Prioritizing violence against women: The new agenda-setting of women's organizations' in Greece

Since the 1995 UN Conference in Beijing, violence against women became a “common advocacy position” of women’s and human rights movements. As the previously separate transnational networks begun to converge and mutually transform each other, women’s rights were  reconceptualized as human rights. The new  “master frame” united  formerly divided oganizations  in the West and the developing world and enabled activists to bridge cultural differences and build transnational campaigns aiming at increased global awareness.  Shifting their original focus of orientation through various adaptations, most women’s organizations in Greece  “localized” this “global frame” and became instrumental in defining violence against women as a major social problem of the Greek society. This paper explores both organizational and substantive aspects of this recent transformation. The first involves the impact of national/ transnational fora and committees in which organizations’  members participated, the successive frame utilization within state/society parameters, the implementation of EU directives on gender mainstreaming, the critical role of the General Secretariat on Gender Equality in developing the “National Programme on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women ”, the institutional involvement of the Ministry of Justice, Transparency and Human Rights- the cooperation of women’s activist groups, the establishement of special agencies.  The substantive dimension emphasizes the elimination of violence against women as a constitutive cultural and social cannon, its reconceptualization from  civil to  human right, the reexamination of the public/private divide, the redefinition of violence to incorporate all forms (physical, sexual,psychological,verbal) and types (physical abuse,sexual harassment, rape, trafficking), and more than anything else,an attempt to raise public awareness on domestic violence. With basic targets being law improvement, the legal support of victims, the development of counselling centers and shelters, the prioritization of  violence against women  as a violation of human rights  was perceived  as  a prerequisite for substantive gender equality.