JS-25
Social Movements and Gender Violence: What They Do, What They Can?
RC32 Women in Society
Language: English
The panel aims at discussing the today’s role of social movements, and more specifically women’s movements, in preventing gender and domestic violence. We invite papers based on empirical analysis showing and/or comparing different local or transnational examples of anti-violence collective action.
As a result of their collective action and strategies, women’s movements achieved significant milestones in terms of introducing the issue of gender violence prevention into public discourse and laws. Women’s movements were also active actors in the development of gender equality agenda and in supporting women’s rights, putting the problem of men’s violence against women into the spotlight through continuous advocacy work.
However, the movement’s efforts in facing prevailing power hierarchies and improving the women’s condition through criminal justice system have contributed to underestimating the practical side of anti-violence activism. Helplines and counselling centres are often underfinanced, and very few of women’s organisations running those services receive public support.
Moreover, the problem of gender violence did not turn from the structural/political to the cultural. Still, much needs to be done in terms of changing gender socialisation patterns as well as promoting cultural frameworks encouraging real equality and symmetrical relationship within families and couples. In this sense, we posit that movements should shift focus from the intervention to prevention, in response to still unsolved gender violence problem.
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