender inequality. Brought to international and national policy agendas by the feminist movement in the ‘80s it has lately become a core policy issue discussed not just in the framework of gender equality policy but related to policies on human rights, crime prevention, child protection, health, development, cross border migration and trafficking and conflict and post conflict intervention. This course aims to look at the politics of gender based violence through understanding the main challenges of framing it as a policy issue. Starting from discussing the history of feminist mobilization around gender based violence and the feminist approach to it the course will progress through understanding contestation to the feminist framing, alternative approaches to it and proceed to examining currently available norms and state responses addressing it. The course will pay particular attention to some specific forms of gender based violence such as violence in intimate relations (domestic violence), sexual violence, sexual harassment, traditional forms of violence, trafficking and violence in conflict and post conflict situations.
COURSE STRUCTURE
The structure of the course will be threefold.
- The first part of the class will introduce the course, basic concepts of gender based violence, and will discuss approaches coming from cost and measurement of violence.
- The second part of the class will introduce the feminist framing of gender violence and relate it to other important approaches to gender violence such as human rights, family policy and children’s rights and health approaches. A separate class will be dedicated to intersectionality in framing gender violence.
- The third section of the class will be devoted to policy responses addressing gender violence. Policy responses will be discussed coming from three angles: the state level, civil society intervention and international level. Instruments discussed will include protection of victims through shelters, crisis centers, help lines; criminal responses, and prevention and protection through restraining and sanctioning of perpetrators, and community interventions pointing to holistic approaches as proposed by the Duluth model.
GENERAL RESOURCES
Books:
Wilhelm Heitmeyer and John Hagan eds. (2003) International handbook of violence research. Kluwer
Encyclopedia of interpersonal violence edited by Claire M. Renzetti, Jeffrey L. Edleson. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, c2008
European Commission (2010) Feasibility Study to Assess the Possibilities, Opportunities and Needs to Standardise National Legislation on Violence against Women, Violence against Children and Sexual Orientation Violence. Daphne Program
Sally Merry Engle (2009) Gender violence: a cultural perspective. Wiley-Blackwell
Sokoloff, N. J. & Pratt, C. eds. Domestic Violence at the Margins London: RutgersUniversity Press.
Stark, E. & Buzawa, E. (Eds) Violence against women in families and relationships: making and breaking connections, New York: Praeger Publishers 2009. ISBN: 978-0-275-99846-2
Articles and chapters:
Sylvia Walby (2012) Violence and Society: Introduction to and Emerging Field in Sociology. Current Sociology.
Carol Hagemann-White (2002) “Violence against women in the European context: histories, prevalence, theories” in Thinking differently: a reader in European women's studies edited by Gabriele Griffin and Rosi Braidotti Zed 2002
Marianne Hester (2004) “Future Trends and Developments : Violence Against Women in Europe and East Asia” in Violence Against Women 2004 10: 1431
Compares terminology and processes in UK, DK and China
Journals:
Violence against Women SAGE
Social Politics
European Journal of Women Studies
International Feminist Journal of Politics
Websites
University of Michigan database of reports on violence against women
Stop Violence against Women website of the Minnesota based organization Advocates for Human Rights
European Women’s Lobby Observatory on Violence against Women
Coalition for Women’s Human Rights in Conflict Situations
Women’s Initiative for Gender Justice
THE INTERNATIONAL MONITORING CENTRE ON SEXUAL VIOLENCE IN ARMED CONFLICTS
European Commission Ant-Trafficking Website
teaching method and learning outcomes
The course will meet once a week and work in a seminar format. After the discussion of the required readings in which all students are expected to take part, presentation(s) will follow that reveal the challenges that policy actions face in transnational and domestic context in regard to the problems/themes of the specific classes. The assignment for presentation will be either individual or small group based depending on the size of the class.
Due to the nature of the topic, the course will invite students to develop their skills of critical thinking by understanding major theoretical, moral and practical debates that shape considerations on responding to the problem of violence against women. The teaching method will ensure that students have to regularly synthesize different pieces of knowledge (discussion of the core readings), to critically evaluate the differences and overlaps of arguments (presentations), to do targeted small inquiries for relevant policy cases (voluntary presentations and term paper), and to develop their academic writing skills (written support to the presentation and term paper).
Assignments and assessment
(1) All enrolled students are expected to carefully consult with the required readings prior to the classes, ideally by taking notes. Active participation in the seminar discussions is expected from all students. Students are expected to be prepared to reflect upon these questions in the class.Seminars will be discussion-based, often group based and their success will largely depend on the students’ contributions to the class.
Weight to the grade: 30%
(2) Students will sign up to one seminar presentation during the semester. The course syllabus details the texts or materials that could be presented. The presentation shall be of 15-20 minutes, should always be supported by a written handout or power-point file. An outline of the presentation should be submitted to the course instructor (email) a few days prior to the class.
Weight to the grade: 30%
(3) Students will write a term paper of 3,000 words.A two-paragraph abstract of the paper should be submitted by February 20th. Preliminary discussion with the course instructor on the paper topics is encouraged.
Please note that late papers submitted after the deadline will be marked down by half of a letter grade per day. The papers should be double- or 1,5 spaced, appropriately referenced, and provide a bibliography of sources consulted. Please include the word count on the title page. All written assignments should be produced exclusively by the student who submits the work. Any text reproduction which is not clearly identified and attributed will have to be considered as plagiarism (see related provisions and guidance in the Student Handbook and other relevant University policies and regulations).
Weight to the grade: 40%
AUDIT STUDENTS
Audit students are expected to do all required readings in the class, to actively participate in the class discussions and additionally to make a seminar presentation.
Topics and Readings
First Week:Introduction
Introducing the course and basic concepts of gender based violence. Cost and measurement of violence. Concepts, types, facts and figures.
Questions for discussion: Gender based violence:What is it? What forms? Whose problem? How to measure it? What is its cost?
Readings
Sally Merry Engle (2009) “Introduction” in Gender violence: a cultural perspective. Pp.1-25. “Naming and Framing the Problem” 27-29 in Gender Violence: a Cultural Perspective. Wiley-Blackwell
Recommended
Sylvia Walby (2012) Violence and Society: Introduction to and Emerging Field in Sociology. Current Sociology.
Sylvia Walby (2004) The Cost of Domestic Violence. UK Government. Women and Equality Unit.
Walby, Sylvia and Andrew Myhill: 'Comparing the methodology of the new national surveys of violence against women' , British Journal of Criminology, 2001, 41, 3, 502-522, with Andrew Myhill, )
Carol Hagemann White (2003) “A Comparative Examination of Gender Perspectives on Violence” in Wilhelm Heitmeyer and John Hagan eds. (2003) International handbook of violence research. Kluwer. Pp. 97-117
Carol Hagemann-White (2002) “Violence against women in the European context: histories, prevalence, theories” in Thinking differently : a reader in European women's studies edited by Gabriele Griffin and Rosi Braidotti Zed 2002
Nearly 1 in 5 Women in U.S. Survey Say They Have Been Sexually Assaulted
By Roni Caryn Rabin, December 14, 2011
Materials from UNECE Workshop on Measuring Violence against Women (Geneva, 29-30 April 2010)
Second week: What is the Problem? Violence against Women, Women’s Rights as Human Rights
The feminist approach to gender based violence. Mainstreaming violence into human rights.
Questions for debate: What are the weaknesses of the feminist approach? Can men be victims of gender violence? Can women be perpetrators?
Readings
Radford, Kelly, Hester (1995) “Introduction” in Marianne Hester , Liz Kelly , Jill Radford Eds. (1995) Women, Violence, and Male Power: Feminist Activism, Research, and Practice. Open University Press.
Presentation:
CEDAW Recommendation 19
Recommended
Catherine MacKinnon “Equality Remade: Violence against Women” in Are Women Human? Harvard UP.2006. Pp. 105-111
Kelly, Liz 2005 “Inside outsiders: Mainstreaming Gender Violence into Human Rights Discourse and Practice” International Feminist Journal of Politics Vol.7, no. 4, pp.471 - 495
Charlotte Bunch. 1992. "Women's Rights as Human Rights: Toward a Revision of Human Rights," 12 Human Rights Quarterly 486
Laura J. Shepherd (2007) “‘Victims, Perpetrators and Actors’ Revisited: Exploring the Potential for a Feminist Reconceptualisation of (International) Security and (Gender) Violence” in BJPIR: 2007 VOL 9, 239–256
Kelly & Radford (1995) “’Nothing really happened’: the invalidation of women’s experiences of sexual violence” in Marianne Hester , Liz Kelly , Jill Radford Eds. Women, Violence, and Male Power: Feminist Activism, Research, and Practice. Open University Press. Pp.19
Third week: What is the problem – coming from health?
This class we discuss approaches defining violence as a health problem.
Question for discussion: is the health approach in conflict with the gender based violence approach? Are they compatible? How do they complement each other?
Readings
World Bank website on Gender-Based Violence, Health and the role of the Health Sector
Presentation
Cheryl Hanna. 2010 “Health, Human Rights, and Violence Against Women and Girls: Broadly Defining AffirmativeState Duties After Opuz v. Turkey”. Forthcoming, HASTINGS INTERNATIONAL AND COMPARATIVE LAW REVIEW
Recommended
WHO Multi-country Study on Women's Health and Domestic Violence against Women. 2005.
Mental Health Europe (2012) Shaping attitudes. A handbook on domestic violence and
mental health.
USViolence Against Women Health Initiative Act of 2011
Background material to the law:
Fourth Week: Defining the Problem: Coming from Family Policy and Children’s Rights
The strongest competing approach to that coming from feminists is a family policy approach which sees gender violence as a family problem. This class will discuss some of the challenges coming from the family focused approach.
Children’s rights are a crosscutting topic of gender violence debates. While inseparable from gender violence, violence against children often becomes a competing approach. This class will discuss some of the emerging dilemmas in this realm as well.
Questions for discussion: Is there an inherent conflict between a children’s rights and a gender equality approach? Is the gender based violence approach missing out on something? Is the children’s rights approach missing out on something? Are these two incompatible? Think about domestic violence, rape, trafficking.
Readings
JoAnne Langley Miller and Dean Knudsen (1999)“Family abuse and Violence” in Handbook of marriage and the family / edited by Marvin B. Sussman, Suzanne K. Steinmetz, and Gary W. Peterson. New York, Plenum Press. Pp. 705-743
Presentation
Hester, M. (2009). The contradictory legal worlds faced by domestic violence victims. In E. Stark & E. Buzawa (Eds.), Violence against women in families and relationships: Making and breaking connections (Vol. II, pp. 127-146). New York: Praeger.
Recommended readings
Anastasia Powell and Suellen Murray (2008) Children and Domestic Violence: Constructing a Policy Problem in Australia and New Zealand. Social & Legal Studies 17: 453-473
Kelly, Liz (1996) ‘When woman protection is the best kind of child protection: Children, domestic violence and child abuse’, Administration, 44,2,118-135.
Radford & Stanko(1995) “Vaw and children” in Marianne Hester , Liz Kelly , Jill Radford Eds. Women, Violence, and Male Power: Feminist Activism, Research, and Practice. Open University Press.
Marianne Hester (2005) Issues of custody and access following violence in the home in Denmark and Britain. As presented at the European Conference on interpersonal violence. 26th September 2005, Paris, France.
Fifth week: Intersectionality
One of the major challenges to the violence against women approach comes from the recognition that gender violence may have varying impact on different subgroups of women depending on other intersecting inequalities. Class, ethnicity and disability are some of the most evident and most widely discussed intersections. This class will discuss the problem of intersectionality in the field of gender based violence.
Questions for discussion: Is attention to intersectional subgroups disrupting the wider gender based violence is universal claim? Can they be seen as complementary?
Readings
Sokoloff, Natalie J. and Dupont, Ida (2005). Domestic Violence at the Intersections of Race, Class, and Gender: Challenges and Contributions to Understanding ViolenceAgainst Marginalized Women in Diverse Communities.ViolenceAgainstWomen. 11(1):38-64.
Presentations
Kimberle Crenshaw(1991) Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review, Vol. 43, No. 6: 1241-….
or
Irma Morales Waugh (2010) Examining the Sexual Harassment Experiences of Mexican Immigrant Farmworking Women. Violence Against Women 16( 3): 237-261
Recommended
Weldon, Laurel(2011) chapter on intersectionality and violence ch 4 in When Protest Makes Policy. Michigan UP
UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women Rashida Manjoo (2011) Multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination and violence against women.
Michele Bograd (2005) “Strengthening domestic violence theories. Intersections of race, class, sexual orientation and gender” in Sokoloff, N. J. & Pratt, C. eds. Domestic Violence at the Margins London: Rutgers University Press. Pp 25
Jennifer Nixon and Cathy Humphreys “Marshalling the Evidence: Using Intersectionality in the Domestic Violence Frame.” Social Politics Volume 17, Number 2, Summer 2010
Shamita das Dasgupta (2005) “Women’s realities. Definign VAW by immigration, race and class”. in Sokoloff, N. J. & Pratt, C. eds. Domestic Violence at the Margins London: RutgersUniversity Press. Pp. 56
Websdale & Johnson (2005) “Reducing women battering. The role of structural approaches”. in Sokoloff, N. J. & Pratt, C. eds. Domestic Violence at the Margins London: RutgersUniversity Press. Pp. 389
Sixth Week: Specific aspects of the problem: Trafficking
Question for debate: What is the tension between liberal and radical feminist approaches to trafficking? Can they be resolved? Are the two standpoints compatible?
Readings
Outshoorn, Joyce (2005).”The Political Debates on Prostitution and Trafficking of Women”. Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society, Volume 12, Number 1, Spring 2005, pp. 141-155
Presentation
The EU Strategy towards the Eradication of Trafficking in Human Beings 2012–2016 /* COM/2012/0286 final */
Recommended
Niki Adams (2003) Anti-Trafficking Legislation: Protection or Deportation? Feminist Review 73(1): 135-139
Liz Kelly (2003) The Wrong Debate: Reflections on Why Force Is Not the Key Issue with Respect to Trafficking in Women for Sexual Exploitation. Feminist Review 73(1):139-144
OSCE (2004) National Referral mechanisms. Joining Efforts to Protect the Rights of Trafficked Persons. A Practical Handbook
Integration of the Human Rights of Women and the Gender Perspective. Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children (2004)
Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings
and its Explanatory Report (Warsaw, 16.V.2005). Council of Europe Treaty Series - No. 197
Laura Agustin, 2005. “Migrants in the mistress's house: Other voices in the "trafficking" debate” Social Politics, 12 (1): 96-117.
Musto, Jennifer Lynne(2010) 'Carceral Protectionism and Multi-Professional Anti-Trafficking Human Rights Work in the Netherlands', International Feminist Journal of Politics, 12: 3, 381 — 400
Hua, Julietta and Nigorizawa, Holly(2010) 'US Sex Trafficking, Women's Human Rights and the Politics of Representation', International Feminist Journal of Politics, 12: 3, 401 — 423
Kligman, Gail. Limoncelli, Stephanie. Trafficking Women after Socialism: To, Through, and From Eastern Europe. Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society, Volume 12, Number 1, Spring 2005, pp. 118-140
Directive 2011/36/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 5 April 2011 on preventing and combating trafficking in human beings and protecting its victims.
Further resources:
Website of the EU anti-trafficking coordinator
Week Seven: Specific aspects of the problem: Domestic violence and rape
Rape and domestic violence, the most prevalent and most widely discussed and regulated issues of gender based violence will be discussed this week.
Questions for debate: Is it gendered or not? Does it need to talk about women specifically? Or it can stay neutral and still promote women’s rights?
Reading:
Krizsan, Andrea, and Raluca Maria Popa(2011) "Frames in Contestation: Gendering Domestic Violence Policies in Five Central and Eastern European Countries." Violence against Women (in press/forthcoming).
Presentation
Walby et all (2013) Draft Report on Rape to the European Parliament Committee on Gender Equality
Recommended
Eva Stark (2012) “Re-presenting Battered Women: Coercive Control and the Defense of Liberty” Prepared for Violence Against Women: Complex Realities and New Issues in a Changing World, Les Presses de l’Université du Québec (2012)
Elizabeth M Schneider: The Violence of Privacy. In Martha Finneman The Public Nature of Private Violence. 36-59
Isabel Marcus “Reframing Domestic Violence: Terrorism in the home” in Martha Finneman The Public Nature of Private Violence. Pp. 11-36
Maria Bustelo, Andromachi Hadjigianni, Andrea Krizsan "Domestic Violence: a public matter” in Multiple Meanings of Gender Equality. A Critical Frame Analysis of Gender Policies in Europe (ed.) Mieke Verloo, CEU Press: Budapest. 2007