Tactics of Antifeminist Backlash against the U.S. Battered Women’s Movement

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Conclusion: The future of human trafficking research

Scholarly publications to date have overwhelmingly focused on describing general dynamics of trafficking and trafficking routes, based largely on anecdotal information. Another of the largest segments of the research literature so far comprises commentary on the human trafficking policy debates. Although these debates are often described as fairly homogenous across the globe, this collection reveals substantial regional variation in this discussion. Political, epistemological, and resource differences between governments have had a profound effect on legal and social responses to traffi cking. Therefore, attention to the theories of trafficking propagated in specific locations will continue to be essential to research in the field. Despite the challenges of studying trafficking, there are several possible directions for future research. The preceding chapters exemplify innovative approaches to radically contextualized research, providing some potential ways forward. I will outline a few of these possibilities here.No Full Tex

Fathers' rights activism and law reform in comparative perspective (Book review)

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Family law reform and domestic violence: Lessons from Australia

This chapter reviews efforts to assess the outcomes of Australian family law reform, particularly as it affects domestic violence cases. Australia has adopted and implemented a number of family law reforms, including shared parenting and friendly parent provisions. Although the hope was that shared parenting would decrease the number of contested custody cases, it actually had the opposite effect, increasing the number of cases filed and the burden on the court system. In addition, the research found that there was a significant amount of conflict in these families. Moreover, the adoption of friendly parent provisions discouraged reporting of violence and abuse. These reforms had the effect of increasing inappropriate child custody arrangements, a fact that became evident because of Australia’s robust research infrastructure; this research later led to the adoption of standards that prioritized protection from harm over shared parenting.No Full Tex

Domestic and family violence

Stereotypes of crime and deviance are focused on violence perpetrated by strangers in public spaces. However, women and girls face their greatest risk of victimisation from known men. The domestic home and private family life are two primary contexts for such victimisation. Domestic violence refers to violence and abuse by current or former intimate partners. It includes physical violence, sexual violence, emotional or psychological abuse and economic abuse. Domestic violence is generally understood to describe the type of ongoing abusive, controlling and violent behaviour that was originally called ‘wife beating’. While the shift to de-gendered terminology reflects the recognition that violence and abuse extends beyond heterosexual men’s violence against women, domestic violence remains a highly gendered phenomenon.No Full Tex

Gender bias in the courts: Implications for battered mothers and their children

In the courtroom, female litigants face not only a battle with an ex-partner who is trying to gain custody of their children but also face a far more sinister opponent: the deeply entrenched gender bias permeating the United States legal system. Gender bias impairs not only a woman’s chances of winning relief from her abuser but also limits the ability of her attorney, if female, to prove her case. In this article, Molly Dragiewicz provides compelling evidence for these assertions, demonstrating, through data coming from diverse sources, that the decks are indeed stacked against the average female litigant’s likelihood of obtaining justice and relief from a court system that professes equality under the law but in many cases delivers anything but. The oft-used moniker of the “good old boys’ club” is quite horrifyingly accurate when describing how women rank vis-à-vis men in what goes on behind the courtroom doors. Dr. Dragiewicz’s summary of the evidence ought to raise critical self-examination by our courts and their agents of the practices they use in adjudicating women’s custody cases in jurisdictions across the country.Full Tex

Critical contexts for thinking about trafficking

This introductory section provides background information that is essential to understanding the rest of the chapters in the collection and, indeed, the rest of the traffi cking literature. The discussion about human traffi cking has been taken up by a number of interest groups which have argued and lobbied to institutionalize different understandings of traffi cking, based on a variety of values and beliefs. Because the issue has been so deeply politicized, it is essential to place any study or discussion of human traffi cking within this context.No Full Tex

Family violence or woman abuse? Putting gender back into the Canadian research equation

Research on violence against women has been among the most scrutinized areas in social science. From the beginning, efforts to empirically document the prevalence, incidence, and characteristics of violence against women have been hotly debated (DeKeseredy, 2011; Dragiewicz & DeKeseredy, forthcoming; Minaker & Snider, 2006). Objections that violence against women was rare have given way to acknowledgement that it is more common than once thought. Research on the outcomes of woman abuse has documented the serious ramifications of this type of violence for individual victims and the broader community. However, violence against women was not simply “discovered” by scholars in the 1960s, leading to a progressive growth of the literature. Knowledge production around violence against women has been fiercely contested, and feminist insights in particular have always been met with backlash(Gotell, 2007; Minkaer & Snider, 2006; Randall, 1989; Sinclair, 2003)...No Full Tex