By Gill Hague

We walk on the ground forged by others.  Those of us struggling for change on violence against women across the world depend, despite setbacks and backlashes, on the women’s movements against violence which originally came out of the women’s liberation movement.  With the emphasis these days on services, cutbacks and policy development very often, we forget this direct connection to past and present women’s activism at our peril.

The women’s liberation movement in many countries from the 1960s/1970s on, and the violence against women movement which grew out of it, were full of feminist zeal, of daily passionate change, of visions of a new world for women.  They nurtured resistance and new ways of thinking and living, and they developed powerful campaigns and strategies for change.  The latest wave of women’s activism that has arisen in 2020/2021, campaigning around the murder of Sarah Everard for instance, carries this flame on in new and challenging ways.

A book published on May 26th records the history of the women’s liberation movement and the movement against domestic violence specifically, from the 1970s on, in this and other countries.  Ideally, this would have been a collectively written account.  However, that has not been forthcoming yet.  Meanwhile, this book is a starter on that road.  It was coordinated and written by myself, but so many activists from the early years and later were willing to contribute that it has become at least the beginning of a collective effort to record our history. 

The book is called History and Memories of the Domestic Violence Movement: We’ve come further than you think.  It records in brief - and moderately informally - the dynamic history we all made while many of us older activists are still here.  Charting the movements against domestic abuse and for the liberation of women, the book is non-academic and contains anecdotes, some memoir, and both testimonies from survivors and interviews. It is illustrated with a few poems.

In FiLiA, we all know that it is women’s activism which has led to social change for women, then and now.  The movement against men’s violence back then ushered in direct action and campaigning in many countries globally, and certainly not just in the West.  These were heady days of passion and change, as, from 1970 on, it all burst into being.  The book celebrates everything that we all made and continue to make, as in this famous quote:

The emphasis ever since has been on strengthening and empowering women and children experiencing violence, transformation of the lives of survivors, culturally-specific, culturally-sensitive responses taking on equality and diversity issues, campaigning, engaging in public and professional awareness-raising, and holding perpetrators accountable.

 

The first brave initiatives started out on an unknown path

Focussing here on domestic abuse, it is worth us returning to the beginning. The first initiatives of the new domestic violence movement were to campaign on the issue - and then to start the completely unanticipated idea of setting up services: refuges and safe houses.  With some exceptions in the late nineteenth century, this idea had never been tried out before.  Refuges/shelters are now commonplace across the world (even in countries in the Global South where the main responses to violence against women may be different), and challenging domestic violence is part of criminal justice work, service provision and popular culture in many countries.  It is almost impossible to conceive of what it was like when all this first started happening, beginning from a base of pretty much zero services and zero societal interest – in fact from a base of nothing at all

Looking back for a moment, the original refuges of the domestic violence movement were quite revolutionary.  At the time, they were new to everyone and the struggles to get them established were conducted with ferocious dedication and against the odds.  But women trying to get away from domestic violence immediately arrived at these brand-new projects.  Immediately.  They had found out, somehow, that there were these other unknown women around – and that, almost out of the blue, these other women might offer assistance.  And so they threw their fates to the winds to try to get help. These were acts of almost unimaginable courage at the time.

The new women’s initiatives confronted – in a concrete and undeniable way – men’s rights and power within the family.  And the (male-headed) family was then the heart and bedrock of how personal, family and sexual relations were organised in society.  Women were taking unprecedented action to leave their husbands who they had probably, at the time, promised to ‘obey’. They were suddenly trying to get themselves and their children out of violent marriages and partnerships, often without warning.

Not only were they doing this – extraordinary at the time – but then they were doing something even more extraordinary. They were going to live together with groups of other women in safe houses run by women.  It was a quite remarkable - and entirely unpredicted -development, stunning in its fearlessness and daring.  In addition to all this, the refuges that were set up were of course at secret locations to which women experiencing domestic violence from their husbands or partners could escape – and more or less disappear.

At first, many men, husbands, women, agencies like the police, and indeed society as a whole, could scarcely believe it was happening.  But it was.  Suddenly, in a significant way, the very fabric of personal and sexual relations between men and women was being challenged. 

The brazen – and brave – challenge of it was, and is, without doubt, something to celebrate. This short book is part of honouring the women involved, the work they did, the support and help they provided to other women – the pure audacity of it.

As the movement became established, coordinating bodies like Women’s Aid were set up and a diverse movement evolved in all the countries of the UK, with powerful developments in Scotland, Wales and the North of Ireland.  The radical early politics and policies are revisited in the book including operating as collectives and trying to break down power differences between the women providing the services and those using them. These were brave, difficult and pioneering moves forward. 

 

As time went on

As time went on, there were challenges from Black women and other women from minorities that the new movement was slow to take on their needs and sometimes had a sense of white entitlement. As a result, the independent Black Women’s Movement developed services and social action, sometimes working with Women’s Aid and the wider movement, and sometimes separately.  Leading the way were organisations like Southall Black Sisters, the London Black Women’s Project, the Asian Women’s Resource Centre, Brent, the network of projects provided by and for South Asian women across the UK countries, and pioneering developments in Scotland and Wales.  However, many Black and minority women’s projects still struggle on these issues today with governments and policy-makers.  They also still have to struggle for recognition, sometimes, with predominantly white VAWRG (violence against women and girls) organisations. 

The book takes a look around the globe.  Now, after nearly 50 years of work, there are powerful activists in all countries across the world – in literally all of them, even if they may be very small in number in some places and fighting rear-guard battles.  The leading actions on VAWRG are by no means only Western-initiated ones.  For example, the strong activist movements in India battle with entrenched violence against women. The international grass roots campaign in many Global South countries (in e.g. the Philippines and the countries of South East Asia and the South Pacific) was successful in helping to get rape accepted as a war crime by UN. 

I have had the privilege and honour of working with many extraordinary women activists across the world.  From the book, this is a poem of tribute to the sensational village women activists from Ugandan villages, with whom I have worked in participatory action projects, used with their permission.  Jane Rose and Immaculate have agreed to the use of their first names.

To the women, and to Jane Rose and Immaculate

 

I

These women from remote villages,                   

each one spread-out over miles,

they live a subsistence life

exactly where they always have.

They fight domestic violence with deep courage

beyond what most of us can start to imagine.

Living and breathing what they believe.

 

And what they believe is

that they must stay strong

and help any woman in trouble.

Give them some of that strength.

They take violated women into their homes.

Sleeping in their one room on the floor.

Go with them to the hospital.

 

Shield them at the door if the men come.

Sit some of these men down.

And give them a stern talking-to.

 

II

Yes, often you are in danger,

In case hostile individuals beat or stab them.

You offer solace to those who come,

beaten, distressed, raped,

some with HIV, with raped babies,

possibly on the edge of starvation.

They need you to stand firm with them.     

 

And you always do.

To give some power to the women.

To take some power from the men.

The men tend to do what they can to stop you.

This is gender equality work at its most testing. 

Power and control’ that we endlessly speak about

in the domestic violence movements of the world.

 

But don’t always practise.

You are doing it often without being able to read

any of the famous books.

 

III

Dear Jane-Rose and Immaculate.

Thank you for agreeing to let me speak of you.

You are dedicated beyond belief.

Hundreds of women and children have benefited

from your committed, thorough, powerful work.

Taking women in, strengthening them,

Sharing everything you have with them.

 

Sometimes you dare not buy food

From your local male traders for fear of poisoning.

Activists on domestic violence  elsewhere 

could learn much from your courage and commitment. 

What a gift and an inspiration indeed.

Please know that you are heroes and beacons

to all around you.

 

Thank you deeply from all of us

who struggle to end domestic violence,                   

not only in Africa, but across the world.                                                                                                                                                                                

 

Changing the world

The book starts in the early days but then charts developments up to date in Women’s Aid and the now wide-ranging domestic violence and abuse sector in the UK.  It also charts briefly the rape crisis and sexual violence movement and the campaigns and service development around ‘honour’-based violence, FGM, forced marriage and other forms of gender-based violence.  It records not only the challenges developed by the Black women’s movement but also, in later years, the struggles around cutbacks, commissioning frameworks, emphasis on risk above all else, empire-building, and attacks on small independent Black and minority ethnic women’s projects and on concepts of equality.  The coverage of the movements internationally includes looking at different attitudes to refuge provision in some parts of the Global South, and the development of trans-national feminist joint projects which attempt to avoid dominance from the West.  The evolution by activist researchers of feminist research on violence against women and girls is outlined, as are legal frameworks and campaigns. 

The emphasis throughout is on what the activists did, our triumphs, victories, inadequacies and defeats -- but mainly on the fact that, even though domestic abuse by men continues to occur almost universally, the movements against it have changed the world in terms of support offered, campaigns, services, policies and awareness.  Despite cutbacks and attacks, there have been real transformations.  The landscape is unrecognisable to what went before.  We have indeed come far in this huge and brave endeavour to take on male violence.

The book will be published by Policy Press on May 26th and there will be a series of launch and other events, including a FiLia podcast, zooms and, also, hopefully, face-to-face celebrations of the violence against women movement, planned in Bristol and London at the end of September.

This is the cover of the book:

Explanation of the Cover

It shows a ‘Red Shoes’, Los Zapatos Rojos protest.  From 2009 on, the artist, Elina Chauvet, has initiated these demonstrations and installations, which have been held across South America and in other parts of the world.  The red shoes are left in public places, with each shoe representing a femicide, a woman murdered, or ‘disappeared’.  The colour red symbolises blood.  The huge demonstration illustrated on the cover was held on International Women’s Day, March 8th, 2020, in the Zocalo, Mexico City.  It was in memory of 25 year-old Ingrid Escamilla Vargas.  In February 2020, she was murdered and brutalised in horrific ways, too terrible to record here, by her husband. 

This book is also dedicated to her memory.

 Order History and Memories of the Domestic Violence Movement: We've Come Further Than You Think with 20% discount from Policy Press.

Gill Hague is an Emerita Professor of Violence Against Women Studies and activist and researcher on VAWRG since the 1970s.