THE BATTERED WOMEN’S MOVEMENT

More Than Just Another Chapter in History

By Kristi Kysar

Domestic Violence Awareness month is here again this October, and it implies many of the same truths we say every year- that its meaning runs deeper than fundraising events and purple ribbons. Bringing awareness to domestic violence and celebrating the bravery of survivors is about showing those suffering in silence that they have a community that will support them in one of the hardest endeavors they may ever have to endure. It shows survivors who have long set out on their healing journey that we value the sacrifices they made to end the cycle of abuse in their lives. Hopefully, it even shows abusers who look on from a distance that their violence is not tolerated by our society, and they will be held accountable.

Every year we gather more support even if it’s just one more individual who shows up to tell the world that they will be part of the solution and end the silence. But this struggle to raise awareness around the importance of protecting survivors and ending the cycle of violence didn’t start with SAFE. Even though SAFE has been here since 1982, the fight for rights of survivors began much earlier.

Understanding our history is looking deeper into the roots of a movement that changed the world one individual at a time. An unconventional, unofficial political revolution that began with small groups of women sitting down at their kitchen tables. They took us to the supreme court, congress, and changing the very laws they were told they would never see changed in their lifetime, maybe ever- the Battered Women’s Movement.

The world before the Battered Women’s Movement was an unjust place for women. We were beaten, raped, and controlled. When cries came for justice, the federal government’s response was that to interfere would be infringing on a husband’s right to run his own household. We were told that we didn’t deserve our own rights and were equated with property. Even in the very early beginnings, states began providing protections to wives not because it was the right thing to do, but because they felt that it would satisfy female citizens to be given legal protections from abuse and they would not be encouraged to demand their right to vote. Alabama was the first state to rescind the legal right of men to beat their wives in 1981. While Maryland was actually the first state to criminalize “wife-beating” in 1882, more than 100 years since the United States declared independence as its own country. One hundred years of dismissed cases of intimate partner violence, marital rape, and femicide before governments began providing protections as a means of delaying the inevitable suffrage movement.

The suffrage movement brought about a new chapter for women. The laws that oppressed us for so long had lifted that pressure only slightly and we could see the light on the other side. That small opening of hope and faith propelled so many to see that if it was possible for women to be so hated by our society and still fight for our rights, we could get more than a vote at the polls. We could fight for future generations to be recognized as more than accessories in their husband’s homesteads. Civil rights, anti-war, and black liberation movements that challenged the country in the 1950s and 1960s would later propel this incentive to lay the groundwork for the growing feminist movement.

Even after securing the right to vote in 1919, it would take a long time to break the barriers that our society had secured with laws, culture, and discriminatory practices. Some would even say we’re still breaking those barriers over 100 years later.

Up until the 1960s, cases of women being killed by abusive husbands were rarely recognized for what they were. When it was acknowledged, battered women and their abusers were considered deviants or psychotic anomalies. Both supporters and detractors suggested that cases of abuse were exaggerated or not true “victimhood.”

Why can’t she just leave?

Why did she go back?

The most sympathetic audiences scrutinized women’s response to abuse as foolish failures, even other women. The fear of being hurt or trapped makes us all deeply anxious and partially accounts for this response. Being helpless is one of the most unsettling feelings a human can experience, and the existence of battered women soberly compels all women to confront the possibility that it could happen to them. Blaming battered women for their choices made under duress was more socially acceptable than acknowledging the imbalance of power that exists in intimate relationships.

Since 1975, the ongoing struggle of the battered women’s movement has been to name the hidden and private violence in women’s lives, declare it public, and provide safe havens and support.

Why Doesn’t She Just Leave?

If police were called to a violent incident at a home, they were quick to dismiss acts of violence from men as “marital problems” even if it was written into law that hitting your wife is a criminal offense, no matter the justification from the husband. Women couldn’t get so easily get divorced without evidence of the cause or even have their own bank account, which would have been small given the significant wage gap for the limited amount of work they could obtain.

Police officers called to domestic violence attacks would trivialize a woman’s fears and solutions would include walking the husband around the block and sending him home. Judges would minimize the problem and frequently intimidate victims with statements such as “You wouldn’t want to ruin his reputation over marital problems.” That’s only the tip of the iceberg but dives much deeper when you consider discriminatory hiring practices and the lack of protections in workplace sexual harassment cases. Laws were created for protection but weren’t enforced, we were given rights, but they weren’t equitable, and our society shunned battered women because “they could have just left.”

Moving Forward

Something needed to change, and someone needed to help but it wasn’t the men in charge who were going to do it. The Battered Women’s Movement is such a unique chapter in history because it wasn’t an overall organized effort. There are no Battered Women’s Marches or large demonstrations or protests. It was a domino effect of one woman at a time deciding she had had enough of watching the world punish us for being weaker and more vulnerable than men when they had put us in that position in the first place. The first shelters started opening in the early 70s and were not federally funded or registered non-profits. They were created by women who opened the doors of their own homes for battered women seeking safety. Women and their children slept on couches, in spare rooms, or even on the floor if it meant they were protected from the harm their husbands would bring if they were to come home from one more bad day. Stories, whispers, and secret messages were passed along to help some and inspire others. More inspired women meant a louder voice and one by one, women in communities would gather to advocate to their local legislators and community resources for help to make real change possible. By the end of the 1970s, there were more than 250 shelters operating across the country. In 1980, there was the formation of Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs. One of the most popular is known as The Duluth Model, a Coordinated Community Response (CCR) with guidelines for various kinds of agencies. This is where our awareness tool, the Power and Control Wheel, was developed. By 1986, over 50% of states passed laws making it easier to receive civil protection from intimate partner violence.

A Turning Point

 It is truly admirable that without a central hub of communication and networking, women across the country saw what changes were brought about just one county over or in a friend’s home state and advocated to see those changes in their own communities. By the 1980s, changes really became apparent on the federal level. In 1988, The Victims of Crimes Act (VOCA) is amended to make awards available for the first time to victims of domestic violence. The following year saw that the United States had at least 1200 battered women programs that could shelter up to 300,000 women and children per year.

If I had only one opportunity to share a win with the grassroots activists of the early stages of the Battered Women’s Movement, I’d hope to tell them about our biggest victory to date. In 1994, Congress passed The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and it is signed into law by President Bill Clinton. This legislation acknowledges the severity of crimes like domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking. The act created the Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) to administer funding for programs aimed at supporting survivors and holding offenders accountable. The law has been reauthorized many times, with each reauthorization strengthening and expanding its provisions, such as creating new programs and protections for victims.

Conclusion

Just a little over one hundred years ago, our predecessors fought for our right to have a voice. Several generations later, we stood on their shoulders as we fought for our right to be protected. That fight is far from over and the suffering of those who did not live to see a world that would protect them from violence in their homes will not be forgotten. But as we wear our purple ribbons this month, let’s not forget how far we’ve come and let it encourage us to move forward. Maybe you or someone you love has benefited from this movement without knowing the work required to be able to provide you with the resources that are available now. Maybe you’ve been fortunate enough to have gone through life, never having been affected by domestic violence. But if we want to provide a better future for all individuals, no matter their class, race, or sex, we must look at the journey that’s been taken to continue forward and finally break the cycle of violence.

Sources

Schecter, Susan. Women and Male Violence: The Visions and Struggles of the Battered Women’s Movement.

Delaware Coalition Against Domestic Violence

Louisiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence