25 November - International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women
Posted on: 25 November 2020 by Prof Sandra Walklate, Eleanor Rathbone Chair of Sociology. in Blog
Throughout her career, Prof Sandra Walklate has maintained an interest in criminal victimisation. She is currently conjoint Professor of Criminology at the University of Monash, Melbourne, Australia and has recently worked on a number of 'Shadow Pandemic' working papers on domestic violence during COVID-19. Sandra's Monash University report on 'lone wolf' terrorism won the best paper award from the Division of Critical Criminology of the American Society of Criminology (2020).
During 2020, the global pandemic has focused public discourse on several issues not least of which has been violence against women. Led by calls from the UN, the consequences of lockdowns/shelter in place/stay at home directives, alongside requirements for social distancing for women living with violence, have been placed at the forefront of a wide range of policy and practice concerns across the globe.
It is without doubt the case that the circumstances of 2020 have put many people under stress, as a result of losing loved ones, and/or through job losses, or living with the ongoing threat of financial insecurity. When these kinds of stresses become added ingredients in lives where co-existence with an abusive partner might mean surviving in the space afforded by routine time spent apart, we begin to get an insight into what those same lives might look like when those spaces are taken away. The insecurities felt by us all right now; about money, jobs, health, and food supplies are the kinds of insecurities felt routinely by women and children living their lives with an abusive partner. These insecurities have been multiplied when the spaces afforded by work, school or meeting with friends and so on, are taken away as they have been during 2020 and has been evidenced by increased calls to support services. However, to be clear; the global pandemic may have heightened insecurities for those living with such violence(s) but it did not cause them.
For example, in 2019, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reported that in 2017 some 87,000 women and girls were intentionally killed worldwide and over 50% of those deaths occurring at the hands of a partner or ex-partner. That report concluded that the ‘home’ remains the most dangerous place for women (and children). Remember these are yearly figures. These deaths occur each and every year. Hoeffler and Fearon (2014) estimate that intimate partner violence costs the global economy in the region of $4.4 trillion a year, or just over 5% of the global GDP. Add to these figures the costs of the lives lost routinely as a result of the long term impact of men’s violence(s) whether that be physical, psychological, financial or a combination of all three, violence(s) that pervade thousands of women’s and children’s lives on a daily basis, the costs add up. These experiences also contribute to many women’s deaths before their time. In recent work have called this ‘slow femicide’.
How do we change this? One way is for academics and policy makers to focus on the who, where, when, and how of such violence(s), and to consider the interconnecting answers to these questions.
My recent work has been striving to challenge criminology to do this: to search for these interconnections. This was the purpose of a paper written with my colleagues at Monash University on ‘lone wolf’ terrorism (Springer) which won the best paper award from the Division of Critical Criminology of the American Society of Criminology (2020) and earlier award winning papers published in Criminology and Criminal Justice (Sage) and the Asian Journal of Criminology (Springer).
Website homepage of the American Society of Criminology's (ASC) Division on Critical Criminology & Social Justice
Eliminating violence(s) against women requires recognising during war time, peace-time and times post-conflict, that on the street, behind closed doors, and at work, violence is gendered. Men are the predominant perpetrators, not exclusively but mostly. Moreover, the man who perpetrators violence in the street, as a terrorist or not, is also likely to be the man who is violent at home against his partner.
Calling violence to account, wherever and whenever it occurs, is something we can all do. It is one step we can all take towards eliminating violence(s) against women.
Prof Sandra Walklate is the Eleanor Rathbone Chair of Sociology in the Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology and conjoint Chair of Criminology at Monash University, Australia.
In 2020, Professor Walklate along with Professor Barry Godfrey and Dr Jane Richardson were funded by the ESRC to investigate the challenges posed by the lockdown in responding to domestic abuse, the policy innovations put in place in response to these circumstances by the police and the courts, and the potential learning opportunities for practice that might ensue. Read the working papers on the Shadow Pandemic.
If you are interested in studying within the Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology visit our study pages.
Keywords: Sociology, Domestic violence, lone wolf terrorism, Violence against women, Research, Pandemic, Social Justice.