Securing Women's Lives

Workshop success leads to upcoming publication

Prato Workshop Attendees

Constructions of risk and understandings of security in responses to IPV was at the centre of a recent roundtable organised by MGFV project. As contemporary constructions of risk and security tend to accept or tolerate IPV, the roundtable formed to challenge the status quo understandings of risk and question how we can redefine and relocate the risk of IPV, and particularly the risk of IPH, as a critical site of national security and safety.

Bringing together scholars from across four continents, the workshop forms part of the ARC DP project Securing Women’s Lives.

Sparking discussions and feedback that were central to the workshop, attendees presented research from pre-drafted chapters. Led by Professor Jude McCulloch, Dr Kate Fitz-Gibbon, Professor Sandra Walklate and Professor JaneMaree Maher, the workshop will result in a Routledge Edited Collection.

By adopting a gendered lens, the workshop and edited collection challenge the separation of the private terrorism of everyday life routinely experienced by women across the globe from public violence.

Contributions within the Edited Collection will question how a reconstruction of risk can be operationalised to better ensure the safety and security of women.

Here the law has been and continues to be a key site for reform and this Edited Collection will provide the opportunity to examine the extent to which current and proposed responses to IPV across multiple jurisdictions provide the necessary security for women to live free from intimate violence.

EDITED COLLECTION
Intimate Partner Violence, Risk and Security: Securing Women’s Lives in a Global World (eds. Fitz-Gibbon, Walklate, McCulloch & Maher).

Key Questions of Risk and Security

What would a national and international security agenda that took gender seriously look like?

How can women’s security be improved by the design and delivery of risk-informed approaches to intimate partner violence which reflect women’s real lives?

And how might an agenda that takes women’s private security as seriously as national security impact on the prevention of intimate partner homicide?

Look for the answers to these questions and more in the upcoming Edited Collection.

Why don't they just leave?

A typical question about Intimate Partner Violence answered

Implicit and explicit factors hinder women’s ability to leave situations of IPV

Major Barriers:

Fear for safety
Gender roles
Isolation from others
Patriarchal attitudes
Lack of support services
Financial dependency
Family pressures
Children

Intimate partner violence (IPV) against women has long been regarded as a private and domestic issue rather than as a matter of public and community concern.

Prejudice against women who have experienced of IPV is historically enshrined in Western societies across establishments of law enforcement and the judiciary, and in wider cultural settings.

Implicit and explicit factors hinder women’s ability to "just leave" situations of IPV. This has been a long road from victim-blaming, to psychobiological explanations of victim behaviour, and finally to an appreciation of the rational considerations at play when women seek to leave violent relationships.

While the extant research has made significant inroads in exploring these considerations, there is still work to be done.

Project Updates

Interpreting in family violence settings

Description: Workshop for interpreters employed in family violence setting

Conducted by our newest team member Dr Karla Elliott, the presentation at the workshop described the current situation of family violence within Australia, and was entitled 'Setting the scene and understanding family violence'.

The presentation set the tone for the day and received accolades from all in attendance.

Dr Karla Elliott

Adolescent Family Violence Project

Description: Project focused on violence perpetrated by young people against family members

Data collection phase has now been completed. We spoke to 45 practitioners and experts in the field, and collected over 100 survey responses from people who had experienced AFV.

Currently, we are in the process of writing up the report for this project. Read more about the project here.

Events

Temporary Migration and Family Violence:
An analysis of victimisation, vulnerability and support

Thursday, 12 October 2017, 11am-1pm
Canapes to be served from 12pm

Monash University Law Chambers
555 Lonsdale St, Melbourne

RSVP

CONGRATULATIONS

Imogen Richards (Criminology, MonashGFV team member) has just been awarded a

commendation in the Faculty of Arts Postgraduate Publication Prize Competition.

Link: “‘Flexible’ capital accumulation in Islamic State social media’ 2016, Critical Studies on Terrorism, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 205-225.

Opportunities

2018 Honours Bursaries

PhD Scholarship