For this essay I am going to look at Domestic Violence against women and what the State is doing to protect them.
Domestic Violence is now a well-known global occurrence affecting not only women but also their children too. Violence against woman has been around since the dawn of time. We have all seen cartoon pictures of the caveman dragging his mate behind him by her hair. It was just something that men did. Woman had no protection against men especially if they were married to their attacker. For the first 75 years of the 20th century women were seen as meek and subservient to their men and were also owned by those men.
Men had a social right to keep their women under control. Things began to change from the late 1960s early 1970s. As feminism became more popular the feelings that men owned their women began to subside. But this change in society did not so much to change the occurrence and violence of violence in the home. So what exactly is domestic violence? Domestic Violence is usually defined as physical, emotional, sexual and other abuse by someone (usually but not always a man) of a person (usually not always a woman) with whom they have or have had some form of intimate relationship such as marriage, in order to maintain power and control over that person. It may include threats to kill or harm the woman and/or her children or other family members (Barron 1992) Lists of typical injuries sustained by victims include: Bruising; bleeding; hair loss; knife wounds; scratches to body and face; concussion; broken/loss of teeth.
This list could go and on. Injuries do not have to include physical but also mental. The cause of domestic violence against women can never fully be documented. There is the Liberal approach that violence against women is a rare occurrence and that it is only a small number of men who will abuse.
They blame social backgrounds that form a cycle of abuse. If the father used violence against the mother then the child will see it as normal. They also feel that to push a man as far as to commit an assault sexual frustration should also be taken into consideration. But the criticisms against this approach include the notion that not all men who come from a broken home go out and commit rape and systematic abuse. They see that the women have to take part of the blame by the way they act or dress.
Class is another main approach in trying to decipher why men use violence against women. Violence is attributed to the lower/working classes or black social groups. Sylvia Walby has attacked this approach by saying that this is not the case. Not all under educated, low paid or low status men go out and rape and abuse. Radical feminists see domestic violence as a widespread and classless act.
They see that men are expected to take the lead in a situation, they are supposed to be strong and macho. They go to war and fight for their countries. Their strength is something to be looked up to not down on. Their strength is their basis of power. The critics against this approach say that is does not take into account class or race.
Male violence is a form of social control and the state does not make an attempt to control and eradicate it. The sate is run by men, for men, to protect men. Figures to show the extent of male violence against women is difficult to truly estimate due to the large number of abuse cases that are never reported to the police. Statistics that have been documented are alarming to say the least.
One in four women may experience violence in their relationships with men (Womens Aid Federation England} report 1992). Severe, repeated and systematic violence occurs in at least 5 of every hundred marriages in the UK: Between 40% and 45% of murdered women are killed by their male partners; Between 1 and 2 women are murdered by their male partners every week; More that 25% of all violent crime repeated to the police is domestic violence of .
