International Responses To Gendered Based Domestic Violence Gender Specific and Socio Cultural Approaches Dongling Zhang

You might also like

Download as pdf or txt
Download as pdf or txt
You are on page 1of 70

International Responses to Gendered

Based Domestic Violence Gender


Specific and Socio Cultural Approaches
Dongling Zhang
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmeta.com/product/international-responses-to-gendered-based-domestic-
violence-gender-specific-and-socio-cultural-approaches-dongling-zhang/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Gender-Based Violence in Migration Interdisciplinary,


Feminist and Intersectional Approaches 1st Edition Jane
Freedman

https://ebookmeta.com/product/gender-based-violence-in-migration-
interdisciplinary-feminist-and-intersectional-approaches-1st-
edition-jane-freedman/

The Routledge International Handbook of Domestic


Violence and Abuse 1st Edition John Devaney

https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-routledge-international-
handbook-of-domestic-violence-and-abuse-1st-edition-john-devaney/

Religion in Gender Based Violence Immigration and Human


Rights 1st Edition Mary Nyangweso

https://ebookmeta.com/product/religion-in-gender-based-violence-
immigration-and-human-rights-1st-edition-mary-nyangweso/

Principles of Gender-Specific Medicine: Sex and Gender-


Specific Biology in the Postgenomic Era 4th Edition
Marianne J. Legato

https://ebookmeta.com/product/principles-of-gender-specific-
medicine-sex-and-gender-specific-biology-in-the-postgenomic-
era-4th-edition-marianne-j-legato/
Disability Gender and Violence over the Life Course
Global Perspectives and Human Rights Approaches 1st
Edition Sonali Shah (Editor)

https://ebookmeta.com/product/disability-gender-and-violence-
over-the-life-course-global-perspectives-and-human-rights-
approaches-1st-edition-sonali-shah-editor/

The Routledge Companion to Gender, Media and Violence


1st Edition Karen Boyle

https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-routledge-companion-to-gender-
media-and-violence-1st-edition-karen-boyle/

Religious Responses to Violence Human Rights in Latin


America Past and Present 1st Edition Alexander Wilde

https://ebookmeta.com/product/religious-responses-to-violence-
human-rights-in-latin-america-past-and-present-1st-edition-
alexander-wilde/

Dante and Violence Domestic Civic Cosmic 1st Edition


Brenda Deen Schildgen

https://ebookmeta.com/product/dante-and-violence-domestic-civic-
cosmic-1st-edition-brenda-deen-schildgen/

The Istanbul Convention Domestic Violence and Human


Rights 1st Edition Ronagh Mcquigg

https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-istanbul-convention-domestic-
violence-and-human-rights-1st-edition-ronagh-mcquigg/
INTERNATIONAL RESPONSES TO
GENDERED-​BASED DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

This edited volume represents a joint effort by international experts to analyze the prevalence and nature of
gender-​based domestic violence across the globe and how it is dealt with at both national and international
levels. With studies being conducted in 20 different countries and 4 distinct regions, the contributors to
this volume shed light on the ways in which contextual particularities shape the practices and strategies
of addressing the socio-​cultural and legal problem of gender-​based domestic violence in the countries or
regions where they do research. Special attention is devoted to developing countries where there is a lack of
a consistent legal definition of gender-​based domestic violence and where violence against women is widely
considered a private matter. The authors of the chapters share a common goal of raising public awareness
of the significance in nuanced local experiences of women and other individuals from gender and sexual
minority groups facing gender-​based violence.
Furthermore, the authors attend, analytically, to the newly emerging, overlapping influences of COVID-​
19 and global warming. Their research findings acknowledge and provide a detailed account of how the two
ecological and socio-​economic crises can combine to produce economic devastation, disconnect victims from
necessary social services and assistance, and create a large degree of panic and uncertainty. In addition, they
intend to offer insights into next steps to not only adjust existing public policies, legislation, and social services
to the ever-​changing national and global contexts, but also to make new ones.
The book is intended for a wide range of scholars (both professors and students) and practitioners in a large
number of areas, including but not limited to criminal justice, criminology, law, human rights, social justice,
social work, nursing, sociology, and political or public affairs.

Dongling Zhang, PhD, is an Assistant Professor from the Department of Global Languages, Cultures and
Societies Webster University, the United States of America. He earned his PhD degree in Justice Studies
from Arizona State University. His research interests include university entrepreneurship education, micro-​
enterprise development program in China’s urban areas, social capital theories, and feminist theories. His
current research focuses on the power dynamics of entrepreneurship, exploring various forms of collective
and interpersonal violence instigated by the overwhelming influences of entrepreneurial ethos. It specifically
examines the institutions through which a social body—​the entrepreneur—​is continually structured and
transformed. These institutions include the family, neighborhood, labor market, government, and more.

Diana Scharff Peterson, PhD, has nearly 20 years of experience in higher education teaching in the areas
of research methods; comparative criminal justice systems; race, gender, class, and crime; statistics; criminology;
sociology; and drugs and behavior at seven different institutions of higher education. She has been the
chairperson of three different criminal justice programs over the past 20 years and has published in the areas
of criminal justice, social work, higher education, sociology, business, and management. Her research interests
include issues in policing (training and education) and community policing, assessment and leadership in
higher education, family violence, evaluation research, and program development. She is the co-​editor of
Domestic Violence in International Context published by Routledge in 2017.
ADVANCES IN POLICE THEORY AND
PRACTICE SERIES
Series Editor: Dilip K. Das

Honor-​Based Violence: Policing and Prevention


Karl Anton Roberts, Gerry Campbell, and Glen Lloyd

Policing and the Mentally Ill: International Perspectives


Duncan Chappell

Security Governance, Policing, and Local Capacity


Jan Froestad and Clifford Shearing

Police Performance Appraisals: A Comparative Perspective


Serdar Kenan Gul and Paul O’Connell

Policing in France
Jacques de Maillard and Wesley G. Skogan

Women in Policing around the World: Doing Gender and Policing in a Gendered
Organization
Venessa Garcia

Police Behavior, Hiring, and Crime Fighting: An International View


Edited by John A. Eterno, Ben Stickle, Diana Peterson, and Dilip K. Das

Translational Criminology in Policing


Edited by The George Mason Police Research Group with David Weisburd

Exploring Contemporary Policing Challenges: A Global Perspective


Sanja Kutnjak Ivković, Jon Maskály, Christopher M. Donner, Irena Cajner Mraović & Dilip Das

International Responses to Gendered-​Based Domestic Violence


Gender-​Specific and Socio-​Cultural Approaches
Edited by Dongling Zhang and Diana Scharff Peterson
INTERNATIONAL RESPONSES
TO GENDERED-​BASED
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
Gender-​Specific and Socio-​Cultural
Approaches

Edited by Dongling Zhang and Diana Scharff Peterson


Designed cover image: © Getty Images / Klaus Vedfelt
First published 2023
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 selection and editorial matter, Dongling Zhang and Diana Scharff Peterson;
individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Dongling Zhang and Diana Scharff Peterson to be identified as the authors of the
editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance
with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
ISBN: 978-​1-​032-​20529-​8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-​1-​032-​20530-​4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-​1-​003-​26404-​0 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/​9781003264040
Typeset in Bembo
by Newgen Publishing UK
This is presented as a collection of gender-​based domestic violence victims’ and survivors’ voices
and dedicated to the UN and Women’s UN Report Network who inspired this work.
CONTENTS

List of Figures  x
List of Images  xi
List of Tables  xii
List of Contributors  xiii
Foreword by Lois A. Herman  xx
Series Editor’s Preface by Dilip K. Das & Vicente Riccio  xxiii
Acknowledgments  xxv

Introduction: An Interfaces Approach to the Global Problems of


Gender-​Based Domestic Violence  1
Dongling Zhang and Diana Peterson

SECTION ONE
North and South America  7

1 The Myth of the Universal Woman: The (White) Feminist Fantasy and the
Invisibility of Violence against Women of Color  9
Roksana Badruddoja

2 Paradigm Shift in Latin American Legislation over Time: From Domestic


Violence Laws to Comprehensive Legislation on Gender-​based Violence
against Women (1990–​2020)  18
Nancy Madera

3 Gender-​Based Violence and Femicide in Mexico: Why Is the Law Failing to


Protect Mexico’s Women?  39
Emily Acevedo
viii Contents

4 Violence against Women in Mexico City: A Cry for Change  51


Flor Avellaneda and Luis R.Torres

5 Severe Licking: Calypso Considers Domestic Violence  58


Alison Mc Letchie and Daina Nathaniel

6 Gender-​Based Violence in the English-​Speaking Caribbean: Chronicling


Guyana’s Progress  70
Aneesa A. Baboolal

7 Intersectionality as a Means to Understanding Violence against


Women in Belize  80
Kiesha Warren-​Gordon

8 The Dangers of Being a Woman in Nicaragua  87


Pamela Neumann

SECTION TWO
Asia and Oceania  101

9 Response to Domestic Violence: India  103


Arundhati Bhattacharyya

10 Combating Domestic Violence and Sexual and Gender-​Based Violence


during Conflict: The Case of the Rohingyas in Myanmar and Bangladesh  113
Tonny Kirabira and Fiza Lee-​Winter

11 Malaysia Responding to Domestic Violence: A Corpus-​Assisted Discourse


Analysis  126
Mohd Muzhafar Idrus, Habibah Ismail, Bahiyah Dato Haji Abd Hamid and
Ruzy Suliza Hashim

12 From Private Matter to Public Problem: Relocating Gender-​Based


Violence in China  135
Dongling Zhang

13 Social Taboos and Legal Constraints: The Status of Domestic Violence in


Kuwait  145
Alanoud AlSharekh and Nour AlMukhled

14 “Mobilizing for Punishment”: Legal Activism, Women’s NGOs and the


Grassroots in Lebanon  154
Sirin Knecht

15 Domestic Violence in Thailand: An In-​Depth Examination of How Culture


and Resource-​Seeking Barriers Impact Victim Safety  166
Tanya Grant
Contents ix

16 Domestic Violence in the Micronesian Context: Past and Future Challenges  175
Hiroaki Matsuura

SECTION THREE
Africa  185

17 Domestic Violence in Ethiopia: An Overview  187


Fikresus Amahazion

18 Between Reality and Expectations: Tackling Domestic Violence in Egypt  197


Hiam Elgousi

19 Domestic and Sexual Violence among University Students in Ghana  210


Michelle L. Munro-​Kramer, Lindsay M. Cannon, Eugene K. M. Darteh,
Ruth Owusu-​Antwi and Sarah D. Compton

20 Domestic Violence, Human Rights, and Reform in Mauritania  220


Nabil Ouassini and Anwar Ouassini

SECTION FOUR
Perpetrators and Victims (Intersectionality: Race/​Ethnicity,
Gender, Migrant, and Refugee Populations)  229

21 Responding to Intimate Partner Violence against Women in


Spain: Perpetrators’ Accounts as a New Variable to the Ecological
Approach Model  231
Mostafa Boieblan

22 Why Domestic Violence Remains Under-​Reported within Migrant


Communities in Germany  239
Fiza Lee-​Winter

23 Ritualized Experiences of Pain: Love and Domestic Violence among


Transgender Women in Brazil  250
Thiago de Lima Oliveira and Verônica Alcântara Guerra

24 Socio-​Legal Responses to Immigrant and Refugee Male Batterers in the


EU and MENA Regions  258
Chuka Emezue

Appendix I: IPES Global Meetings 273


Appendix II: IPES Publications 275
Index  280
FIGURES

2.1 Legislative instruments used to address violence against women in Latin America  21
2.2 Discursive framing in Latin American legislation on VAW, DVAW, GBV, and DV  22
2.3 Definitions of violence in Latin American VAW, DVAW, GBV and DV legislation  23
2.4 Scope of personal relations covered under domestic violence definitions in
Latin American legislation  24
2.5 Strength of the policy approach in VAW, DVAW and DV laws in Latin America
over time (1990–​2020)  26
2.6 Laws that modified the strength of the comprehensive policy approach to violence
in Latin American legislation (1990–​2020)  27
2.7 Institutional reforms in Latin American legislation on DV, DVAW, and VAW  28
2.8 State capacity provisions in Latin American legislation on DV, DVAW, and VAW  28
IMAGES

10.1 5W Dashboard by GBV Sub Sector, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, OCHA


(UNFPA, 2017)  119
17.1 Ethiopia geographic setting  188
TABLES

2.1 Comprehensive policy approach toward VAW  25


8.1 Crimes against adult women in Nicaragua  89
8.2 Forensic evaluations in domestic violence cases in Nicaragua  90
8.3 Formal charges in domestic violence cases in Nicaragua  90
8.4 Court resolution of domestic violence cases in Nicaragua  90
11.1 Top 100 words in NGOs and government reports based on the word list  130
11.2 Collocates of domestic violence in the reports written by NGOs and the
government  131
CONTRIBUTORS

Alanoud AlSharekh, PhD, is the Director of Ibtkar Strategic Consultancy, leading the
Empowering Kuwaiti Women in Politics training program, and has held senior consultative and
teaching positions in academic, governmental, and non-​governmental institutions in the Arabian
Gulf and abroad. Her research won the Arab Prize for best publication in a foreign journal in 2014
and includes books such as The Gulf Family and Popular Culture and Political Identity in the Arab Gulf
States, examining the persistent importance of family and tribe in modern Gulf politics and society.
She was awarded the knighthood of the National Order of Merit by the French Government in
2016 for her dedication to improving women’s rights in the region. She is currently an associate
fellow at the Chatham House MENA Program and a research fellow at Arab Gulf States Institute
in Washington. She has been named one of the 100 most influential and inspiring women in the
world by the BBC for 2019.

Emily Acevedo, PhD, is an Associate Professor in Political Science at California State University,
Los Angeles. Her research focuses on public security threats in Mexico, gender-​based violence and
femicide in Mexico, and institutional reform and strengthening democratic accountability and
transparency.

Fikresus Amahazion, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at the National College of Arts and Social
Sciences (Eritrea). His work focuses on Human Rights, Political Economy, and Development. His
recent work,“Short-​sighted Solutions:An Examination of Europe’s Response to the Mediterranean
Migration Crisis”, is available in Deadly Voyages: Migrant Journeys across the Mediterranean (2019),
published by Lexington Books.

Flor Avellaneda is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Houston Graduate College of
Social Work. Her dissertation builds on her experiences with the intersectional challenges faced
by minority women. Using a mixed-​methods approach, her dissertation examines the relationship
between migration (in-​country vs. transnational), intimate partner violence, and health, in Mexican
migrant women. She completed bachelor’s and master’s degrees in social work, and prior to her
doctoral studies, she served as an advocate for victims of domestic violence at the Family Abuse
Center, Executive Director of AVANCE, and faculty member of the Baylor University Diana
xiv List of Contributors

R. Garland School of Social Work, all in Waco,TX. Upon completion of her PhD, Flor will pursue
a tenure-​track faculty position at a Tier One research institution.

Nour AlMukhled is a Kuwaiti social activist focused on humanitarian issues with an emphasis on
women’s rights. She has been focusing on ending gender-​based violence since 2017, a few months
after earning her BA degrees from GUST, through managing Kuwaiti-​based nonprofit Eithar, a
civil society organization that advocates for women’s rights and the prevention of violence against
women. Meanwhile, Nour is the project manager of Abolish 153, a Kuwaiti-​based NGO that aims
to end honor killings, in collaboration with the Gibran Chair of the University of Maryland. In
the course of the project, they have been working to fight against stereotypes against women as
well as putting their efforts into aiding the state to increase the percentage of women in leadership
positions.

Aneesa A. Baboolal, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Crime and Justice
Studies at the University of Massachusetts—​Dartmouth. Her research interests include violence
against women across intersecting identities, including race/​ethnicity, immigrant, and religious
minority status. She has conducted studies examining Caribbean women’s experiences of intimate
partner violence in ethnic enclave communities and her most recent work explores gendered and
racialized violence against Muslims in the United States.

Arundhati Bhattacharyya, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science


at the University of Burdwan in West Bengal, India. She received her PhD from the University of
Calcutta, India. She has been invited to the United Nations, Geneva, to present her research on
Indian rural women and has authored two monographs.

Mostafa Boieblan, PhD, is an Associate Professor/​a part-​time instructor at the Polytechnic


University of Madrid, and the Alfonso X el Sabio University, Spain. His research interests include
issues in embodied cognition, discourse analysis, gender ideology, conceptual metaphor, and
domestic violence against women. He is also a member of the organizing committee of Empirical
Methods in Cognitive Linguistics workshops. He also worked as a research assistant at The Library
of Social Science, New York City. He has published an article in a scientific journal “Dimensions
of Coupling Source and Target Domains in Multimodality-​Based and Orientational Metaphors”.

Roksana Badruddoja, PhD, is a Professor of Sociology and Women’s and Gender Studies
at Manhattan College. She teaches courses on feminist research methods, women of color in
the United States, feminist activism, race and resistance, codes of gender, social inequalities, and
representations of women. Dr. Badruddoja’s research in the areas of race and ethnicity, sexu-
ality, gender, religion, and culture, and how these impact “South Asian” American women has
been published in numerous peer-​reviewed journals. These include the National Women’s Studies
Association Journal, the International Journal of Sociology of the Family, and the International Review of
Modern Sociology. She is the author of Eyes of the Storms: The Voices of South Asian-​American Women
and the editor of “New Maternalisms”:Tales of Mother (Dislodging the Unthinkable).

Lindsay M. Cannon, MPH, MSW, is a PhD student in Sociology at the University of


Wisconsin—​Madison, and a demography trainee at the Center for Demography and Ecology. Her
work focuses on the intersection between sexual and reproductive health, gender-​based violence,
and substance use. She has been involved with research in Ghana over the last three years, including
facilitating the training of peer educators for a sexual violence prevention program.
List of Contributors xv

Sarah D. Compton, PhD, MPH, is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of


Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Michigan Medical School. Dr. Compton has a
background in public health where she has developed deep professional and research ties to Ghana,
especially in the fields of sexual and reproductive health and emergency medicine.

Bahiyah Dato Haji Abd Hamid, PhD, is Associate Professor at the Centre for Literacy and
Sociocultural Transformation, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Universiti Kebangsaan
Malaysia. Her research interests are language and gender, gender issues, identity construction, code
alternation and code choice, and discourse and semiotics analysis.

Eugene K. M. Darteh, PhD, MPhil, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Population


and Health as well as the Dean of Students of the University of Cape Coast, Ghana. Dr. Darteh
has worked as an academic and a researcher for the past 13 years. Over the last eight years, his
research has focused on reproductive health issues among youth, aging, and the aged, and child and
women’s health. This work has been geared toward contributing to the discourse on making the
world a better place and achieving some of the Millennium Development Goals (now Sustainable
Development Goals).

Chuka Emezue, PhD, MPH, MPA, is a certified health education specialist and Assistant
Professor at the Department of Women, Children, and Family Nursing at Rush University College
of Nursing. Emezue earned a PhD in Nursing, a Master of Public Health (MPH), and a Master
of Public Affairs (MPA) from the University of Missouri—​Columbia. His research is focused on
tailoring culturally relevant, gender-​and age-​responsive interventions for partner abusers and/​or
survivors of partner violence, with particular emphasis on male victims and abusers in immigrant
and rural communities. His primary interests are the safety and well-​being of male survivors of
partner violence, early prevention of partner violence, and reducing post-​intervention recidivism
among recently rehabilitated partner abusers. He is currently adapting and disseminating mobile
health interventions targeting dating violence among rural adolescent males to inform sexual,
emotional, and reproductive health decisions among vulnerable or difficult-​to-​reach youth at the
margins of traditional care.

Hiam Elgousi, PhD, gained her MSc in Development Training and Education from the University
of Wolverhampton, United Kingdom. In her PhD research, she examined the role and influence of
contemporary scholars (Ulma) on Arabian women’s rights with a focus on Islamic women living
in Egypt. She has over 15 years’ experience in community development, training, and research
in the Middle East and the UK. She has undertaken various consultancies and held several posts
including the social mobilization officer with UNICEF—​Sudan and was also a visiting lecturer
with the Arab Academy for Science and Technology—​Egypt—​in cooperation with Virginia Tech
University, the United States, between 2006 and 2008. Currently she is working as a consultant and
research associate with several organizations in Egypt and the UK.

Tanya Grant, is an Assistant Professor at St. Mary’s University, San Antonio,Texas. She holds a PhD
in Criminal Justice from Capella University, an MS in Criminal Justice from the University of New
Haven, and a BA in Psychology from Fairfield University. Dr. Grant’s teaching interests include
domestic and sexual violence and the intersection of pop culture, law enforcement’s response to
domestic violence, and domestic violence advocacy. Dr. Grant’s field experience includes juvenile
justice, corrections, and domestic violence advocacy. Dr. Grant is a member of the New England
Council on Crime and Delinquency, The Northeastern Association of Criminal Justice Sciences,
and Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences.
xvi List of Contributors

Verônica Alcântara Guerra holds a PhD in Anthropology. Her MSc thesis at the Federal
University of Paraiba focused on transgender women in small towns of northeastern Brazil. In her
doctoral dissertation, she did research with migrant transgender women focusing on the returning
process to Brazil. Her actual research is on the political production of transfeminicide in Brazil.

Ruzy Suliza Hashim, PhD, is a Professor of Literature at the Centre for Literacy and
Sociocultural Transformation, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Universiti Kebangsaan
Malaysia (UKM). She currently serves as Director of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Press.

Habibah Ismail, PhD, is a Lecturer at the Faculty of Major Language Studies, Universiti Sains
Islam Malaysia. She has a doctoral degree in Linguistics (University of Sydney), focusing on gender
issues in Malaysian sports news discourse based on media’s examination of written and visual texts.

Mohd Muzhafar Idrus, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia. His
research interests include discourse analysis and literature. He is a reviewer for a number of Taylor
& Francis’ journals including Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, Cogent Education, and Cogent Arts
and Humanities.

Sirin Knecht is a PhD candidate at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. Her
current research focuses on the realization of transferred women’s rights and empowerment claims
NGOs are negotiating and practicing in their daily life as institutions and project implementation
actors.

Tonny Kirabira is currently a Visiting Professional in the Office of Public Counsel for Victims at
the International Criminal Court. He holds an LLM in International Human Rights Law from the
University of Notre Dame (United States), and a bachelor of Laws degree from Uganda Christian
University (Uganda). He has attained specialized training from the European University Institute
(Italy), RFK Training Institute (Italy), and Lucerne Academy for Human Rights Implementation
(Switzerland). He was a recipient of theVLIR-​UOS scholarship under the Sustainable Development
and Human Rights Law program at the University of Antwerp in Belgium. He was admitted to
the Ugandan Bar in 2014 and practices as a Barrister and Solicitor in the High Court of Uganda
and all courts of judicature. Tonny worked as a legal officer at Vision Group in Uganda. He has
been involved in international human rights work, including participation in UN Human Rights
Council sessions in Geneva (Switzerland). He is conducting research for a PhD in Law at the
University of Portsmouth (United Kingdom), focusing on transitional justice and international
criminal prosecution. He has teaching responsibilities which focus on criminal law and human
rights at the undergraduate level.

Fiza Lee-​Winter is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Development Research and Development
Policy (IEE) at the Ruhr-​Universität Bochum (RUB) in Germany where she is conducting her
research project on the compatibilities of a human rights-​based approach (HRBA) to refugee pro-
tection with Asian regionalism, using the Rohingya Refugee Crisis as a case study. Her research
interests include international human rights law, transnational governance, refugee and forced
migration studies, and gender-​based violence. She is also a member of the Institute for International
Law of Peace and Armed Conflict (IFHV) at the RUB, and an associate member of the SYLFF-​
Mikrokolleg on Forced Migration. Fiza Lee has obtained her Master of Arts in Human Rights and
Democratization from EIUC/​Global Campus of Human Rights and RUB, and a Bachelor of Arts
in Criminal Justice from the University of Northern Colorado. She was recently awarded a PhD
Research funding and support by the Konrad-​Adenauer-​Stiftung in Germany.
List of Contributors xvii

Alison Mc Letchie, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at South Carolina State University where she
teaches anthropology and sociology in the Department of Social Sciences. She obtained her PhD
in Sociology in 2013, an MA in Anthropology, and Certificate in Museum Management in 2003
from the University of South Carolina (USC). Her primary research interest includes race and eth-
nicity, economic inequality, music, and religion. Some of her current projects include investigations
of Caribbean Carnivals in the Carolinas, behavioral and sexual health among Historically Black
Colleges and Universities (HBCU) students, inclusion and diversity on HBCU campuses, and a
study of Caribbean Catholic music.

Hiroaki Matsuura, PhD, is Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs of Shoin University
in Japan and a member of the World Committee of Tourism Ethics of the United Nations World
Tourism Organization. He is an economist and demographer who is interested in the intersection
between human rights and child health and welfare. Before joining Shoin, he was Lecturer at the
University of Oxford’s School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies. Hiroaki received his ScD in Global
Health and Population from Harvard University. He is an editorial board member of the Child
Abuse Review and international advisor of the Sociology of Illness and Health among others.

Michelle L. Munro-​Kramer, PhD, CNM, FNP-​BC, is an Assistant Professor, the Suzanne


Bellinger Feetham Professor of Nursing, a Johnson & Johnson Nurse Innovation Fellow, and the
Director of the Office of Global Affairs at the University of Michigan School of Nursing. She is
trained as a family nurse practitioner and certified nurse midwife and has over a decade of research
experience related to gender-​based violence. For the last five years, she has been working exten-
sively with colleagues in Ghana to explore interventions for gender-​based violence prevention
within the university setting.

Nancy Madera is a sociologist (Universidad de Buenos Aires) and a doctoral candidate in Political
Science from the School of Government and Politics of the Universidad Nacional de San Martín
(Argentina). Her dissertation thesis discusses the role of international human rights norms and its
implementation on the paradigm shift regarding legislation on violence against women in Latin
America. With publications on women’s substantive representation, institutional mechanisms for
the advancement of women, women’s human rights agenda, and the feminist movement in Latin
America, she is currently a member of the interdisciplinary research group “Gender, (In)equal-
ities and rights in tension”—​sponsored by the Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales
(CLACSO)—​and the Swiss School of Latin American Studies (SSLAS).

Daina Nathaniel, PhD, is a Professor of Communication, Media and Cultural Studies and Director
of Undergraduate Programs in the Knight School of Communication at Queens University of
Charlotte. A native of Trinidad and Tobago, her research interests center around culture, identity,
nationhood, and digital inclusion. Most recently she has been exploring how the Caribbean dias-
pora use social media to create a sense of connection to their various homelands. Her primary
research area is cultural studies which looks at the relationships between cultures within societies,
marginalized communities, issues of power and domination, the postcolonial experience, issues of
race and ethnicity between disparate groups, and all the attendant challenges that arise as people
try to find a sense of place within their various environments: home, school, work, church, com-
munity, and online.

Pamela Neumann, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Sociology in the Department of Social Sciences
at Texas A&M International University (Laredo, TX). Her research examines the politics of gender
violence law, everyday state practices, feminist activism, and women’s perceptions of laws and legal
xviii List of Contributors

institutions in Nicaragua. Her work has been published in journals such as Gender & Society, Social
Forces, Law & Society Review, and Latin American Politics & Society. She earned her PhD in Sociology
from the University of Texas at Austin in 2016 and subsequently held a post-​doctoral fellowship
at Tulane University in the Stone Center for Latin American Studies (2016–​2018) and a Visiting
Assistant Professor position at Bucknell University (2018–​2019). She also holds an MA in Latin
American Studies (UT-​Austin) and a BA in Political Science (Trinity University—​San Antonio).

Anwar Ouassini, PhD, joined Delaware State University as an Assistant Professor of Sociology and
Criminal Justice in Fall 2016. Dr. Ouassini earned his doctorate in Sociology from the University
of New Mexico in 2013. His research interests include social movements, political sociology, and
comparative criminal justice systems. He is currently working on projects that explore the inter-
section of race and religious identities in the Arab World, the relationship between civil society,
social movements, and democratic development in West Africa, and Criminal Justice Reform
in the Maghreb. Dr. Ouassini teaches courses in Sociological Theory, Complex Organizations,
Contemporary Issues in Criminal Justice, and Sociology of Culture.

Nabil Ouassini, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at Prairie View A&M University in Texas. He
received his PhD in Criminal Justice from Indiana University at Bloomington and his research
interests include sociology, criminology, legitimation and legitimacy, and criminal justice reform
in the Arab world.

Ruth Owusu-​Antwi, MD, is a specialist psychiatrist in the Department of Psychiatry at Komfo


Anokye Teaching Hospital as well as an adjunct lecturer at the Kwame Nkrumah University of
Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana. As one of the few mental health professionals in Ghana,
Dr. Owusu-​Antwi has become acutely aware of the health effects of gender-​based violence. She
has recently developed the Abuse Clinic at Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Kumasi, Ghana,
to provide comprehensive care for the physical health, mental health, reproductive health, psycho-
social, and legal needs of individuals who have experienced gender-​based violence.

Thiago de Lima Oliveira is a doctoral student in Social Anthropology at the University of São
Paulo and visiting researcher at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His current research is on gender
and development projects in Amazon. He is also the author Sobre o Desejo nômade, a monography
on sex and small towns in northeastern Brazil.

Luis R. Torres, PhD, is Associate Professor, Director of the Center for Drug and Social Policy
Research, and Humana Endowed Chair for the Social Determinants of Health in the Graduate
College of Social Work (GCSW) at the University of Houston. He is also Associate Professor of
Behavioral and Social Sciences in the University of Houston College of Medicine. His research
focuses on health disparities, social determinants of health, and co-​occurring mental health, sub-
stance use, and medical disorders. Dr. Torres is also actively involved in research and community
engagement initiatives aimed at building community resilience, with a focus on Hispanics, African
Americans, and other minority communities. His work has been funded by SAMHSA, NIDA,
ACF, and other federal and private funders. He has traveled and worked extensively in Latin
America and has ongoing research collaborations in Mexico, El Salvador, and Puerto Rico.

Kiesha Warren-​Gordon, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Criminal Justice/​Criminology at Ball


State University where she also serves as the Director of the African American Studies Program.
Dr. Warren-​Gordon’s work centers on critical approaches of community engagement while
List of Contributors xix

working with marginalized communities. Her research explores the intersection of race, class, and
gender as it relates to violence and intercultural conflict. Currently, Dr.Warren-​Gordon is active in
several research projects including critical pedagogical approaches to teaching positive community
involvement outside of traditional criminal justice educational norms; violence against women of
Belize. Dr. Warren-​Gordon is also active in the criminal justice professional community. She cur-
rently serves as the Past President of the Midwest Criminal Justice Association. She is also Senior
Faculty Fellow for Indiana Campus Compact.
FOREWORD

International Responses to Interpersonal Violence: Gender-​Specific and


Socio-​Cultural Approaches
Lois A. Herman
Managing Director WUNRN
Women’s UN Report Network
Https://​orcid.org/​0000-​0002-​3726-​8081
ENDING VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN, INTERPRSONAL VIOLENCE—​RHETORIC
TO REALITY—​DUE DILIGENCE
……………………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………..
In today’s complex and volatile world, tools and strategies to address interpersonal gender vio-
lence are even more urgent and serious than ever. This book uniquely reaches an expansive range
of countries and cultures. In the recent past, we have seen shocking increases in violence against
women and girls, interpersonal violence, due to the COVID-​19 pandemic, guns and weapons from
civil society to law enforcement, conflicts and wars and resulting migration, immigration, refugee
status, and internal displacement. Political will and public will must be involved and accountable
for addressing gender-​based violence in all dimensions, throughout the world. Climate change and
environmental challenges are increasing and can catalyze gender-​based violence.
A major issue impacting gender violence is technology, and online violence. Online is the new
front line for violence against women and girls, and it has increased exponentially during COVID-​19
and the lockdowns. Online violence is an epicenter of risk, intersectional and intergenerational, and
compounding multiple forms of violence against women and girls, including trafficking.
_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​______​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​
WHAT IS THE MOST RISKY, DANGEROUS HUMAN SITUATION IN THIS WORLD?
TO BE A WOMAN
WHAT GROUP OF PEOPLE IN TODAY’S WORLD SUFFER THE MOST
PERSECUTION? GIRLS
WHY IS VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND GIRLS SO GLOBALLY PREVALENT,
YEAR AFTER YEAR, IN SPITE OF LAWS AND COUNTRY COMMITMENTS?
Foreword xxi

This book will explore new strategies, best practices, multisector engagement.
WHY IS THERE SUCH A BARRIER ON GENDER VIOLENCE BETWEEN THE
PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SPHERES?
WHY DOES VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN CONTINUE TO BE A WEAPON
OF WAR?
WHEN STATES HAVE AN OBLIGATION UNDER INTERNATIONAL HUMAN
RIGHTS LAW TO INVESTIGATE AND PROSECUTE HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS
AND PROVIDE REMEDY FOR VICTIMS, WHY SO OFTEN, PERVASIVELY, DOES THIS
NOT HAPPEN? A former UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers:

When crimes and human rights violations go unpunished, and assuredly those affecting
women, then States should be held accountable for contributing to a culture of impunity
and lawlessness. When certain types of crimes, such as honor crimes, affect disproportion-
ately one gender, go UNPUNISHED, the State CAN, in addition, be held accountable for
disciminatory treatment under the law.

YET, SPECIFIC MEMBER STATES,AS INTHIS AUDIENCE, HAVETAKEN A LEADERSHIP


POSITION ON VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND ARE CREATING LANDMARK
EFFORTS FOR PREVENTION AND REDRESS ON VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
AND WILL BE INSTRUMENTAL IN FORMING OUR FRAMEWORK AND ACTION
PLAN FORWARD.
WHY DO NEGATIVE GENDER STEREOTYPES EXACERBATE DISRESPECT,
INEQUALITY, EVEN VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND GIRLS?
WHY IS THERE NO MECHANISM FOR FOLLOW-​UP BY COUNTRIES AFTER
THE REPORTS OF THE MISSION OF THE SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR ON VIOLENCE
AGAINST WOMEN?
WHY HAS VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND GIRLS BECOME NORMALIZED
IN SO MANY PARTS OF THIS WORLD?
WHY DO TRADITIONS AND CULTURAL PRACTICES THAT PERPETUATE
VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND GIRLS CONTINUE WITHOUT REDRESS?
WHY DOES THE MEDIA GRAVITATE TO SENSATIONAL VIOLENCE AGAINST
WOMEN AS ACID BURNING, FEMICIDE?
WHY ARE COUNTRY GENDER BUDGETS REPEATEDLY SHORTCHANGED AS
FOR DATA, MONITORING, ENFORCING LAWS AND PROGRAMS ON GENDER
VIOLENCE?
SO,WE HAVE THE CEDAW CONVENTION—​No specific VAW component, but a General
Recommendation.
WE HAVE CEDAW COMMITTEE REVIEWS OF COUNTRY REPORTS.
WE HAVE THE UPR—​UNIVERSAL PERIODIC REVIEW—​UPR Info:

The issue of violence against women was by far the most prominent one on recommendations
made by countries on women’s rights.......Within violence, the issue that received the more
attention was domestic violence...which was followed by Female Genital Mutilation and
rape, and also sexual violence.

WE HAVE THE DECLARATION ON VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN—​not an enforceable


document.
WE HAVE THE BEIJING PLATFORM—​AND +​5, +​10, +​15, +​20 +​25 +​
xxii Foreword

WE HAVE UN SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION 1325 ON WOMEN, PEACE,


AND SECURITY.
WE HAVE THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS, AND INCLUDING SDG 5
ON GENDER EQUALITY
WE HAVE THE INTERNATIONAL DAY ON VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN—​
NOVEMBER 25.
WE HAVE THE UN SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR ON VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
WE HAVE THE 16 DAYS CAMPAIGN ON VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN.
WE HAVE SO MANY RESOLUTIONS ON VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AS AT
THE UN HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL, THE COMMISSION ON THE STATUS OF
WOMEN, AND THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY.
WE HAVE THE EUROPEAN UNION ISTANBUL CONVENTION ON DOMESTIC
VIOLENCE.
WE HAVE THE SECRETARY-​ GENERAL’S ONGOING PROGRAM TO UNITE
AGAINST VAW.
THERE ARE CONTINUED CONFERENCES, SEMINARS, COLLOQUIA ON
VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN, BUT WE MUST BREAK THE IMPASSE WITH NEW
FORCE, DUE DILIGENCE, CLOSING THE GAP!
NOW it is time to get serious with an ACTION PLAN, BASED ON RESEARCH,
ANALYSIS, LEGAL STRUCTURES, COMMITMENTS on VIOLENCE AGAINST
WOMEN that can be specific, tangible, and monitored. It is time to move from rhet-
oric to reality for MEMBER STATE ENGAGEMENT and ACOUNTABILITY, for
advocacy, with a well-​strategized Framework for Action.
THIS BOOK IS A VALUABLE TOOL TO EFFECTIVELY ADDRESS
INTERPERONAL VIOLENCE, IN A MULTITUDE OF WAYS, AROUND THE
WORLD, URBAN TO RURAL, INTERGENERATIONAL.
SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE

While the literature on police and allied subjects is growing exponentially, its impact upon day-​to-​
day policing remains small.The two worlds of research and practice of policing remain disconnected
even though cooperation between the two is growing. A major reason is that the two groups speak
in different languages.The research work is published in hard-​to-​access journals and presented in a
manner that is difficult to comprehend for a layperson. On the other hand, the police practitioners
tend not to mix with researchers and remain secretive about their work. Consequently, there is
little dialog between the two and almost no attempt to learn from one another. Dialogs across the
globe, among researchers and practitioners situated in different continents, are of course even more
limited.
I attempted to address this problem by starting the IPES, www.ipes.info, where a common plat-
form has brought the two together. IPES is now in its 31st year. The annual meetings which con-
stitute the most major annual event of the organization have been hosted in all parts of the world.
Several very impressive publications have come out of these deliberations and a new collaborative
community of scholars and police officers has been created whose membership runs into several
thousands.
Another attempt was to begin a new journal, aptly called Police Practice and Research:An International
Journal PPR, that has opened the gate to practitioners to share their work and experiences. The
journal focuses on issues that help give scholars and police officers a single platform. PPR has been
edited under PES auspices from 2000 to 2020. It is certainly evidence of growing collaboration
between police research and practice, given that PPR began with four issues a year, expanded into
five issues in its fourth year, and it is now issued six times a year.
Clearly, these attempts, despite their success, remain limited. Conferences and journal publications
do help create a body of knowledge and an association of police activists but cannot address sub-
stantial issues in depth. The limitations of time and space preclude larger discussions and more
authoritative expositions that can provide stronger and broader linkages between the two worlds.
It is this realization of the increasing dialog between police research and practice that has
encouraged many of us—​my close colleagues and I connect closely with IPES and PPR across
the world—​to conceive and implement a new attempt in this direction. This led to the idea of a
book series, Advances in Police Theory and Practice, that seeks to attract writers from all parts of
the world. Further, the attempt is to find practitioner contributors. The objective is to make the
xxiv Series Editor’s Preface

series a serious contribution to our knowledge of the police as well as to improve police practices;
the focus is not only on work that describes the best and most successful police practices but also
challenges current paradigms and breaks new ground to prepare police for the 21st century. The
series seeks comparative analysis that highlights achievements in distant parts of the world as well
as one that encourages an in-​depth examination of specific problems confronting a particular
police force.
This book contributed to the Advances in Police Theory and Practice Series is an important
addition to the studies of gender and violence. The chapters cover diverse topics and all continents
with a galaxy of authors. This volume is a truly cooperative global enterprise in which scholars
discuss gender-​based domestic violence, its impact on different societies and contexts, and pol-
icies that must be followed to deal with these phenomena. The editors have done a great job in
gathering researchers from different countries in order to understand the reasons for this kind
of violence, and the potential solutions to reduce it. For these reasons, the themes analyze the
impact of the laws promulgated to fight gender violence, and the contextual limitations to their
enforcement. This is a contemporary and relevant topic because there is a growing movement to
broaden the legal framework to protect women and other minorities. However, different elements
interfere in this process such as poverty, culture, race, migrant populations, transgender abuse, eld-
erly populations, the impact of COVID-​19, and the fragilities of States in enforcing laws to curb
domestic violence.
It has been an objective of IPES since its foundation to build bridges among academics and
police practitioners. This book endorses this goal but goes beyond because it will build bridges
among scholars, police officers, social workers, lawyers, judges, attorneys, public managers, and civil
rights activists. For these reasons, this volume is a timely contribution to the field of gender studies
and violence.
The global influence and service of IPES was recognized by the United Nations, and as a result,
IPES is in Special Consultative Status with the United Nations. An account of the IPES meetings
and publications is presented below.
Dilip K. Das, PhD, Professor
Founding President, International Police Executive Symposium, IPES, www.ipes.info
Founding Editor-​in-​Chief, Police Practice and Research: An International Journal, PPR, www.tand​
fonl​ine.com/​gppr (2000–​2020)
Series Editor, Advances in Police Theory and Practice; Interviews with Global Leaders in
Policing, Courts, and Prisons and Routledge IPES Co-​publication
Professor of Criminal Justice, Coppin State University, Baltimore, Maryland
Vicente Riccio, PhD, Associate Professor, Federal University of Juiz de Fora (Brazil), IPES book
editor.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A book that takes several years to complete in such extraordinary circumstances of the COVID-​
19 pandemic owes much to others. We would like to gratefully acknowledge our intellectual debt
to our family members, friends, colleagues, and institutions whose support and contributions are
indispensable and, therefore, highly appreciated.
This work represents joint efforts by over 30 scholars, practitioners, and human rights activists
across the globe to explore best practices to deal with and end historic cycles of gender-​based
domestic violence.Therefore, we would like to thank all authors and their families for their cooper-
ation and contributions.
We are deeply debted to Ellen Boyne and Kate Taylor at Routledge who showed initial interest
in this work and prepared it for publication with meticulous care and efficacy. We also gracefully
acknowledge Drs. Dilip K. Das and Vicente Riccio’s interest and eagerness to include our work
in the book series titled “Advances in Police Theory and Practice”. There is no way that we could
have been able to complete this book without them guiding and supporting us through the entire
long yet extremely rewarding process.
Heartful thanks go as well to the Global Languages, Cultures, and Societies Department at
Webster University (St. Louis, USA) and the Program of Social Justice and Human Rights at
Arizona State University—​your help and support are of great importance to this final product.
On the personal side, we want to thank Qiao Ying Li, Bernessa Sum Zhang, Landon Peterson,
Colten Peterson, Hayden Bruns, and Arolsen Bruns. Without all your support and understanding,
we could not have done this.
newgenprepdf

INTRODUCTION
An Interfaces Approach to the Global Problems of
Gender-​Based Domestic Violence

Dongling Zhang and Diana Peterson

In this introduction, we elaborate on an interfaces approach to gender-​based domestic violence


(Wilcox et al., 2021) as an alternative to United Nations’ and other Western-​centric (notably indi-
vidualist) interpretations. We suggest that an interfaces approach enables international academics,
feminist activists, and policy/​development specialists among others to employ gendered and socio-
logically informed understandings of the local and global contextual factors that necessarily shape
individual experiences of abuse. The notion of interfaces, as it is explored by the authors whose
works comprise this edited volume, raises a number of important research questions and these
suggest a variety of next steps for academic researchers and social practitioners who wish to improve
the safety and healing of individuals surviving or who have survived years of physical, emotional,
and sexual abuse. Only by shedding light on the context-​dependent particularities of gender-​based
domestic violence can researchers and activists hope to influence the legislators and policymakers
who are best positioned to rapidly redefine legal and socio-​cultural contexts to effectively address
the often multi-​generational cycles of abuse taking place within households, families, and intimate
relationships around the world today.
The authors of the chapters that follow draw attention to the particularities of the contexts in
which global quests to redress, prevent, and eradicate gender-​based domestic violence occur. With
research projects that are situated in 20 different countries and four distinct regions, they conducted
their research with the shared goals of: first, better understanding domestic violence as a global
phenomenon and; second, identifying best practices and strategies for breaking cycles of violence.
After carrying out comprehensive examinations of the incidences and prevalences of gender-​
based domestic violence in the countries or regions in which they work, these authors composed
detailed accounts of their findings, ones that render visible the ways in which local contexts can
and do shape individual experiences of violence.Their conclusions reinforce pre-​existing critiques
of UN terminology (see, e.g., Schneider, 2000) and other dominant, Western-​centric discourses,
while also advancing the conceptualization/​reconceptualization of the phenomenon of gender-​
based domestic violence.
Furthermore, their research has added another layer of analysis to gender-​based domestic vio-
lence research by recognizing and exploring the impacts of social positions. Differences resulting
from social positions—​including those based upon gender identity, sexuality, class, race, ethnicity,
indigeneity, immigration status, and the intersections thereof—​all can influence the ways in which
a personal story about violence is experienced and responded to by other individuals (Bhardwaj
& Miller, 2021; Brassard et al., 2015; Crenshaw, 1991; Zhang & Zhao, 2018). At the edges of their

DOI: 10.4324/9781003264040-1
2 Dongling Zhang and Diana Peterson

thinking, and especially timely, the contributors to this volume acknowledge that the COVID-​19
pandemic and climate change have overly burdened those who were, already, disproportionately
victimized by gender-​based domestic violence.
Taken together, this edited volume demonstrates joint efforts by international scholars,
practitioners, and activists to not only challenge the decontextualized, universal perspective that
tends to see non-​Western experiences of violence “…as extraneous to the experiences of violence”
of Western victims (Carty & Mohanty, 2015, p. 9) but also expand the understanding by means of
illuminating the multiplicity in experiences of abuse. Contingent on distinct local contexts and
social positionality, survivor experiences can vary in terms of the survivor-​perpetrator relationship,
effects and risk factors of violence, types of violence, and responses from the authorities as well as
other individual and organizational stakeholders.
In lack of a one-​size-​fits-​all concept that can accurately capture all possible meanings and
experiences of violence, we choose to use the term gender-​based domestic violence to refer to
harmful threats or acts disproportionately directed at women as well as other individuals from
gender and sexuality minority groups. This contrasts with UN understandings of the term, in
which domestic violence also gets called domestic abuse or intimate partner violence and gen-
erally refers to acts or threats of violence to exert power and control over a partner, child or
children, parent(s), or other member(s) of a shared household (United Nations, n.d.). The term
domestic violence has been widely recognized and used in international scholarship (see, e.g., Fulu
& Miedema, 2015; Zhang, 2009), and keeping it as part of our term is good for clarity and consist-
ency. Meanwhile, reaffirming and reconceptualizing domestic violence as a gendered experience
highlights that such experience is fueled by hegemonic, heteronormative masculinity and sustains
the normalcy of patriarchal society (Connell, 2005;Wilcox et al., 2021). In addition, “how violence
is conceptualized and defined will determine what is visible and seen and known…and what is and
is not done about it through policy and practice” (Itzin, 2000, p. 357). Hence, we choose not to
give a clear-​cut definition of the term because the overall goals of this edited volume are to: first,
avoid a decontextualized, simplified understanding centering around one individual’s threats or acts
of violence against another; second, keep the concept open-​ended so that it can accommodate and
account for any possible incident of violence indicative of varied local contexts.
The term of our choice can enable research and praxis to respond to the transnational feminist
scholars’ call (see, e.g., Guthery et al., 2019; Nayak, 2003) to examine nuanced local experiences
through the lens of various systemic forces. Good understandings of gender-​based domestic vio-
lence are not necessarily gained through homogeneous experiences of violence but rather through
distinct localized ones that exemplify various modes of domination and oppression. By providing
these, researchers, practitioners, and feminist activists are able to develop a capacity to uncover
and explicate victims’ disparate traumatic realities of violence, and more importantly, the injustice
of the system that consistently undermines their safety, freedoms, and well-​being. The interfaces
approach (Wilcox et al., 2021), which we will introduce and discuss in detail in the next section,
comes to serve as a viable way to build the capacity to attend, analytically, to social positions, local
particularities, transnational processes, and the intersections thereof. Also, adopting the approach
will allow researchers and other investigators to open many new, and definitely important, lines of
inquiry for social change and reform on the structural and institutional conditions sustaining the
historical cycles of violence.

Thinking about Gender-​Based Domestic Violence through Interfaces


Experiences of gender-​ based domestic violence cut across the divides of home/​ work, pri-
vate/​public, and individual/​institution. Such intersectional injustice necessitates a gendered and
Introduction 3

sociologically informed understanding through which to not only problematize the status quote
of victims’ lived realities as individualistic and universal all the time, but also to offer new insights
into public policies, laws, and social practices which engage all individual and organizational
stakeholders in becoming aware of and responsible for social, and more specifically gender, justice.
As suggested by Wilcox et al. (2021), the concept of interfaces can be seen and utilized as a heuristic
tool—​a useful means by which researchers, practitioners, and activists would be able to scrutinize
how experiences of gender-​based domestic violence span the divides and thereby illuminate the
ways in which the dichotomous practices, ideas, and spaces connect and separate the experiences
simultaneously. Thinking of interfaces invites us to (re-​)theorize structured and institutionalized
boundaries by considering “not only the boundaries that separate two fields but also that which
connects them” (p. 704). Drawing up the idea of an interface, we can hold boundary and con-
nectivity simultaneously by exploring “a whole range of general social processes present across a
wide variety of…processes such as boundary-​work, boundary crossing, boundaries shifting, and
the territorialization, politicization, relocation, and institutionalization of boundaries” (Lamont &
Molnar, 2002, p. 168).
Informed by the idea of interfaces, we lean to the conviction that special attention must be
devoted to four interfaces that are essential to identifying and understanding the socio-​legal phe-
nomenon of gender-​based domestic violence: home/​work; business/​society; men/​women; and
mind/​body. A gendered examination of domestic and work spheres makes clear systemic gender
inequalities—​the patriarchal social structure in which work (public) sphere is naturally associated
with men and, by contrast, home (private) sphere with women (Acker, 2004; Miller & Borgida,
2016). Furthermore, the home may not be safe for victims who experience gender-​based domestic
violence. In particular, the overlapping globalized socio-​ecological crises of COVID-​19 and cli-
mate change have caused major economic devastation, disconnected people from social resources
and assistance systems, and created a great deal of uncertainty and panic. Scholars have found
that such conditions very likely either worsened situations in families where violence had been a
problem or stimulated violence in homes where there had been none before (see, e.g.,Sharma &
Borah, 2022; Sultana, 2021).
In addition, the lines between domestic and work spheres have never stopped shifting, as both
spheres continue to evolve. Many of these shifts happening in the domestic/​work interface are
gendered (Wilcox et al., 2021). Women’s entry, en masse, into the labor force is a good case in
point: despite a possibility of negotiating and redistributing responsibilities for childcare and house-
work between wives and husbands, many working mothers unfortunately come home to a second
shift of unpaid work. Home and work spheres intrude on each other in these cases. As a result,
it is pertinent to look at perceptions and experiences of these overlapping boundaries, and more
significantly, how individual perceptions and experiences not only are shaped by but also shape
global and local contexts. Researchers, activists, and practitioners should particularly be mindful of
whether and in what ways this overlapping can amplify gender-​based domestic violence and be
responded to by victims.
Considering the interface between business and society requires us to be attentive to the
globalized diffusion of neoliberal discourses featured by its emphasis on the value of free market
competition as the most efficient way to allocate resources and its commitment to minimal state
intervention in both economic and social affairs. Neoliberal agendas attempt to de-​center the
government’s role toward providing public services for people in need and thereby shift the
“responsibility for norm and standard setting from public institutions to private institutions, from
state actors to local actors…[, wherein gender-​based] domestic violence is no exception” (Wilcox
et al., 2021, p. 708). In this process, as non-​governmental organizations are “depoliticized, defunded,
and forced to partner with corporate organizations”, the public socio-​legal issue of gender-​based
4 Dongling Zhang and Diana Peterson

domestic violence is relocated to the private business area (p. 708). Indeed, neoliberal politics and
accompanying strategies of privatizing responsibilities have been woven into the fabric of society.
This poses another few significant research topics and questions that the contributors to this volume
delve into and we believe future inquiry needs to address still further: what role should government
and non-​governmental organizations play in addressing the problem of gender-​based domestic
violence in particular and gendered social structure in general that supports it? What role does
the government have in setting and maintaining conditions for non-​governmental organizations’
responses to gender-​based domestic violence? What are victim perceptions and experiences of all
these roles?
Feminist scholars have gradually come to a consensus that domestic violence is a form of patri-
archal oppression that men exert against their intimate partners (Walby & Towers, 2018). Gendered
power relations within intimate relationships and broader society are now understood to be essen-
tial to socio-​cultural circumstances in which men’s use of violence against women is tolerated
and even facilitated (Harvie & Manzi, 2011). In the case of men/​women interfaces, we suggest
instead that we should view the phenomenon of gender-​based domestic violence as a manifest-
ation of structural and institutionalized gender power relations that reproduce unequal gendered
hierarchies and reify the subordination of women and gender and sexuality minorities. In doing
so, research on gender-​based domestic violence can go beyond notions of individual determinants
(i.e., individual characteristics of perpetrators and victims), instead focusing on gendered socio-​
cultural norms and structures where experiences of violence are normalized and enabled (Kuskoff
& Parsell, 2021).
Moreover, bringing to the forefront and retheorizing the gendered nature of violence allows us
to be attentive to intersections between gender-​based domestic violence and other forms of socio-​
cultural inequalities (Wilcox et al., 2021).Violence against LGBTQ+​community members, which
is often overlooked and under-​researched, is a good case in point. This means the problems with
notions of the gender binary must be noted. Importantly, in speaking of gender-​based domestic
violence, non-​binary gender and sexuality identities should be taken into account so as to further
recognize and investigate the multiplicity in experiences of violence. Drawing upon the idea of
the men/​women interface, the chapters included in this edited volume leverage a gender-​focused,
intersectional approach to promote an understanding of how multiple forms of gendered social
relations can intersect in order to support the subordination of women and gender and sexuality
minority groups, particularly in the form of gender-​based domestic violence.
Throughout the world of traditional Western philosophy, the mind-​body problem was often
conceptualized from the male perspective (e.g., Gatens, 2003). The feminine perspective had been
largely marginalized till Simone de Beauvoir published her seminal book, The Second Sex in 1953.
Feminist scholars and activists since then have been engaged in a conflicting relationship with
earlier philosophical ideas. In the book, de Beauvoir challenged explicitly the patriarchal social
values and ordering that problematizes the female body as the othering of the male and therefore
links it with body, emotion, instinct, and nature, as opposed to men who were thought of as the
embodiment of intellectuality and rationality. In the case of women and other individuals from
gender and sexual minority groups facing gender-​based violence, the patriarchal subjugation of
the feminine and the (related) mind/​body duality reinforce the image of women (and gender and
sexual minorities) being depicted as victims (Wilcox et al., 2021). That is to say, the multiplicity in
women’s life experiences is reduced to the one-​dimensional daily reality of victimization.
The mind/​body interface provides inspiration for calling into question the body-​rationality
dichotomy, and more specifically, institutionalized knowledge structures that privilege and nor-
malize the association of masculinity with rationality at the cost of gender inequalities.The gender-​
aware and sociologically informed approaches that the authors in this volume collectively adopt
Introduction 5

can draw attention to victim’s bruised bodies as a political body with great potentials to play an
active role in negotiating with and even disrupting the social norms and values of patriarchal
society (Wilcox et al., 2021). The feminine and emotional bodies, particularly their experiences of
masculine violence, must be recognized as the centrality of multiplicity and be thought of as having
agency for making social change.
This points to opportunities, available to victims and survivors of gender-​based domestic vio-
lence, for agency—​a concept that refers to “the meaning, motivation, and purpose people bring to
their activities” (Kabeer, 1999, p. 438). This definition queries frequent assumptions that escaping
violence is the only viable and best option for victims, and staying with perpetrators means lack
of agency and victimhood. As a matter of fact, agency is not simply about observable acts of direct
resistance but rather consists of a vast array of varyingly direct and subtle strategies, including
“bargaining and negotiation, deception and manipulation, subversion and resistance, and more
intangible, cognitive processes of reflection and analysis” (p. 438). From this perspective of agency,
a victim’s decision to stay with a perpetrator could be made through deliberately weighing up all
available options and then willingly selecting the most expedient one serving the best interests of
his/​her own and other family members in extremely constrained situations. In these situations,
the question for research on victims’ and survivors’ agency is how they could cope with restrictive
and even oppressive contexts. In response to this question, the studies in this volume reveal how
victims and survivors of gender-​based domestic violence can and do negotiate with and transform
the domestic, workplace, and societal arrangements that oppress and exploit them.

References
Acker, J. (2004). Gender, capitalism, and globalization. Critical Sociology, 30 (1), 17–​41. https://​doi.org/​
10.1163/​156​9163​0432​2981​668.
Bhardwaj, N., & Miller, J. (2021). Comparative cross-​national analyses of domestic violence: Insights from
South Asia. Feminist Criminology, 16 (3), 351–​365. https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​15570​8512​0987​635.
Brassard, R., Montminy, L., Bergeron, A., & Sosa-​Sanchez, I. (2015). Application of intersectional analysis to
data on domestic violence against Aboriginal women living in remote communities in the province of
Quebec. Aboriginal Policy Studies, 4 (1), 3–​23. https://​doi.org/​10.5663/​aps.v4i1.20894.
Carty, L., & Mohanty, T. (2015). Mapping transnational feminist engagements: Neoliberalism and the politics
of solidarity. In Baksh, R., & W. Harcourt (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of transnational feminist movements (pp.
82–​115). Oxford University Press. Https://​doi.org/​10.1093/​oxfordhb/​9780199943494.013.010.
Connell, R. W. (2005). Change among the gatekeepers: Men, masculinities, and gender equality in the global
arena. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 30 (3), 1801–​1825. https://​doi.org/​10.1086/​427​525.
Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the margins: Internationality, identity politics and violence against women of
color. Stanford Law Review, 43, 1241–​1299. http://​dx.doi.org/​10.2307/​1229​039.
De Beauvoir, S. (1953). The second sex. Knopf.
Fulu, E., & Miedema, S. (2015).Violence against women: Globalizing the integrated ecological model. Violence
Against Women, 21 (12), 1431–​1455. https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​10778​0121​5596​244.
Gatens, M. (2003). Towards a feminist philosophy of the body. In Cahill, A. J., & J. Hansen (Eds.), Continental
feminism reader (pp. 275–​286). Rowan and Littlefield.
Guthery, A., Jeffrey, N., Crann, S., & Schwab, E. (2019). Using transnational feminist theory to expand domestic
violence understandings. In Collins, L. H., Machiza, W. A. S., & J. K. Rice (Eds.), Transnational psych-
ology of women: Expanding international and intersectional approaches (pp. 165–​183). American Psychological
Association. https://​doi.org/​10.1037/​0000​148-​008.
Harvie, P., & Manzi, T. (2011). Interpreting multi-​agency partnerships: Ideology, discourse, and domestic vio-
lence. Social & Legal Studies, 20 (1), 79–​95. https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​0964 663910384907.
Itzin, C. (2000). Gendering domestic violence: The influence of feminism on policy and practice. In Itzin C.,
& J. Hammer (Eds.), Home truths about domestic violence: Feminist influences on policy and practice (pp. 356–​380).
Routledge.
6 Dongling Zhang and Diana Peterson

Kabeer, N. (1999). Resources, agency, achievements: Reflections on the measurement of women’s empower-
ment. Development and Change, 30 (3), 435–​464. https://​doi.org/​10.1111/​1467-​7660.00125.
Kuskoff, E., & Parsell, C. (2021). Striving for gender equality: Representations of gender in “progress” domestic
violence policy. Violence Against Women, 27 (3–​4), 470–​488. https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​10778​0122​0909​892.
Lamont, M., & Molnar,V. (2002).The study of boundaries in the social sciences. Annual Review of Sociology, 28,
167–​195. https://​doi.org/​10.1146/​annu​rev.soc.28.110​601.141​107.
Miller, A., & Borgida, E. (2016). The separate spheres model of gendered inequality. PLoS One, 11: e0147315.
https://​doi.org/​10.1371/​jour​nal.pone.0147​315.
Nayak, M. (2003). The struggle over gendered meanings in India: How Indian women’s networks, the Hindu
nationalist hegemonic project, and transnational feminists address gender violence. Women & Politics, 25 (3),
71–​96. https://​doi.org/​10.1300/​J014v2​5n03​_​04.
Schneider, E. M. (2000). Battered women and feminist lawmaking.Yale University Press.
Sharma, A., & Borah, S. (2022). COVID-​10 and domestic violence: An indirect path to social and economic
crisis. Journal of Family Violence, 37, 759–​765. https://​doi.org/​10.1007/​s10​896-​020-​00188-​8.
Sultana, F. (2021). Climate change, COVID-​19, and the co-​production of injustices: A feminist reading
of overlapping crises. Social & Cultural Geography, 22 (4), 447–​ 460. https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​14649​
365.2021.1910​994.
United Nations. (n.d.). What is domestic abuse? Retrieved June 21, 2022, from www.un.org/​en/​coro​navi​rus/​
what-​is-​domes​tic-​abuse.
Walby, S., & Towers, J. (2018). Untangling the concept of coercive control:Theorizing domestic violent crime.
Criminology & Criminal Justice, 18 (1), 7–​28. https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​17488​9581​7743​541.
Wilcox, T., Greenwood, M., Pullen, A., O’Leary Kelly, A., & Jones, D. (2021). Interfaces of domestic vio-
lence and organizations: Gendered violence and inequality. Gender, Work & Organization, 28 (2), 701–​721.
https://​doi.org/​10.1111/​gwao.12515.
Zhang, H., & Zhao, R. (2018). Empirical research on domestic violence in contemporary China: Continuity
and advances. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 62 (16), 4879–​4887.
https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​03066​24X1​8801​468.
Zhang, L. (2009). Domestic violence network in China: Translating the transnational concept of violence
against women into local action. Women’s Studies International Forum, 32 (3), 227–​239. https://​doi.org/​
10.1016/​j.wsif.2009.05.017.
SECTION ONE

North and South America


1
THE MYTH OF THE UNIVERSAL WOMAN
The (White) Feminist Fantasy and the Invisibility of
Violence against Women of Color

Roksana Badruddoja

The Mythical Declaration of Violence against Women of Color


Domestic violence (DV)—​defined as physical, sexual, verbal, mental, and/​or economic control
perpetrated by spouse or extended kin—​is a major health hazard for women globally. In the
United States, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) statistics tell us that every 12 minutes a woman
is beaten by her intimate partner and 4 million women are physically abused by their husbands or
live-​in partners each year (underreported). In the past 50 years, DV activists, victim advocates, and
feminist scholars successfully responded to the prevalence of DV in the United States by paving
the way for an emerging movement and radical possibilities. By 1975, an industry of DV programs
for both victims and offenders burgeoned, and research and evaluation activities were growing at
a steady rate. The American feminist and battered women’s movements solidly established much
needed DV services, shelters, safe home programs, crisis centers, and hotlines. Shepard and Pence
(1999) write “substantial reforms in the criminal justice system, greatly expanded shelter and
advocacy services, an industry of domestic violence treatment programs for offenders, and steady
growth in research and evaluations activities” (p. 3). Combined with the “initiation of community
intervention projects to modify, coordinate, and monitor the response of community agencies”
(Shepard & Pence, 1999, p. 3), the battered women’s movement in the United States gained lively
momentum and battered women’s organizations aptly received recognition and accolades from
the public and the government by the 1980s. However, while government and public policies
placed DV as a priority issue on their agendas since the 1980s and 1990s in the United States,
this attention has not been focused equally on all communities. The programs, services, projects,
legal interventions, evaluations, and theories did not and do not adequately support researchers,
advocates, and communities to grapple with different aspects, interventions, and DV prevention
strategies as it impacts Women of Color (WoC) and im/​migrant women. While the scholarship
and advocacy work formed a robust pathway for the development of community-​based reform
and coordination with legal agencies, resulting in written policies and protocols, the strength of the
American battered women’s movement also manifested itself as a weakness and, frankly, a betrayal
for WoC and im/​migrant women in the United States. The (underreported) rates of prevalence of
DV in the United States make it clear that DV crosses class, caste, nation, ethnicity, and several other
borderlines and this means responding to heterogeneity is a critical factor in successfully handling
DV cases (Abraham, 1995).

DOI: 10.4324/9781003264040-3
10 Badruddoja, R.

In this chapter, I engage with transnational intersectional feminist discourse to display the
narrowness of normative feminism in the United States (read as “white” and non-​im/​migrant), and
what I hope to demonstrate is that WoC and im/​migrant women are a marginalized, invisible, and
erased category in contemporary American feminism. I call out the troublesome cultural imagin-
ations of feminism and representations of im/​migrant and WoC—​restricting definitions of mar-
ginalization and suffocating visions of what oppression looks like—​and the desperate unschooling
of Orientalism that is needed to answer a haunting question: What does vulnerability really look like?
I draw on the power of the “black imagination” (hooks, 1992) to rupture the white gaze or the
“white imagination” (hooks, 1992) and name our violent erasure and restore the realities of our
lived experiences of systemic oppression, i.e., terror (“of whiteness”) (hooks, 1992). I accomplish
this by deploying Narayan’s (1998) “gender essentialism” and “cultural essentialism” to stress the
invisibility of the experiences of DV of immigrant WoC in the (white) feminist gaze and I turn to
transnational intersectionality as a pathway to complicate our understanding of vulnerability, mar-
ginalization, and oppression.

The Violent Myth about Gender


I begin the exploration of vulnerabilities by returning to the 1980s and 1990s as a significant
temporal nexus: The global struggles for gender equality shifted their focus to violence against
women (VAW) and our sexual victimization. A critical moment in the American battered women’s
movement is the development and initiation of the Domestic Abuse Intervention Project (DAIP) in
Duluth, Minnesota, in 1980 (Shepard & Pence, 1999): DAIP’s intervention resulted in and solidified
a standard practice of response to experiences of DV (Pence, 1983). In 1993, the United Nations
General Assembly passed a Declaration on Violence against Women: The declaration recognized that
VAW is a manifestation of historically “unequal power relations between men and women,” which
have led to domination over and discrimination against girls and women. The collective focus
on VAW had important and beneficial consequences for women in the United States, like DV
laws and funding for DV services through the Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) in 1984 and the
1994 Violence against Women Act (VAWA). However, while the women’s right movement in
the United States aptly focused on the rights of battered women with community-​based reform
intervention projects, successfully linking intervention practices to legal agencies and developing
feminist theory offered service providers with an analysis of the experiences of victims of gender-​
based violence (GBV) (hooks, 1984), Narayan (1998) expressed serious trepidations around the
claims for battered women’s rights and empowerment in the United States. What was and is not
fully recognized is the unequal power relation between white women and WoC in the United
States. The battered women’s movement, while a felicitous cause, was and is not a holistic one due
to an exclusive reliance on what Narayan (1998) calls the fallacy of “gender essentialism” (and what
Collins (1998) names as the “additive model of oppression”).
Gender essentialism is the notion that all women are the same—​that all women share a coherent
group identity as women—​and that we all experience oppression—​namely the world view of
sexism and the practices of misogyny—​in homogenous monolithic ways or a “universal female
identity” (Narayan, 1998). Intersectional theorists Crenshaw (1992) and Collins (1998) draw on
the queer black goddesses who curated the Combahee River Collective Statement to ferociously point
to the fallacy of essentialism: Such generalizations efface women’s marginalization because of their
class, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, culture, im/​migration, etc. (The Combahee River
Collective, 1997). The universal female identity is informed by the white liberal gaze of colorblind
racism, one that serves to subtract our racial identities, among our other discursive identity work,
from our experiences of marginalization and oppression as WoC. Succinctly, gender essentialism
The Myth of the Universal Woman 11

reduces all women to a homogenous group simply based on gender, which further fuels white sol-
ipsism and produces a homogenous category of sex where the struggles of white women represent
the struggles of all women! (It is precisely within this logic of white feminist hegemonic thought
that evades the specificities of gender, race, class, etc. to posit all women should have supported
Hillary Clinton in the 2008 and 2016 Democratic presidential primaries.)
Our experiences of marginalization and oppression linked to our complex identity work as
WoC teaches us the significant, poignant, and humane lesson of intersectionality: Race (white
supremacy), class (predatory corporate capitalism), gender (patriarchy), and other identity variables
work together to oppress and marginalize women, and the mosaic of our identities create differing
forms and experiences of oppression and marginalization for different women. I am bitterly
reminded of Rihanna’s experience with intimate partner violence (IPV). McKenzie (2013), in
Black Girl Dangerous, writes:

I…find it interesting that the question of whether someone “chose” to be part of something
that might be degrading to them and people like them only becomes important for (white)
feminists when talking about black women and other women of color. (This is mostly
because people don’t see black women as victims, ever. We aren’t ever innocent enough to
be victims. We are always at fault, at least partly, for any violence or degradation perpetrated
against us. That’s why Rihanna was portrayed as an equal partner in the “hot mess” that
was her relationship with Chris Brown, rather than a victim of violence). In all other cases,
though, (white) feminists seem to understand that we live in a world that limits (white)
women’s choices.1

Crenshaw (1992) astutely points out the struggles of African American women are not the same as
white American women. And Purkayastha (2012) pushes the boundaries of black feminist thought
by aptly including transnational WoC (by naming the differing experiences of oppression between
Ugandan Black immigrant women and Ugandan Indian immigrant women as a salient consid-
eration). Race, class, gender, sex, ethnicity, culture, sexuality, religion, im/​migration, able-​body,
citizenship, and nation cannot be understood as autonomous and mutually exclusive experiences.
Crenshaw (1992) and Purkayastha (2012) teach us our everyday experiences of oppression and
marginalization as WoC calls for a dialectical framework, where each identity variable feeds off
one another other and bleed into each other as part of the interconnected mosaic of our lives.
Collins (1998) calls this the “matrix of domination” or the “multiplicative model of oppression.”
Intersectionality prevents the reduction of a woman’s experience as simply being “black” or simply
being “woman” (Crenshaw, 1992). And Purkayastha (2012) vehemently asks us to consider the
meanings of the set of social hierarchies that are involved in the American immigrant context,
e.g., the relative positions of Blacks and Indians in differing historical circumstances, in South
Africa and India or Uganda and India. An intersectional analysis allows one to recognize that
women experience discrimination for numerous reasons because they lay on multiple identity axes
simultaneously.
Clearly, race neutral, monolithic woman scholarship is simply unacceptable. I return here to
DAIP’s concrete standardized practice of response intervention to experiences of DV and IPV.
While it was and is necessary to develop standards of response to DV victims to minimize the mis-
handling of cases (Pence, 1983), the signatures of white supremacy inform and result in standardized
protocols to addressing family violence in women’s lives. Crenshaw (1992) diligently points out
mainstream service providers (read as “white” and “American”) failed to include WoC and immi-
grant women who are victims of DV. And Dasgupta (1998a, 1998b, 1999) finds immigrant commu-
nities in the United States have escaped social watchfulness and, thus, suffer from lack of DV-​related
12 Badruddoja, R.

services and resources. The universal woman scholarship is dangerous; it not only serves to control
images of us as WoC (Collins, 1991), but it also costs us our livelihood and, literally, our lives. We
simply cannot and must not ignore studies of subordination and discrimination require an inter-
sectional approach.
I concern myself with individual (versus institutional) advocacy here. Individual advocacy
involves DV advocates assisting battered women to explain and evaluate their options and then,
often, pursue a course of action within the legal system. The assumption underlying individual
advocacy is that the advocate is trained to support a victim’s decision even if the advocate does
not agree with the choices the woman has made (Davis & Smith, 1995). While there is little dis-
agreement about this discourse around battered women, and the battered women’s movement
did include discussions around “diversity” and “multiculturalism” (read as “WoC”), deep issues
of “difference” were and remain ignored among and between women, further fueling the flames
of white solipsism via the violent signatures of sexual racism. Shepard and Pence (1999) docu-
ment sharp disagreement over the presence of police and courts in the lives of battered WoC
and im/​migrant women and white service providers, e.g., legal presence does not have the same
meanings to Mexican American women compered to white American women. Dasgupta and
Warrier (1997) write, “…these organizations have standardized training programs for their own
counselors and service providers in various issues concerning domestic violence” (p. 1). I take this
to mean WoC and im/​migrant women were/​are seen as tremendous challenge for established
institutions; confronting “diversity” meant that WoC and im/​migrant women were/​are a problem
to be managed, i.e., assimilation. Abraham (2000) argues that not all services are effectual and most
practitioners and advocates in the United States base services on a one-​size-​fits-​all service provi-
sion model. Dasgupta and Warrier (1997) staunchly argue standardized service provisions “…has
alienated the majority of…minority groups…as evidenced by the infrequency of such individuals
accessing the domestic violence intervention system” (p. 1). In other words, standardized services/​
“one-​size-​fits-​all” model deeply betrays WoC and im/​migrant women.
Plainly, individual (and institutional) advocacy is intimately tethered to cultural, social, and
institutional practices of colonial imperialism and sexual racism in the United States. Practitioners
and agencies are unwilling to address the reality and the multi-​layered nature of oppression in a
contemporary transnational United States. Concerns relating to DV and its intersection with legal
issues, such as an immigrant woman’s residency status in the United States, were and continue
to be ignored and silenced by the battered women’s movement. Mainstream service providers
and DV advocates continue to lack up-​to-​date information on laws affecting im/​migrant victims
of intimate and family abuse, advancements in research, and available resources that may help
the victims and their families. Crenshaw (1992) documents the Marriage Fraud Act of 1986 was
passed to reduce fraudulent marriages to either American citizens (USC) or legal permanent
residence/​green card holders (LPR). The Act requires a two-​year conditional residency require-
ment on the non-​resident spouse before they can become eligible for permanent residency status.
Mainstream service providers are often unaware VAWA, signed into law on September 13, 1994,
contains provisions that allow battered women to escape violent marriages without risking deport-
ation.2 Furthermore, the reauthorization of VAWA in 2013 included legislation for Lesbian, Gay,
Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) individuals, Native Americans, and victims of human
trafficking and expands protection for immigrant women through the U visa. The ubiquity of
American immigration policies encourages and maintains abuse and victimization, silencing and
erasing the experiences of im/​migrant WoC.
Finally, Dasgupta and Warrier (1997) push us to think in deeper shades within intersectionality:
They daringly point to not only the power differential between white women and WoC, but also
to the power differential among women. They write with piercing clarity,
The Myth of the Universal Woman 13

[G]‌ender relations are influenced and structured by the interactions between members of
the same sex. That is, the relationships between two women of the same household [are]
affected by their relations to the men in the household and by the men’s relationship to
each other.
p. 7

That is, gender relations are neither uniform nor historically static in any community.Within immi-
grant South Asian communities, this often translates into a tremendous unequal power dynamic
between mother-​in-​law (son’s mother) and a daughter-​in-​law (son’s wife). This brings up for me
how we continue to simply refuse to accommodate the multi-​layered experiences of women, dan-
gerously ignoring the codetermination of inequalities to produce complex configurations. Our
approach to DV in the United States represents hegemonic notions of what vulnerability looks like.

The Violent Myth about Culture


I next turn your attention briefly to a rapidly growing community that chronically experiences
lack of services and resources: “South Asian”3 American women. Contrary to widespread belief,
South Asian women’s organizations in the United States expose DV as a serious problem in the
community. Yet, there is little reliable statistical data on the incidence rate of intimate abuse in the
South Asian American immigrant community, and this speaks volumes about the invisibility of
the community. In general, “statistics on South Asian Americans are extremely hard to find as South
Asians are often hidden under the categories of ‘unknown’ or ‘other Asians’” (Hussain et al., 2020).4
Compounding the intersection of gender and im/​migration, mainstream DV advocates too quickly
and comfortably link WoC and im/​migrant women’s experience with DV and IPV to passivity, deep
repression, and denial. I point to the sister of gender essentialism here:“cultural essentialism” (Narayan,
1998). Briefly, cultural essentialism reduces WoC and im/​migrant women to the status of structural
dopes and victims of culture à la Orientalism. Common Orientalist stereotypes about South Asian
women are passive-​demure, dutiful-​reserved, asexual-​frigid, traditional-​old fashioned, conservative-​
politically unaware, dependent-​faithful, inarticulate-​incompetent, loud-​stupid, and slavish-​subservient
(Dasgupta & Warrier, 1996). Orientalist tropes about South Asian women have been internalized and
they act as a filter to our experiences of battering. Mohanty (1988) pivots her work on the relation-
ship between “Woman”—​a cultural and ideological composite Other constructed through diverse
representational discourse—​and “women”—​real, material subjects and their collective herstories.
My point is mainstream service providers interpret behaviors of individuals according to essentialist
worldviews of “eastern”/​“global south” women. The gratuitous connection between culture and
violence is almost invariably brought up in relation to the “third world”—​WoC and im/​migrant
women—​or what Narayan (1998) calls “death by culture.” Narayan demonstrates culture is frequently
invoked to explain the kind of violence experienced by women in India, though it is not invoked in
a similar way when discussing VAW in various “western”/​“global north” contexts. Narayan argues
cultural explanations deflect attention from the broader and more prevalent crime of DV and the
many other reasons why women are beaten, abused, or killed in family violence situations. Such
explanations reproduce the native subject of colonial discourse, leaving in place the distorted image
of Indian women and other WoC and im/​migrant women as both “exotic” and barbaric. This is
cultural essentialism functioning at its best. Indeed, race, gender, and im/​migration debates highlight
the emblems of sexual racism posed by “western” feminist discourse. Then, the central trepidation
against white feminist scholarship and the battered women’s movement in America is the discursive
colonization of heterogeneities of the lives of women (Mohanty, 1988).The reality is all women—​real
women—​have multiple and contradictory loyalties (Naber, 2006).
14 Badruddoja, R.

Abraham (1995) challenges the stereotypes of South Asian women as passive and submissive,
thereby implicating American feminist theory. The proliferation of organizations focusing on pro-
viding culture-​specific DV services to WoC and im/​migrant families in the mid-​to-​late 1980s
in the United States is a response to the demands of WoC and im/​migrant women who were
victims of battering. Abraham (1995) points to the pivotal role South Asian American organizations
continue to play in helping immigrant and WoC escape abusive relationships, which, in turn,
demonstrates the strategic resistance of WoC to combat family violence.

COVID-​19, Climate Change, and DV


Immigrant women are especially vulnerable to abuse due to immigration status, cultural
assumptions, and stereotyping from mainstream society; unfamiliarity with American social, legal,
economic, and other institutions; and the maintenance of the myth of model minority (Abraham,
1995, 2000). And the global pandemic has intimately intertwined with immigrant women and
their experiences with DV in cataclysmic ways. Social pandemic-​related distancing has resulted in
a national (and global) spike in DV and accessing support and services has become even more chal-
lenging for WoC and im/​migrant women. Simply put, women (and their children) have become
vulnerable to family and intimate violence in unprecedented ways during the pandemic. As a
result of COVID-​19, DV calls from South Asian American immigrant women to South Asian
American DV organizations, like Manavi, Sakhi, Maitri, and Narika, came to an abrupt halt soon
after March 12, 2020 (Kam, 2020). South Asian American immigrant women with abusive part-
ners found themselves unable to connect with DV advocates they were working with before the
pandemic because women were trapped at home with their abusers. Kam (2020) writes, “Clients
who had previously told them of abusive partners who choked them, struck them in the face or
threw them [downstairs] were now saying: ‘Don’t call me. It’s not safe.’”5 The pandemic-​related
“lockdowns” not only made it more difficult for women to seek help and access services, but the
abuse has also magnified (Hussain et al., 2020). Kam (2020) reports, “Not only were their partners
watching them around the clock, but many took away their phones, cars and credit cards, making it
harder for women to seek help or leave.”6 In addition, many immigrant women who called South
Asian American DV organizations found themselves living in COVID hot spots, like Queens, NY.
Coupled with limited English proficiency and lack of familial and friend support systems, many DV
victims were left overwhelmingly dependent on their intimate partners during the “first” wave of
the pandemic. In Silicon Valley, South Asian American women employed in the tech industry, who
experience DV at the sophisticated intersection of family abuse and smart technology, exhibited
a similar dynamic: The plethora of hotline calls from women abruptly declined during the “first”
wave quarantine as abuse escalated. Mukherji (2020) documents how women struggled to make
phone calls with their abusers at home, e.g., “One woman hid in her closet to make the call,” and
“A … desi woman … stopped receiving the spousal support … Her ex-​husband used COVID-​19
as an excuse … He is also … using the pandemic to keep her from seeing her children … .”7 Bhatia
(2020) writes, “The very conditions that are needed to battle the coronavirus –​isolation, social
distancing, restrictions on freedom of movement –​are, perversely, the very conditions that feed
into the hands of abusers who now find state-​sanctioned circumstances tailor-​made for unleashing
abuse.”8 The silence was chilling for two months and as the “lockdowns” eased in May and June
2020, South Asian American DV organizations experienced a surge in calls as a response to the
increase in abuse during the pandemic (Kam, 2020).
The pandemic coupled with climate change further aggravates the risk of DV against women.
Climate change crises often displace women and their families and impact their economic well-​
being, particularly in rural areas in the United States. The loss of income renders women and
The Myth of the Universal Woman 15

their children economically vulnerable, increasing exposure to DV, and displaced women become
even more vulnerable to sexual violence. The impacts of climate change from torrential floods to
wildfires exacerbate the challenges women face in the home with abusive partners. Like the radio
silence on South Asian American DV hotlines during the initial stages of the pandemic, crisis lines
went dead immediately after the 2018 wildfires in California accompanied by an uptick in phone
calls to shelters and domestic abuse hotlines three months after Camp Fire; shelter accommodation
and restraining order requests were 300% higher (Zoledziowski, 2020). The stressors brought by
climate change are intimately tied to increased domestic abuse, particularly for marginalized people
like impoverished women and immigrant women on dependent immigration statuses. Climate
change is not separate from the violence women experience in their lives every day.
I suspect the current infectious spike, the “second” wave, this winter, and climate change will
continue to exacerbate the violence South Asian American women, and women in general, are
facing at home and will continue to limit the ways in which women might seek for help. South
Asian American DV organizations predict the subsequent rise in COVID cases, and the second
cycle of “lockdowns” will prompt some women to flee their abusive intimate partnerships. Racism
and im/​migration limit the ways in which many women can seek help, and I am afraid the
pandemic further heightens and seals the experiences of DV as women and their children are
trapped at home with abusive partners under the “shelter in place” policy. And the effects of climate
change-​induced crises fuel the risks of VAW. It is critical for national governments to designate DV
service providers as “essential workers” and the services they provide to victims of domestic abuse
are categorized as “essential services” (Bhatia, 2020). Furthermore, “Effective service to the victims
of domestic violence should be culture-​specific and emanate from a close understanding of the
client’s background” (Dasgupta & Warrier, 1997, p. 1). Meaning, it is imperative for crisis counselors
to assess DV with a heightened awareness of the client’s understanding of the violence and accept-
able ways of intervention to ameliorate family and intimate violence that is transnational, intersec-
tional, and COVID—​and climate change-​informed.This is vital in providing effective services and
feasible choices for victims of family abuse.

Stand under My Umbrella


In ending, I return to the question, what does vulnerability really look like? If the linchpin of
a feminist model is to serve the most marginalized, then I am afraid we as a culture and com-
munity have fallen deeply short. Essentialism has serious implications for feminist strategies that
are adopted to remedy the violence that women experience. Essentialism encourages “western”/​
“global north” feminists to propose strategies within an imperial/​colonial white signature, one
that represents WoC and im/​migrant women as victims of “backward” and “uncivilized” cultures
or “death by culture.” Narayan (1998) argues that such hegemonic generalizations represent the
problems of privileged women, who are often white, “western,” middle-​class, and heterosexual.
These generalizations are a part and parcel of white hegemonic feminist thought, producing a
homogenous category of sex where the struggles of white women represent the struggles of all
women, effacing the oppressions of marginalized women because of their class, race, religion, eth-
nicity, sexual orientation, etc. Narayan (1998) teaches me essentialism is ahistorical, it limits the
possibilities of social reorganization, and it precludes a practical application of intersectional fem-
inist theory. I take this to mean essentialism evades seriously exploring the moral practices of soli-
darity and what it means to provide services to the most marginalized. The mission of this chapter
includes centralizing invisible, marginalized, and peripheral voices, and locating marginalized and
peripheral voices inevitably raises questions about representation. I ask here: How are the dislocated
silenced? How can we recover unrecognized or suppressed aspects of our experiences? And how
16 Badruddoja, R.

can our silenced voices be located and inserted into a story in which we have a fuller role to play
locally, nationally, and globally? It is imperative that we tease out the realities of oppression(s) to
prevent the silencing and erasure of the most marginalized. “Now that it’s raining more than ever,”
I invite you—​as a WoC—​to “stand under my umbrella” (Rihanna, 2007).

Notes
1 www.bgdb​log.org/​2013/​11/​easy-​white-​bitch-​words-​lily-​all​ens-​new-​video/​
2 The Act provides women with two forms of relief: (1) apply for suspension of deportation (effective as of
September 13, 1994) and (2) self-​petition for permanent resident status (effective as of January 1, 1995).
3 The population of Asian and Pacific Islanders in the United States increased 142% between 1970 and
1980. Between 1980 and 1990, the South Asian population increased 125% with Asian Indians comprising
a large part of this group. According to the American Community Survey of the U.S. Census Bureau, the
Asian Indian population in the United States grew from almost 1,679,000 in 2000 to 2,570,000 in 2007
(a growth rate of 53% or the highest for any Asian American community). Indian Americans are the third
largest Asian American group (after Chinese Americans and Filipino Americans).
4 https://​saalt.org/​wp-​cont​ent/​uplo​ads/​2020/​09/​Uneq​ual-​Con​sequ​ence​s_​SA​ALT-​2020.pdf?eType=​
EmailB​last​Cont​ent&eId=​faa50​469-​c2f7-​4d40-​b739-​5b367​73c7​378
5 www.nbcn​ews.com/​news/​asian-​amer ​ica/​why-​domes​tic-​viole​nce-​calls-​are-​surg​ing-​asian-​ameri​can-​
women-​amid-​n1240​663
6 www.nbcn​ews.com/​news/​asian-​amer ​ica/​why-​domes​tic-​viole​nce-​calls-​are-​surg​ing-​asian-​ameri​can-​
women-​amid-​n1240​663
7 https://​thew​ire.in/​women/​south-​asian-​domes​tic-​viole​nce-​surviv​ors-​in-​sili​con-​val​ley-​g rap​ple-​with-​
covid-​19-​lockd​own
8 www.unwo​men.org/​en/​news/​stor​ies/​2020/​3/​news-​women-​and-​covid-​19-​gove​r nme​nts-​acti​ons-​by-​
ded-​bha​tia

References
Abraham, M. (1995). Ethnicity, gender, and marital violence: South Asian women’s organizations in the United
States. Gender & Society, 9 (4), 450–​468.
Abraham, M. (2000). Speaking the unspeakable: Marital violence among South Asian immigrants in the U.S. Rutgers
University Press.
Bhatia, A. (2020). Women and COVID-​19: Five things governments can do now. UN Women. www.unwo​
men.org/​en/​news/​stor​ies/​2020/​3/​news-​women-​and-​covid-​19-​gove​r nme​nts-​acti​ons-​by-​ded-​bha​tia
Collins, P. H. (1991). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. Routledge.
Collins, P. H. (1998). It’s all in the family: Intersections of gender, race, and nation. Hypatia, 13, 62–​82.
Crenshaw, K. W. (1992). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women
of color. Stanford Law Review, 43 (6), 1241–​1299.
Dasgupta, S. D. (1998a). Women’s realities: Defining violence against women by immigration, race and class.
In R. K. Bergen (Ed.), Issues in intimate violence (pp. 209–​219). Sage publications.
Dasgupta, S. D. (1998b). Gender roles and cultural continuity in the Asian Indian community in the U.S. Sex
Roles, 38 (11/​12), 953–​974.
Dasgupta, S. D. (1999). Is all well with domestic violence work in the United States?. SAMAR, 11 (Spring/​
Summer), 5–​11.
Dasgupta, S. D., & Warrier, S. (1996). In the footsteps of ‘Arundhati’: Asian Indian women’s experience of
domestic violence in the U.S. Violence against Women, 2 (3), 238–​259.
Dasgupta, S. D., & Warrier, S. (1997). In visible terms: Domestic violence in the Asian Indian context: A handbook for
intervention (2nd ed.). Manavi.
Davis, R. C., & Smith, B. (1995). Domestic violence reforms: Empty promises or fulfilled expectations?. Crime
& Delinquency, 41 (4), 541–​552.
hooks, b. (1984). Feminist theory: From margin to center. South End Press.
hooks, b. (1992). Black looks: Race and representation. South End Press.
The Myth of the Universal Woman 17

Hussain, M., Qureshi, S., Suryanarayanan, S., Sridaran, L., & Howard, R. (2020). Unequal consequences: The
disparate impact of COVID-​19 across South Asian American communities. South Asian Americans Leading
Together (SAALT). https://​saalt.org/​wp-​cont​ent/​uplo​ads/​2020/​09/​Uneq​ual-​Con​sequ​ence​s_​SA​ALT-​
2020.pdf?eType=​EmailB​last​Cont​ent&eId=​faa50​469-​c2f7-​4d40-​b739-​5b367​73c7​378
Kam, K. (2020). Why domestic violence calls are surging for Asian American women amid the pandemic.
NBC News. www.nbcn​ews.com/​news/​asian-​amer​ica/​why-​domes​tic-​viole​nce-​calls-​are-​surg​ing-​asian-​
ameri​can-​women-​amid-​n1240​663
McKenzie, M. (2013). Easy out there for a (White) bitch: A few words on Lily Allen and the continued use
of Black women’s bodies as props. Black Girl Dangerous. www.bgdb​log.org/​2013/​11/​easy-​white-​bitch-​
words-​lily-​all​ens-​new-​video/​
Mohanty, C. T. (1988). Under western eyes: Feminist scholarship and colonial discourses. Feminist Review,
30, 65–​88.
Mukherji, A. (2020). South Asian domestic violence survivors in Silicon Valley grapple with COVID-​19
lockdown. The Wire. https://​thew​ire.in/​women/​south-​asian-​domes​tic-​viole​nce-​surviv​ors-​in-​sili​con-​val​
ley-​grap​ple-​with-​covid-​19-​lockd​own
Naber, N. (2006). Arab American femininities: Beyond Arab virgin/​American (ized) whore. Feminist Studies,
32 (1), 87–​111.
Narayan, U. (1998). The essence of culture and a sense of history: A feminist critique of cultural essentialism.
Hypatia, 13 (2), 86–​106.
Pence, E. L. (1983). In our best interest: A process for personal and social change (1st ed.). Minnesota Program
Development Inc.
Purkayastha, B. (2012). Intersectionality in a transnational world. Gender & Society, 26, 55–​66.
Rihanna. (2007). Umbrella [Song]. On good girl gone bad: Reloaded [Album]. Def Jam Recordings.
Shepard, M. F., & Pence, E. L. (1999). Coordinating community responses to domestic violence: Lessons from Duluth
and beyond. Sage Publications.
The Combahee River Collective. (1997). A Black feminist statement. Women’s Studies Quarterly, 42 (3–​4),
271–​280.
Zoledziowski, A. (2020). Expect domestic violence to skyrocket after the California fires end. Vice News.
www.vice.com/​en/​arti​cle/​935​pk7/​exp​ect-​domes​tic-​viole​nce-​to-​skyroc​ket-​after-​the-​cal​ifor​nia-​fires-​end
2
PARADIGM SHIFT IN LATIN AMERICAN
LEGISLATION OVER TIME
From Domestic Violence Laws to Comprehensive
Legislation on Gender-​based Violence against Women
(1990–​2020)

Nancy Madera

Introduction
From the early 1990s, demands toward violence against women (VAW) that were historically
promoted by feminist and women’s movements around the world started to be institutionalized
in the universal and regional human rights systems. In 1992, the Committee on the Elimination
of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) included violence within the scope of the 1979
Convention, recognizing it as a form of discrimination that inhibits women’s ability to enjoy
rights and freedoms on a basis of equality with men (CEDAW Committee, 1992, para. 1). The
1993 Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women (DEVAW) defined it as any
physical, sexual, or psychological harm based on gender occurring both in public and private life
(UN General Assembly, 1994, para. 1). The following year, the Inter-​American Convention on the
Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of VAW ‘Convention Belem do Para’ (BdPC) affirmed
that VAW constitutes a violation of their human rights and fundamental freedoms, framed it as
a manifestation of structural inequalities, and granted women a free-​standing right to be free
from gender-​based violence (OAS, 1994, p. Preamble, para. 3). Later on, the Maputo Protocol and
the Istanbul Convention stablished binding mandates to African and European member States
regarding prevention, penalization, and eradication of VAW (Council of Europe 2011; African
Union 2003).
More than 25 years after the emergence of this international normative consensus, only a
handful of countries include its structural and gender sensitive approach toward violence in their
legislation. As of 2020, 50 out of the 193 countries that are full members of the United Nations had
adopted comprehensive laws and/​or criminal reforms that specifically address VAW, domestic vio-
lence against women (DVAW), and/​or gender-​based violence in their legislation within a gender
equality frame.1 With 18 Latin American countries explaining a significant part of this figure, the
region stands out as a remarkable case in the global context.
Toward mid-​2000s, Latin American legislation shifted from a family oriented, mostly gender-​
neutral approach to violence toward a gendered and comprehensive interpretation of it, framed
in human rights, gender inequality, and intersectionality perspectives. This emergent new gen-
eration of laws expanded the progress made during the previous decade reframing violence as a
type of harm based on gender that takes place in domestic and public spaces, a form of discrim-
ination that violates or limits women’s human rights and that is rooted in social, cultural, and
economic structural inequalities between men and women. Taken as a whole, these changes show

DOI: 10.4324/9781003264040-4
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
77. When I was going up to town I met a man; his head is fire an’ his
mouth is bone. 25

—Rooster.

a) As I was going through Bramble hall,


An old man gave me a call;
His beard was flesh, his mouth was horn,
And this old man was never born.

b) Got to a gentleman’s yard and his mouth was hard and his beard
was flesh.

78. I was going over Dingledown hill and I saw a grey horse.

—Moon.

79. Picking juketa (?) going to town, picking juketa coming from town
and can’t get my hands full.

—Dew and sweat. [193]

80. I gwine to town wid a hand o’ ripe plantain; I hungry an’ couldn’t
taste it.

—Fingers.

81. I was going to town; I mash a plate and when I was coming back
I found it new.

—Ants’ nest.
82. As I was going up to town I hear the bells of heaven ring; man
tremble, beast tremble, cause the devil to break his chain.

—Earthquake.

83. Going up a lane I see a drink an’ see a chaw.

—Cocoanut.

a) Dere’s a cup an’ in de cup dere’s a chaw; no man to clear dis


chaw.

84. A man was going to Kingston, saw two roads and took both. 26

—Trousers.

85. I heard that my father was dead in Kingston; I went there and
took a piece of his bone and made increase.

—Kasava root.

86. I heave up a t’ing white an’ it come down red.

—Egg.

87. In England I am, in Jamaica I stand.

—A man took soil from Jamaica, put it in his boots, went to England.

88. I went to town, I walk in town, I eat in town, and yet I don’t know
town.

—A woman was breedin’. She went to town an’ after she come home the
baby born, grow a big man, don’ know town.

89. A man going to town and he face town, and when he coming
back he face down to Montego Bay.

—Train running between Kingstown and Montego Bay. [194]


90. A man going up to town; he walk on his head going up, he walk
on his head going back. 27

—Horse-shoe-nail.

91. Riding in to town, two talking to each other and none understand
what the other was saying.

—Two (?) new saddles creaking ru-u-u-u-u.

92. Four men going up to town; all were talking and not one could
understand the other.

—Four buggy wheels.

93. Four bredder walk a road and not one can touch. 28

—Four buggy wheels.

94. Some white ladies were walking to Kingston, and all the walk
they walk they couldn’t catch each other.

—Mile-posts.

95. Three brothers in one house and never see each others’ face
until dead.

—Three beans in one castor-oil pod.

96. Two sister on ribber side; no one could never wash the other.

—Two bottles.

97. Two sawyers were sawing from morning till night and never saw
a bit of dust. 29

—Clock. [195]
98. Three man start fe go a heaven; one go half way an’ turn back,
one go right up, and one no go at all.

—Fire: spark, smoke and ashes.

99. A man walk around four corners of the world and make a house;
rain come catch him a door, dew fall on him, sun burn him, and he
have no shelter of his own.

—Ladder.

a) A man build a fine up-stairs house, and he have to sleep outside.

100. A man mek him house an’ him sleep outside.

—Axe.

101. A man work for rich and work for poor and yet his head outside.

—Nail-head.

102. There was an old man that live never building house till rain
come. 30

—John Crow: as soon as rain come he begin to cut posts, say he will
build him a house. When sun comes out, he come to dry himself; never
build house any more.

103. Man mek him house, an’ him bade da a do. 31

—Ear of corn.

a) Old man in his room and the beard out in the hall.

104. Vineyard man walk through vineyard grass-piece and neither


make track nor road.

—Sun.
105. I know a man talk every second.

—Sea.

a) I know a man; every talk he talk his mouth-corner foam.

106. Born from de worl’ mek an’ nebber a month ole yet. 32

—Moon.

107. Baby born an’ vanish.

—Moon. [196]

108. I know a baby born widout belly.

—Skelion (tin can).

109. Tallest man in Kingston don’ have any belly.

—Bamboo.

a) A man stan’ up widout guts.

110. Holler belly mumma, humpback pupa, pickney wid t’ree foot.

—Cooking-pot.

111. Born in white, live in green, die in red, bury in black. 33

—Coffee.

112. He laugh plain and talk plain but havn’t any life.

—Talking-machine.

113. Going up to town me coatie torn-torn and not a seamstress in a


town could sew it. 34
—Banana leaf.

a) Mrs. Queen coat-tail tear an’ never mend.

114. I think I will shoot God, and God say I mus’ shoot the earth. 35

—Banana shoot.

115. I was tying mat ever since an’ I never lay down on one.

—Pumpkin-vine.

116. If me stan’ me kimbo; if me lie me kimbo. 36

—Coffee-pot.

117. A thousand hungry men kill a thousand bullocks.

—Hunger kill men.

118. And smart as little Tommie be, one man kill the whole world.

—Mr. Debt.

119. Woman have a chile an’ fust begin larnin’ larn him fe t’ief. 37

—Hawk. [197]

120. Black man dance on white man table.

—Black ink on white paper.

a) Mr. Blackman sit pon Mr. Whiteman table.

b) Black man sit down on white man chair.

c) Black man dance on white man head.

d) Black man dance on white man sheet.


121. A black man sit upon a white man head.

—Ackee.

122. A white man stand upon a black man head.

—Bammie on griddle.

123. A black man sit upon a red man head.

—Pot on fire.

124. John Redman tickle John Blackman till him laugh puco-puco. 38

—Fire under boiling pot.

a) A red man tickle a black man make him belly boil up.

b) John Redman beat John Blackman till him gallop.

125. Mr. Redman box Mr. Blackman make Mr. Whiteman laugh.

—Fire, baking-pan and bammie.

126. The white man take a red cloth tie his head.

—Tooth and gum.

127. Mr. Blackman was going to town; him drop him kerchief an’
couldn’t pick it up.

—Crow drops a feather.

128. Miss Nancy was going to Kingston; she drop her pocket
handkerchief never turn round to pick it up.

—Bird drops a feather.


a) Miss Nancy was going up-stairs and she lose her pocket
handkerchief and she would not turn round to pick it up.

b) Queen of Sheba riding out;


Her kerchief drop and couldn’t pick it up.

129. Little Miss Nancy sit at the pass; everyone that come give him a
kiss.

—Fly. [198]

130. Little Miss Nancy tie up her frock and wheel round three times.

—Turn-stick in the pot.

131. Little Miss Nancy like to dance and dance so rough.

—Pepper.

132. Miss D. June (?) cutting wood for a year, never get a bundle.

—Woodpecker.

133. Little Johnny fell in the water and never drowned.

—Bottle.

134. Aunty Mary cut two packey, not one bigger than the other. 39

—Heaven and earth.

a) Ole man Brenta sit on a stump, cut two packey not one bigger
than the other.

—Cloud on the earth (?).

135. Send bwoy to fetch doctor, doctor come before bwoy. 40

—Boy climbing after a cocoanut; nut falls before boy comes down.
136. Dead carry the living over Napoleon’s grass-piece. 41

—Ship at Sea.

a) Look through a diamond I see the dead carry the living. [199]

137. A hen have six chickens; and hold the hen, the chickens cry.

—Guitar with six strings.

138. Two horses were galloping and neither of them could catch one
another. 42

—Two mill-rollers.

139. One John-crow sit down on three cotton-tree.

—Cooking-pot set on fire-stones.

140. A fleety horse get up over a broken bridge. 43

—Needle and thread.

a) A frisky horse and a frisky mare was going up to mountain hill.

141. John, the mule, in the stable, his tail outside.

—Fire in the kitchen, smoke outside.

142. Stick a hog at its head and it bleed at its tail. 44

—Pipe.

143. Kingston bully-dog bark, Montego bully-dog answer.

—Rooster; when one crows at one end of the island, another answers at
the other end.

144. England dog bark, Jamaica dog sound.


—Newspaper.

145. Portland dog bark, Westmoreland dog hear. 45

—Thunder.

146. Jamaica bully-dog bark, Kingston bully-dog keep silent.

—Great gun.

147. Rope run, horse stan’ up.

—Pumpkin-vine and pumpkin.

148. Old England dead an never rotten.

—Bottle (of ale). [200]

149. Water grow.

—Sugar-cane.

150. Water stan’ up.

—Sugar-cane.

151. No ca how time hard, one coco full pot.

—Foot in a boot.

152. One bammie shingle off Mt. Olivet church.

—Moon.

153. One little bit o’ bag hold three.

—Castor-oil bean-pod.

154. A gully with two notch in it.


—Purse.

155. What water wash, sun can’t dry.

—Butter.

156. Up the hill, down the hill; yet never tired.

—Road.

a) Up the hill, down the hill;


Stand up still.

157. Chaw fine and never tired.

—Saw.

158. This corner, this corner is no corner at all.

—Ring.

159. Chip-cherry, beer, cedar.

—White man (cedar), black-wife (chip-cherry), brown child (beer).

160. Stump to stump; dig out stump out of dogwood heart.

—Jigger.

161. A ’tump in a pond; all the rain can’t cover the ’tump-head.

—Turn-stick in the pot.

162. There’s a rope and every bump a sheet of paper.

—Pumpkin-vine.

163. Sack a back an’ not de front.

—Finger-nail. [201]
164. Roomful, hallful; you can’t get a spoonful. 46

—Smoke.

165. Knock an’ stan’ up.

—Mat.

166. Water a-bottom, fire a-top.

—Lamp.

167. Hell a-top an’ hell a-bottom.

—Frying-pan.

168. Hair a-top, hair a-bottom; only a dance in the middle.

—Eye-lashes and eye.

169. Hairy within and hairy without; lift up your foot and poke it in. 47

—Stockings.

170. Outside black, inside red; cock up your foot and poke it in. 48

—Boot.

171. White a top, black a middle and red a bottom. 49

—Bammie, baking-iron and fire.

172. White as snow but not snow; green as grass but not grass; red
as blood but not blood. 50

—Coffee-blossom and berry. [202]

173. Green as grass, not grass; stiff standing in the bed; and the
best young lady is not afraid of handling it. 51
—Onion.

174. White within, black within, red without.

—Ackee.

175. Hard as rock, not rock; white as milk, not milk.

—Cocoanut.

176. High as the world; red as blood but not blood; blue as indigo;
but not indigo; high as granadillo temple.

—Rainbow.

177. When it come it does not come; when it does not come it
come. 52

—Rat and corn.

178. Four sit down on four waiting till four come.

—Cat on the table waiting for a rat.

179. Six and four waiting for twenty-four.

—Six holes in four horse-shoes waiting for twenty-four nails.

180. Nine run, one come, two run.

—Nine man run for the doctor, one baby born, two nipples run.

181. Ten on to four. 53

—Ten teats on a cow (?).

182. Six is in, the seventh is out; set the virgin free.

—Hen hatching six chicks. [203]


183. Blackey cover ten.

—Boots cover toes.

184. Two peepers, two pokers, two waddlers, and one zum-zum. 54

—Cow.

185. Up chip-cherry, down chip-cherry; not a man can climb chip-


cherry. 55

—Smoke.

186. Whitey whitey can’t climb whitey whitey.

—Smoke.

187. Half a ’tumpy sit down on ’tumpy; when a go, a don’ see nothing
but half a ’tumpy.

—Broken bottle on stump.

188. Climb up Zion hill, pick Zion fruit, come down Zion hill, drink
Zion water.

—Climbing a cocoanut tree, picking the nut, coming down, drinking the
milk.

a) Go up Mount Zion, drink Zion blood, eat de flesh, dash away de


bone.

189. Tetchie in, tetchie out; all hands can play on it.

—Lock and key.

a) Tickle me in, tickle me out; all hands can play on tickle.

190. Hip hop; hip hop; jump wide.


—Flea.

a) Dip dup, a yard wide. [204]

191. Drill a hall, drill a room; lean behind the door. 56

—Broom.

a) Jig a hall, jig a room; go a corner, go stan’ up behin’ de door.

192. Little titchie above ground.

—Ants.

193. Every jump shiney jump, whitey hold it back.

—Needle and thread.

194. Miss Witty wit and wit till she wit out her last wit.

—Needle and thread.

195. Earie, hearie, earie, knock, pom!

—Brushing (the hair).

196. Papa take hairy-hairy put in blackey-blackey.

—Brush and blacking.

197. Unco Joey takin’ long hairy-hairy somet’ing; shubbin’ Aunty


Mary hairy-hairy somet’ing.

—Making a broom.

198. Long Aunty Long-long, no one can long as Aunty Long-long.

—Road.
199. Whitey-whitey send whitey-whitey to drive whitey-whitey from
eating whitey-whitey.

—White man sends his white boy to drive the white goat out of the
cabbage-patch.

200. Sleepy-sleepy under nyammy-yammy tree; killy-killy come to


sleepy-sleepy; nyammy yammy drop, kill killy-killy; walkey-walkey
come nyam (eat) nyammy-yammy, leave sleepy-sleepy. 57

—Man sleeping under a tree; snake comes to kill man; cocoanut falls and
kills snake; another man comes, eats the cocoanut, leaves the first man.
[205]

201. Limb fell lamb; down fell lamb in the cow coram.

—Limb falls, knocks lamb into the cow-dung.

202. If I had my pretty little caney, bigny-pigny could not kill kum-
painy.

—If I had my revolver, the wild hog could not kill my dog.

203. I was going out and I saw some pigs, and if I had my hansom-
cansom I would carry home some bigny-pigny.

—If I had my gun, I would carry home some pigs.

204. I send for my man Richard to bring me tomery-flemery-doctory


to mortify unicle-cornicle-current out of my pinkicle-pankicle-
present. 58

—To bring my three dogs to drive three pigs out of the garden.

205. There is a boat an’ in that boat a lady sat, an’ if I should tell you
the name of that lady I should be blamed, for I’ve told you the riddle
twice. 59
—The lady’s name was Anne. [206]

206. I was going up to Hampton lane (a local name); I met a man,


an’ drew off his hat an’ drew off his glove, an’ he gave me his love.
Take him an’ call him; his name is twice mention as this riddle
begun. 60

—His name is Andrew.

a) As I was going up to St. Andrew’s church, I met St. Andrew’s


scholar. St. Andrew’s scholar drew off his hat an’ drew off his gloves:
tell me the name of the scholar.

b) I was going up on Oxford street, I met an Oxford boy. He took out


his pen an’ drew his name; what was his name?

c) Once as I was crossing the Montego Bay bridge, I met a


Montegonian fellow. He took off his hat an’ drew off his glove; guess
me his name; I’ve mentioned it in this riddle.

207. I an’ my dog ben up the lane catching a buck an’ a doe.
Whoever tell me my dog’s name, there is my dog. 61

—The dog’s name is Ben.

a) “Good morning, Mr. Ben; ben meke a meet. I come to borrow yo’
dog go hunting. I don’ know his name.” “Take him an’ call him; his
name is twice mention as this riddle begun.” [207]

208. Megs, Pegs an’ Margaret is my true lover; but it’s neither Megs,
Pegs nor Margaret.

—Anne is my lover.

209. Trick, track and trawndy,


Which was Trawndy Grawnby?
—Witch.

210. There are 4000 people to draw in one carriage; how can they
do that?

—Mr. & Mrs. Thousand and their two children.

211. Mr. Lets was walking and Mr. Lets was riding and Mr. Lets was
walking again. Can you tell me who the gentlemen were?

—Horse, master and dog, all named ’Lets’.

212. My father has a long bench in his house, an’ to guess me how
many people sit on that bench.

—One man named ‘More’. (The trick is, at each guess to say M o r e .)

213. Bees bite honey, honey run.

—A horse named H o n e y .

214. Twelve pear hanging high,


Twelve men passing by;
Each pick a pear,
How many pear remain? 62
—Eleven; the man’s name is E a c h .

215. A man without eyes


Went out to view the skies;
He saw a tree with apples on,
He neither took apples off nor left apples on. 63
—A one-eyed man; two apples on the tree. [208]

216. I was going up Hampton lane, I met a man have seven wives;
the seven wives have seven sacks, the seven sacks have seven kits,
how many were there going to Hampton? 64
—Only one—I.

217. A duck before a duck, a duck after a duck, a duck in the midst
of two ducks. How many ducks was going along?

—Three.

218. I was travelling and six ducks flying, one before the five; and I
took up my gun and I shoot one of the ducks and drop on the
ground. Guess how many ducks remain? 65

—None; the rest fly away.

219. A parson and his daughter, a doctor and his wife; and there is
three apples to share among them. How will they share it? 66

—Each takes one; the parson’s daughter is the doctor’s wife.

220. Run, Ricky, run; run up the Ahe river, run; run with a long trail,
run up the Ahe river, run; run, Ricky, run? How many r’s in that?

—No r’s in ‘that’.

221. Mr. Parott was sitting on a tree; some pigeons were flying by.
The pigeon say, “Good morning, Mr. Parrot.” The parrot say, “Good
morning, Mr. Hundred.” The pigeon say, “I’m not ‘hundred’; want
twice as much, half as much, quarter [209]as much, and you, Mr.
Parrot, to make a hundred.” Tell me how many pigeons were flying. 67

—Thirty-six.

222. I hire laborers for a shilling a day; I get twelve laborers. I give a
man two pence, a woman ha’ penny, a pickney one farthing. How
many of each do I hire?

—Five men, one woman, six pickney.


223. My father gave me a horse to go sell for ten pounds and to eat
my breakfast out of the money and bring home the same ten
pounds. How could I do that?

—Take the shoes off the horse and sell them separately.

224. In a rainy season the Cabrietta overflows a path where a poor


coolie-man and his family had to cross. He then made a dray for
conveying them to and from their work. Dray cannot carry more than
150 lbs. at a time. Coolie-man weighs 150 lbs., wife 150 lbs. and two
sons together 150 lbs. How must they get over.

—Two sons go over; one remains, the other returns. The mother goes
over; boy returns, takes over brother returns. Father goes over; boy
brings over brother. 68

a) The same story with a fox, goose and bag of corn. [210]

225. My fader got six sheep. He send his son to de pen. ‘My son, go
an’ count me six sheep, but you musn’ count me “one, two, t’ree,
four, five, six”. You musn’t count “four an’ two, six”. You musn’t count
“t’ree an’ t’ree, six”. You musn’ count “five an’ one, six”, but count me
my six sheep!

—Dis, dat, de other,


De ewe, de ram, de wether.

226. I gwine to make a dance; I want you there. You mus’n’t come a
day, you mus’n’t come a night, you mus’n’t ride a horse, you mus’n’t
ride a mule, you mus’n’t ride a jackass. An’ if you come, you mus’n’t
come into me house an’ you mus’n’t stay outside. 69

—You must come riding a cow, between day and night; and when you
come, stand on the threshold, neither in nor out.

227. Under the earth I stand,


Silver and gold was my tread.

You might also like