Rape and respectability: ideas about sexual violence and social class

Women on low incomes are disproportionately represented among sexual violence survivors, yet feminist research on this topic has paid very little attention to social class. This article blends recent research on class, gender and sexuality with what we know about sexual violence. It is argued that there is a need to engage with classed distinctions between women in terms of contexts for and experiences of sexual violence, and to look at interactions between pejorative constructions of working-class sexualities and how complainants and defendants are perceived and treated. The classed division between the sexual and the feminine, drawn via the notion of respectability, is applied to these issues. This piece is intended to catalyse further research and debate, and raises a number of questions for future work on sexual violence and social class

Everyday self-defence: Hollaback narratives, habitus and resisting street harassment

Street harassment is recognised as an ‘everyday’ form of violence against women. Influenced by contemporary sociologies of everyday life, this article examines women responses to street harassment, drawing on over 500 first person narratives submitted to the website of Hollaback London. The narrative structure highlights women’s actions, which (like street harassment) have generally been considered inconsequential. Quantitative content analysis reveals the extent and variety of strategies employed by women, including speaking back, calling on others for help, physically fighting-back, walking away and an array of ‘small’, everyday actions and gestures that aim to resist harassment. I argue that these responses comprise everyday self-defence practice. Furthermore, the notion of narrative habitus is employed to argue that Hollaback narratives do not just describe harassment, but that reading narratives can generate dispositions for self-defence. Narrative analysis reveals the way that satire is employed to make space for women’s successful self-defence. I argue that Hollaback narratives do not just offer storylines or scripts for resisting street harassment but foster a style for doing so. Analysis considers the limits to narratively motivated self-defence. This research demonstrates that, in order to ‘see’ women’s resistance, we need to pay close attention to the everyday as the site of both gendered oppression and moments of liberation

Designing degree-level courses for police recruits in England and Wales: some issues and challenges

This article results from a series of linked research projects designed to support the development of a Degree Holder Entry Programme in England and Wales, as part of the College of Policing’s Policing Educational Qualification Framework (PEQF). Its aim is to draw out some of the issues that need addressing, and challenges that need solving in the design of any degree-level courses required as an entry qualification for recruits to the police service in England and Wales. It examines the rationale for professionalisation of policing, and how this relates the the development and application of a body of policing knowledge. It considers the main challenges facing the English and Welsh police service in developing an effective policing qualification at degree level

Counting the costs Estimating the impact of domestic violence in the London Borough of Hackney

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:99/15439 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Counting the costs Estimating the impact of domestic violence in the London Borough of Hackney

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:99/15439 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Between the devil and the deep-blue sea: Conceptualising victims' experiences of policing in domestic violence in the Singaporean context

In contextualising victims' experiences of policing in domestic violence situations in Singapore, two extreme but interrelated sets of responses have been observed. At one end of the continuum, criminal justice sanctions are strictly contingent upon victim willingness to initiate criminal proceedings against the perpetrator, and at the other, victims' rights, needs and preferences seem to be usurped by the justice system regardless of victims' choice. Neither of these positions takes victims' interests into account. Nor do they stem from an understanding of the sociocultural, economic and structural circumstances in which victims experienced violence, and continued to experience it, long after a police intervention. Data from the research revealed that criminalisation as an ideological and legally practical tool was not only rendered ineffective but irrelevant to the experiences of women in the Singaporean context.Two factors account for this phenomenon. First, the absence of support structures to achieve criminalisation and address victims' needs in the aftermath of criminalisation; second, the authoritative, paternalistic and patriarchal state impedes processes aimed at the empowerment of women victims