(Page 9 of 32) - Feminist Social Movements: The Politics of Inclusion & Exclusion authored by Hebert, Laura.

actors. The most immediate concern of activists in both countries is to ensure the physical and
emotional security of violence survivors – which is most often accomplished through the
establishment of emergency hotlines, shelters, and counseling programs. The assumption behind
women centered-services and programs is that providing violence survivors with information and
the tools to live independently (if they so choose) expands their available options and will
ultimately limit or prevent repeat victimization. However, whether these activities do limit or
prevent re-victimization is unsubstantiated, given that evaluation procedures are rarely in place
to follow up with women who have used these services. Moreover, these activities only come
into play once an individual has experienced at least one violent episode, while the source of
violence remains out of reach. Even if a survivor is able to break the cycle of violence at the
individual level, in the absence of attention to those committing acts of violence the cycle of
violence is likely to be replicated with another “victim.”

The second most common tactic pursued by activists is to engage in lobbying and advocacy for
the implementation, and then reform, of gender violence legislation. Activists devote significant
energy to legal reform, believing that laws will ultimately contribute to gender transformation.
As my own research in Malaysia and South Africa in 1998/98 and 2002 confirmed, there are a
number of problems that arise when relying on the law as a tool of social change. First, the
gender biases at the root of violence against women also influence the institutional mechanisms
and actors responsible for responding to such violence.

Even after the implementation of these

laws, police officers, prosecutors, and judges or magistrates have remained reluctant to intervene
in what they consider to be the “private affairs” of the family. Second, whether criminalization
deters acts of gender violence and enhances protective efforts remains highly contested.

What

proponents and critics of the criminalization approach agree on, however, is that the punitive and
protective effect of the law is diminished when the actors responsible for enforcing the law do
not take gender violence seriously as a crime and therefore hand out token punishments or refuse
to take action against perpetrators. Third, and perhaps most critical, legal systems are able to deal
only with the commission of violations, not the reasons or intentions behind violations. As a
consequence, although the law may be effective in protecting women from further violence, it is
insufficient to prevent the initial occurrence of violence against women. In spite of evident
problems in the implementation and enforcement of laws concerning gender violence, however,

Only rarely do violent individuals contact gender violence organizations for assistance. In

the event that they do, however, social workers are generally not trained to handle their case.
Many women’s organizations have an explicit policy against offering assistance to men –
whether they are perpetrators or victims of violence.

Robin West, for example, refers to the pervading “masculine jurisprudence” or male

standard of the law: “[T]he distinctive values women hold, the distinctive dangers from which
we suffer, and the distinctive contradictions that characterize our inner lives are not reflected in
legal theory because legal theory . . . is about actual, real life, enacted, legislated, adjudicated
law, and women have, from law’s inception, lacked the power to make law protect, value, or
seriously regard our experience” (1993: 521). See also Armatta 1997; Askin & Koenig 1999;
Cook 1994; and Smith 1993.

See Coomaraswamy & Kois 1999; Thomas 1999; UN 1993; and Waits 1993.