Sweden has been a country of immigration since the Second World War. The asylum immigration is regulated by international law, the immigration of employees’ works through guidelines from the European Union. The immigration left for regulations from the government is the family immigration, which xenophobic parties want to increase. The immigration reaches a high level in the 1990’s. As the social democratic government is trying to keep the immigration controlled media is criticizing the regulations of immigration. Since the 1970´s probation of 2 years is needed for relation immigrants in order to minimize abuse. This rule might force women to stay in violent relationships due to fear of being sent back home, if they make a report to the police. The government faces the problem with the proposition 1999/2000:43, which is analyzed in this thesis with the goal to reveal the underlying values regarding the view of women, men and violence. Focusing on gender Carol Lee Bacchi’s discourse analythical method “What’s the ‘problem’ represented to be?” is used.

This feminist project explores the experiential accounts of twenty-five women who have lived through abuse within their intimate relationships. Their stories, gathered through a series of semi-structured face-to-face interviews intended to elicit accounts of resilience were saturated with emotion-talk, especially shame-talk. To address questions of the relationship between these accounts and theoretical accounts of abuse, and shame the women’s texts were engaged in an analytic dialogue with feminist knowledges of abuse against women, Erving Goffman’s sociological understandings of shame, stigma and mortification of the self, Thomas Scheff’s sociological theory of shame and social bonds, and feminist poststructuralist understandings around the constitution of human subjectivity. These conversations enabled development of a conceptual representation of the special and highly specific form of social bonding experienced by victims of abuse within intimate relationships. This bonding begins with processes of mortification of the self, the gradual erosion of a sense of self through the systematic imposition of various shaming and shameful actions. These processes take place within a specific social context created through the constitutive power of dominant discourses of gender, heterosexual coupledom, matrimony and motherhood which work to shape the lives of individual women. Because of the specific ways in which these discourses currently operate within Aotearoa New Zealand they result in the constitution of a narrow range of tightly prescribed subject positions available to victims of intimate partner abuse. This analysis leads to an argument that women’s inability to ‘do’ motherhood or intimate partnership in line with dominant discourses of mothering and relationships (because these simply cannot be achieved within an abusive context), opens them to the debilitating effects of shame. Shame, both actual and threatened, promotes silence, isolation and dangerous private spaces as women seek to protect themselves from its painful experience. I argue that it is therefore crucial to promote the availability of discursive positioning for women living through abuse which offers non-shaming and realistic choices.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 2007. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 196-214).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 2007. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 196-214).

Background: In 2015, 17,000 reports were made of about assault cases in Sweden. In 46% of the reports the perpetrator was in a close relationship with the victim. When the victims of violence seek care, healthcare staff lacks routines and resources to pay attention to and respond to women adequately, despite the fact that the healthcare system has legal responsibility to prevent, detect and identify violence. Hence the interest in how healthcare professionals meet these women and what routines and resources are available in health care to support women with violence. Aim: The literature review’s aims was to map the encounter of women who are exposed to violence in close relationships with a male partner. Method: A general literature review based on qualitative and quantitative articles. Result: Healthcare professionals pay attention to and rarely respond to vulnerable women in healthcare due to lack of knowledge and education. Lack of routines and resources prevents healthcare professionals from responding to and providing adequate support to women with violence. Conclusions: The conclusion that can be drawn is that the predominantly affected person's lack of treatment and the lack of routines and resources of the healthcare system is the woman who is the victim of violence. Suggestions for Continuing Research: To research how healthcare is working with the shortcomings that presents in the encounter of women who experience intimate partner violence / Bakgrund: År 2015 gjordes 17 000 anmälningar om misshandelsbrott i Sverige. I 46% av anmälningarna var gärningsmannen i en nära relation med offret. När de våldsutsatta kvinnorna söker vård saknar vårdpersonal rutiner och resurser för att uppmärksamma och bemöta kvinnorna på adekvat sätt, trots att hälso- och sjukvården har lagstadgat ansvar att förebygga, upptäcka och identifiera våld. Därav intresset för hur vårdpersonal bemöter dessa kvinnor och vilka rutiner och resurser som finns inom hälso- och sjukvården att ge stöd till våldsutsatta kvinnor. Syfte: Litteraturöversikten syftade till att kartlägga hälso- och sjukvårdens bemötande av kvinnor som utsätts för våld i nära relation av en manlig partner. Metod: En allmän litteraturöversikt baserad på kvalitativa och kvantitativa artiklar. Resultat: Vårdpersonal inom hälso- och sjukvården uppmärksammade och bemötte sällan våldsutsatta kvinnor i vården på grund av bristande kunskap och utbildning. Brister i rutiner och resurser hindra vårdpersonalen från att bemöta och ge adekvat stöd till våldsutsatta kvinnor. Slutsatser: Slutsatsen som kan dras är att den som främst drabbas av vårdpersonalens bristande bemötande samt hälso- och sjukvårdens bristande rutiner och resurser, är den våldsutsatta kvinnan. Förslag på fortsatt forskning: Efterforska vidare hur hälso- och sjukvården arbetar med bristerna som framkommer i bemötandet med våldsutsatta kvinnor.

A postmodern approach is used to examine various discourses with relevance to subject positioning and its effect on individual spirituality. The stories are located within different discourses, introducing a spiritual diversity. Through narrative, a holistic understanding of the spiritual experiences of two contemporary Christian women who have suffered abuse is provided, highlighting spirituality as an essential component to physical and psychosocial well-being. Contextual post-structural feminist theology and the social construction theory of reality informed this work. The performative function of language in social interaction is emphasised, situating language and relationship as key factors in the construction of individual identity and spirituality. Whilst recognising the constitutive force of discourse, the research highlights the notion that people can exercise choice in opposition to these discursive practices. Elements of spiritual transformation, hope and empowerment surfaced as counter stories to the culture of abuse, providing the scaffolding for re-storying their lives. / Practical Theology / M.Th. (Pastoral Therapy)

South Africa is a very violent society, where violence is often used as a social resource to maintain control and establish authority. Global and local research suggests that there is a high prevalence of intimate partner violence (IPV), a facet of this violence, although little research has been conducted into the effects of IPV during pregnancy in the South African non-governmental organisation (NGO) context. NGOs globally and in South Africa have attempted to address IPV and IPV during pregnancy by providing services that aim to assist (largely female) clients emotionally and logistically. In light of this phenomenon, this qualitative study presents data generated through the use of a lightly-structured narrative interview schedule. The interviews were conducted over three sessions with eight counsellors, all based at two NGOs in South Africa and experienced in counselling women who have suffered IPV and IPV during pregnancy. This study used Taylor and Littleton’s (2006) narrative-discursive analytical lens, infused with theoretical insights from Foucault about power, discourse and narrative in order to identify the discursive resources that shape the narratives that the counsellors shared in the interviews and how these translate into subject positions and (gendered) power relations of the men and women about whom they speak. Six discursive resources emerged from the narratives, namely a discourse of ‘traditional “African” culture’, ‘patriarchal masculinity’, ‘nurturing femininity’, ‘female victimhood’, ‘female survivorhood’ and ‘human rights’. These informed the three main narratives that emerged: narratives about IPV in general, IPV during pregnancy, and the counsellors’ narratives about their intervention strategies. Within these narratives (and the micro-narratives which comprised them), men were largely positioned as subscribing to violent patriarchal behaviour whilst women were mostly positioned as nurturing and victims of this violence. The counsellors also constructed women as largely ignorant of their options about IPV and IPV during pregnancy; they constructed these phenomena as problems that require intervention and identified a number of factors that indicate what successful IPV interventions should entail. In reflecting upon this analysis, this study also aimed to address the questions of what is achieved or gained by using these narratives and discursive resources, what the significance or consequences are of constructing and using these particular narratives and discourses and whether different narratives or discourses would have been possible. Recommendations for further research includes incorporating more sites as well as interviewing perpetrators and IPV survivors themselves, perhaps in their home language where relevant rather than English, to gain a broader and more faceted understanding of the dynamics surrounding IPV during pregnancy. A recommendation for practice in intervention against IPV during pregnancy is to introduce more holistic/systemic intervention strategies and working with communities to address this issue.

The aim of the study was to seek further understanding of what school staff, social services and staff at the shelters consider to be the difficulties in the work of children's schooling when staying at shelters for abused women. The method used was qualitative semi structured interviews and the empirics consist of six interviews, two from each profession. Despite a comprehensive searching strategy, only a few studies were found that had examined the subject and those studies described the problem briefly. This indicates that the subject has been little researched and that children's schooling in shelters for abused women is a subject we have little knowledge about. The results show that there usually are no systematic routines for dealing with the issue among professionals involved. It is difficult to get a new school place for children staying in shelters for abused women. Professions involved with these children in society need more knowledge in the subject to develop a systematic approach. In future, more research on the subject and its consequences for children in shelters for abused women is needed.

The aim of this study is to investigate and understand how social workers in social services work with abused women in intimate partner relationships in order to accommodate housing and how they are limited in their efforts to arrange accommodation for these women. The study is conducted through semistructured interviews and I have interviewed six social workers which belongs to four equal municipalities around middle Sweden. Each social worker work with abused women but it may differ in how they work with these women depending on the organization structure. Interest has been in describing restrictions and contradictions that the social workers encounter when providing accommodation to abused women in intimate partner relationships. The result was analyzed on the basis of previous research, Michael Lipsky ́s and Johansson Roine ́s theory of street-level bureaucrats and Svensson, Johnsson & Laanemets concept of discretion. The result shows that the social workers' scope of action is limited by various factors, for instance the organizational limitations, laws and housing shortages.

This thesis examines the underreporting of sexual violence against women in the Camdeboo. It is based on a survey of 971 women living in the Camdeboo aged fifteen and older. The thesis considers, with reference to relevant secondary literature, methodological issues pertinent to conducting survey research into violence against women. While many survey researchers into violence against women argue that behaviourally specific questions lead to higher rates of disclosure, the survey on which this thesis is based employed complex and open-ended questions to allow respondents to record their own definitions of physical and sexual abuse. 31,2 percent of the women surveyed disclosed having experienced sexual abuse, but 76,7 percent did not report this abuse to the police. The thesis explores the patterns of sexual abuse of women in the Camdeboo and the factors influencing the underreporting of such abuse. While it was possible to establish correlations between certain socio-demographic variables and the underreporting of sexual abuse, such correlations should be treated with caution. The survey found that women were far more likely to report (and disclose) sexual assaults by strangers than by people known to them, particularly intimate partners. Sexual abuse in intimate relations was found to be strongly associated with physical abuse, and women who had experienced sexual and physical abuse within intimate relationships were more likely to report their physical abuse to the police than their sexual abuse. However, the majority of women, particularly poor and economically dependent women, believed that reporting their intimate partner abuse to the police would not end it, and might even place them at greater risk. The evidence suggests that these perceptions are accurate. Under current circumstances, reporting sexual abuse to the police may not be the best help-seeking strategy available to many sexually abused women, and alternative sources of help may be more appropriate. Consideration should be given to directing more resources into such alternatives.