Young People's Understandings of Men's Violence Against Women

Nancy Lombard

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781472419910
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134790678
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Criminologia

Globally, nationally and locally men's violence against women is an endemic social problem and an enduring human rights issue. Unlike men who are most likely to be victims of stranger assaults and violence, official data shows that women are most likely to be attacked, beaten, raped and killed by men known to them - either partners or family members. Research has maintained that to challenge and prevent men's violence against women, changing the attitudes and behaviour of young people is essential. This ground-breaking book presents the first investigation into what younger people think about men's violence against women. It does this by locating their constructions and understandings within the temporal and spatial location of childhood. Through challenging the perception that young people are too young to 'know' about violence or to offer opinions on it, Nancy Lombard demonstrates the ways to talk to younger people about men's violence. Through confronting preconceptions of younger people's existing knowledge, capabilities and understanding, she demonstrates that this is a subject which young people can confidently discuss.

Chapter 1
Violence

Violence against women is not the result of random, individual acts of misconduct, but rather is deeply rooted in structural relationships of inequality between women and men.

United Nations 2006

This book examines how young(er) people, aged 11 and 12, define, construct and understand violence, specifically men’s violence against women (incorporating physical, emotional, sexual, psychological and economic abuses) and including domestic violence and abuse. Men’s violence against women is both a socially constructed and endorsed social problem. As such, the solutions to challenging and preventing it lie within those same systems of constructed power and gendered inequity. The research upon which this book is based enabled young people to explore their own understandings of violence against women and in doing so how this relates to their constructions of normative gendered roles.

Gender and violence pervade and shape young people’s social relations and understandings very powerfully, already informing both their own understandings and, at times, their own actions (McCarry 2010; Barter 2014; Gadd 2014; Gadd et al. 2014). By using the broad term of men’s violence against women, the gendered dynamics inherent within the concept of ‘violence’ are made explicit. A short discussion of domestic violence and abuse is undertaken in this introductory chapter to explain why it was necessary to include the terms within the research, whilst also highlighting the need to broaden the scope to include all forms of violence against women.

Purpose of the Book

There are two aims of this book. The first is to confront and challenge the ‘everyday’ occurrence and acceptability of the social problem of men’s violence against women (Stanko 1985). It is an issue that impacts upon everyone, not only the lives of adults or those who are judged old enough to talk about it. As young people have generally not been given the power to define violence, here they are afforded the ability to ‘name’ violence (Kelly 1988) as they understand it. Enabling young people to engage with the discursive issues of men’s violence against women and explore their own perceptions can be one way to look beyond the ‘public’ or powerful appropriation of the concept. Part of their construction involved drawing upon their own experiential knowledge and everyday understandings, which may be at odds with dominant discourses or officially recognised definitions. Specifically this book will examine how young people aged 11 and 12 name and define men’s violence against women and interpret how they explain and account for its occurrence.

The second aim is to challenge the perception that 11- and 12-year-olds are too young to ‘know’ about violence or to offer opinions on it. This is achieved in two ways, by finding ways to talk to younger people about men’s violence and through confronting preconceptions of younger people’s existing knowledge, capabilities and understanding thereby demonstrating that this is an area that young people can happily and confidently participate in using appropriate research methods.

Defining and Naming Violence

There are differing debates around the actual defining of violence, men’s violence and domestic violence, demonstrating how such definitions have concurrently both shaped people’s understanding and been indicative of the advancement of the feminist project (Lombard and Whiting 2015). Violence can take many forms; it can be legally sanctioned or condemned with various intentions or motives: power, political, accident, repercussion and retaliation. Violence can involve a myriad of behaviours and a multitude of consequences, physical injuries, emotional abuses, personal and sexual violations or material deprivations. That certain acts of men’s violence are still considered ‘understandable’, ‘defensible’ and ‘honourable’ demonstrates that particular discourses still endorse some expressions of men’s violence (Gill 2013; Lombard 2013b, 2014). The historical legacy of the UK and other western countries, evidenced through religious, legal and social and political examples, accepted, endorsed and legalised men’s right to control and physically chastise their partner and children (Clark 1992; Lentz 1999). For example, in law children may still be chastised using ‘reasonable force’ (Children (Scotland) Bill 1995). It is argued here, that young people’s views are significant because they are living in a time and a culture where many aspects of men’s violence against women are outwardly condemned and are subject to consequence.

There have been numerous studies that have looked at ‘interpersonal’ violence, seeking to label men and women as equal combatants (Gelles 1983, 1987, 1993, 1997; Straus et al. 1980), undertaking ‘mutual acts of aggression’ (Fergusson et al. 2005: 1,116) and endorsing women as being as violent as men (see Steinmetz 1977–1978). Continuous research contradicts this gender symmetric view of violence, as well as disputing the role of women as equal aggressors (Gadd et al. 2002; Johnson 2005; McFeely 2013; Stark 2007).

Men’s Violence Against Women: Gendered Violence

The term ‘men’s violence’ is used in this book. Hearn (1998) and others (see Kimmel 1987) have argued for the need to focus upon men and not maleness. To do so renders such violence innate and therefore the options for change are limited. It is important however that in appropriating the term men’s violence we do not detract from the behaviour and actions of boys.

Gender is integral to ‘the way we speak, conceptualise and challenge violence’ (Stanko 2006: 551) whether it is violence that is experienced, perpetrated or witnessed. Gender is significant because men’s violence is so often treated as gender neutral through terms such as ‘spousal abuse’, ‘date rape’, ‘sexual harassment’, ‘marital rape’, ‘battery’ and ‘child sexual abuse’ (Hague and Malos 1998). Skinner et al. (2005) maintain the use of ‘gender violence’ is a more inclusive term than (men’s) violence against women as the definition does not restrict itself to women but engages with the theoretical connection between violence and gender relations thus including gay and lesbian people as well as children and young people. The term ‘gender violence’ also incorporates a wider definition of abuses and violations including prostitution and trafficking as well as violence where women are the perpetrators (Skinner et al. 2005: 3).

A gendered analysis of men’s violence views it as a manifestation of ‘male’ power that is replicated and endorsed through individual experiences and wider structural inequalities (Dobash and Dobash 1979, 1994; Radford and Kelly 1996; Rowland and Klein 1990). This gendered system of power is termed patriarchy, or patriarchal relations (Hearn 1998, 1999; Lovenduski and Randall 1993; Rowland and Klein 1990) and is propagated through embedded social (and gendered) practices and institutions. It is important to acknowledge the importance of Connell’s term patriarchal relations that compensates for many of the shortcomings of the initial concept of patriarchy. Here the two concepts interchangeably, whilst embracing the elaborated dynamics of Connell’s term. In viewing patriarchy as a series of relations we are more able to conceptualise its cross-cultural, dynamic and relational status and thus encapsulate its spatial and temporal diversity. This system perpetuates, legitimates and sustains the powerful position of men, as both a group and as individuals.

Gender is the most significant risk factor for domestic abuse (Dobash and Dobash 2004; Johnson 1995, 2005; Stark 2007) meaning that women are more likely to experience violence from their intimate (or ex) partners than men are. This indicates is that the intimate violence is taking place within wider structures of gender inequality. Gender is important in any analysis of violence because men and women use violence in different ways and have different motivations for doing so (Hester 2009).

Gender has been identified as a key component in previous studies looking at young people’s views of men’s violence (Burton et al. 1998; Burman and Cartmel 2006; Dublin Women’s Aid 1999; Kelly et al. 1991; McCarry 2003, 2007, 2010), alongside wider studies looking at societal attitudes. For example, Kenway and Fitzclarence (1997) found that men’s violence against women was legitimated as an accepted part of normative gender roles; it is part of how men are and what they do. This book proposes that young people’s position in childhood, impacts upon how they construct and understand men’s violence against women and that they draw upon gender to explain certain forms of violence. However, to do this, these constructions of gender are also dependent upon the temporal and spatial positioning of the young people in relation to the violence.

‘Naming’ Violence

Kelly (1988) developed the concept of the ‘continuum of violence’ which discouraged the generation of a hierarchy for forms of violence and abuse. As a theoretical framework, it also succeeded in merging the gendered spheres by illuminating the notion that men’s normative behaviour and women’s oppression crossed these spatial boundaries. Kelly sought to highlight that these examples of men’s behaviour, however commonplace for both men and women, were not normal or acceptable and needed to be named and challenged as wrong. In doing so, the continuum facilitated the labelling of apparently normal behaviour as part of men’s ability and choice to control, conceptualising commonalities experienced by many women and girls in their day to day lives by ‘enabl[ing] women to make sense of their own experiences by showing how ‘typical’ and ‘aberrant’ male behaviour shade into one another’ (Kelly 1988: 75).

Kelly’s definition is highly relevant to my research in that it contextualises violence and abuse as something that is not always experienced or acknowledged as violent at the time. The temporal aspect of this definition is relevant also because of the age of the participants and their own constructions of time and age:

In the development of the feminist movement, women have seized the power of naming. This is a revolutionary power because in naming (describing) what is done to us (and inevitably to children and men as well), we are also naming what must change. The act of naming creates a new world view. The power of naming resides in the fact that we name what we see from the basis of our own experience within and outside patriarchal culture simultaneously. (Ward 1984: 212)

The feminist project of ‘naming’, ‘involves making visible what was invisible, defining as unacceptable what was acceptable and insisting what was naturalised is problematic’ (Kelly 1988: 139). It enables women to name, understand and challenge what has happened (or is happening) to them, by moving the private into the public domain and shifting the boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable behaviour.

This research endorses the feminist arguments of naming, of knowledge and of power (Dobash and Dobash 1979; Kelly 1988; Stanley and Wise 1993), by locating the young people within a framework that recognises and respects their own language, understandings and situated knowledge. Indeed, it is through lived experiences of childhood that young people explore their own understandings and constructions of violence, with such experiences also informing their knowledge of normative gender roles (Renold 2005). Dobash and Dobash maintain such knowledge is critical in understanding the ‘everyday’ nature of male violence:

[l]ocating violence in the midst of daily life demands a focus on the mundane, the ordinary rather than the extraordinary, the conflicts of interest embedded in daily life, and the rationales and justifications of perpetrators as well as the reactions and responses of victims. (Dobash and Dobash 1992: 142)

As such, Kelly’s continuum is useful as a tool in this research, to name and locate men’s violence, by generating a means to situate it within everyday life. The concept also incorporates the temporal and spatial characteristics of men’s violence, in that the violence may occur over time, or is located a long time in the past, or can impinge upon present and future lives. For example, Kelly (1988: 23) claims the experience and/or naming of violence is not always an immediate or present one, rather it can be ‘experienced by the woman or girl at the time or later, as a threat, invasion or assault’. This is relevant in enabling young people themselves, to have a role in the naming of behaviour that they may understand as problematic, or not recognised by others, particularly those in authority.

However, Hearn (1999: 131) argues against laying the task of ‘naming’ solely at the door of women. He maintains that they may have normalised the events and therefore find it difficult to challenge this or to link it to public discourses of violence that do not reflect their own experiences. Instead Hearn argues for the involvement of men in this process to compel them to recognise their own actions and consequences as violent and abusive. The involvement of all men (and boys) is necessary for this reason and is one step in the direction of countering the huge personal, interpersonal and social costs of violence that continue to be borne by women and their supporters. This journey has begun with the promotion of non-violent masculinities and the continued contribution of men in the movement (for example, the White Ribbon Campaign and the UN Women campaign He For She). As such it should also be the responsibility of men (and boys) to also recognise their behaviour as unacceptable. Encouraging men to challenge their own and others’ behaviour, highlights the potential dynamism of men’s role in changing the patriarchal relations of society. As Connell (1995, 2000) has claimed, the structures of patriarchy thrive on women’s resistance and men’s acceptance.

The Magnitude of the Problem

The United Nations states that there are three areas where men’s violence against women manifests itself: within the family, within the community and that perpetrated by the state.

Violence against women is remains pervasive worldwide. It is the most atrocious manifestation of the systematic discrimination and inequality women continue to face, in law and in their everyday lives, around the word. It occurs in every region, country and culture, regardless of income, class, race, or ethnicity. (United Nations (UN) secretary-general Kofi Annan 2005)

Unlike men who are most likely to be victims of stranger assaults and violence, women and children are attacked, beaten, raped and killed by their family and partners (Department of Health 2000; World Health Organisation 2005) with the patterns and types of violence illustrating the persuasive inequalities between men and women (Bond and Philips 2000). Globally, nationally and locally, men’s violence against women is endemic within all societies:

At least one out of every three women has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime … Usually the abuser is a member of her own family or someone known to her. (Amnesty International 2004)

Women are identified as the ‘most heavily abused group’ being more likely to experience interpersonal violence, especially violence of a sexualised nature including rape and sexual assault (Walby and Allen 2004; World Health Organization 2005; Watts and Zimmerman 2002). Murder statistics indicate that on average two women a week are killed by a current or former partner in the UK (Flood-Page et al. 2003; Scottish Government Statistical Bulletin 2013).

In 2014, the Europe wide study by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights found that one in three women have experienced abuse in their lifetime; one in ten within the past 12 months. Findings from the British Crime Survey (Walby and Allen 2004) reveal that almost one in two (45 per cent) women has experienced some form of domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking illustrating again that gender is a ‘significant risk factor’ in victimisation. The England and Wales Crimes Survey (EWCS) reported that 1.2 million women had experienced domestic violence in 2011–2012 (Dar 2013). In 2012–2013, the police in Scotland attended a domestic incident every nine minutes, accounting for 15 per cent of all violent crime in Scotland. In this same period 60,080 domestic incidents were recorded with 60 per cent of incidents involving a repeat offender. There were 11 domestic abuse related homicides, 313 attempted murders and serious assaults and 248 sexual offences recorded (Scottish Government Statistical Bulletin 2013).

The gendered trends of this violence and the systematic power inequalities that it (re)produces illustrates the global and national scale at which women and girls suffer abuse at the hands of men known to them. However, official data cannot provide a full analysis of the true extent of men’s violence against women, as it is both under reported and under recorded (Kelly et al. 2006) as well as being so ‘deeply embedded’ in cultures that it is almost ‘invisible’ (UNICEF 1997: 41):

Whilst clear categories and definitions are important for statistical and research purposes, we must never forget that these are abstract analytic concepts developed for a specific purpose – to count the extent of violence. They do not reflect experiential reality, which is always more complex. (Kelly 2000, Domestic Violence: Enough is Enough conference, London, October)

Websdale et al. (1998) also argue that the magnitude of such violence cannot simply be documented through the use of official or hidden figures alone, but needs to be viewed in conjunction with women’s social, economic and political subjugation. This relationship can be achieved through the application of sociological theory and understanding to the phenomena of men’s violence against women.

Much of the violence remains hidden or unreported because of a reluctance to report for fear of being disbelieved, or being doubly victimised by the criminal justice system and also because of a lack of faith in the low rates of conviction (Lees 1993; McMillan 2013). Statistics also remain partial because of the process by which they are collated and the methods by which categories of violence are determined and defined. Discrepancies also arise from the use of conflicting definitions, methodologies, measurements and contexts (Johnson, 1998; Walby and Myhill 2001; Dar 2013). Some forms of abuse that women may experience are not labelled as ‘violence’ by legal codes or frameworks and thus are not classified as crimes. Indeed, as Greenan (2004: 18) astutely asserts, some areas of women’s experience remain invisible in any attempt at ‘counting’. Even when instances of violence reach the definitive realms of the criminal justice system, they may then be ‘no crimed’ (see Lees 1997)¹ or the charges downgraded. Global agencies such as Amnesty International have attempted to counter localised and judicial discrepancies by declaring that all violence against women should be seen as a violation of their human rights leading to the creation of new international standards and practice, such as the definition of rape as a war crime and a ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Violence
• 2 Childhood
• 3 Research Methodology
• 4 Gender Constructions
• 5 ‘Real’ Violence by ‘Real’ Men: Naturalising Masculinity
• 6 Processes of Normalisation: Distancing ‘Unreal’ and ‘Proximate’ Violence
• 7 Heterosexuality, Gender and Adulthood: Justifications of Violence
• 8 A Change is Gonna Come?
• Bibliography
• Index