This dissertation investigates discourses of anti-violence strategies in the context of international development. While violence against women is, of course, an urgent problem, this dissertation explores how the urgency to end violence against women is socially, culturally, economically, and politically constructed. I consider the manufacturing of urgency in three case studies of contemporary anti-violence initiatives: i) American foreign policy including what has been branded as “The Hillary Doctrine” and proposed International Violence Against Women Act; ii) the World Bank’s report entitled The Cost of Violence; and iii) the United Nation’s UNiTE To End Violence Against Women and Say NO campaigns. In doing so, I argue that World Bank, the United Nations, and American foreign policies are too often technocratic, narrow, depoliticized, and are executed in an urgent manner in the interest of neoliberal economic growth, security concerns, and “feel good” aid at the expense of more holistic, effective and accountable responses to global violence against women.

Orientador: Paulo Eduardo Teixeira / Banca: Lílian Henrique de Azevedo / Banca: Lídia Viana Possas / Resumo: Esta obra é uma investigação acerca da Lei Maria da Penha e as Políticas Públicas associadas ao enfrentamento da violência contra a mulher no Brasil. Tais políticas foram implantadas após múltiplas reivindicações de movimentos sociais e feministas. A pesquisa teve como foco o Centro de Referência de Atendimento à Mulher Vítima de Violência do município de Bauru, em duas frentes, quantitativa e qualitativa. Examinamos as fichas de atendimento desde a criação do Centro em 2010, e entrevistamos duas mulheres, uma que é atendida no Centro e uma funcionária que lá trabalha. Partindo destas narrativas seguimos em busca das razões culturais na formação identitária de homens e mulheres que expliquem a alta incidência de relacionamentos violentos. Por fim apresentamos o atual estágio das discussões no âmbito penal na busca de soluções que unam punição e prevenção de novas violências. / Abstract: This work is an investigation of the Maria da Penha Law and Public Policy associated with addressing violence against women in Brazil. Such policies were implemented after multiple claims of social and feminist movements. The research focused on the Customer Reference Center for Women Victims of Violence in the city of Bauru, on two fronts, quantitative and qualitative. We examined the medical records since the establishment of the Centre in 2010, and interviewed two women, one that is answered in the center and an employee who works there. From these narratives follow in search of cultural reasons in identity formation of men and women to explain the high incidence of violent relationships. Finally we present the current stage of discussions on criminal matters in the search for solutions that unite punishment and prevention of further violence. / Mestre

"Our society has generally viewed women as less aggressive and less likely to commit acts of violence in comparison to men. Statistics show that only 13 per cent of the violent crimes in the United States have been committed by women (Steffensmeier and Allan, 1996). However, employees at psychiatric hospitals often report problems of increased violent behavior among their female inpatients. This perception of the female inpatient population is further complicated by the mixed research findings regarding gender and violence. Considering the possible other environmental causations, gender alone should not prove an accurate variable in addressing violent behavior. Variables such as age, location, time, ethnicity, institutionalization and violence to self as opposed to violence to others will likely show significant relevance. This study will attempt to demonstrate how these other biopsychosocial variables play a role in violence prediction for this group of forensically committed patients other than gender."

Background: Intimate partner violence, nursing care, men’s violence against women, nurses. Intimate partner violence and men’s violence against women is a health problem globally,socially and across all social classes. Different theoretical perspectives exist about the causes of intimate partner violence. Health consequences for women who are victims of intimate partner violence is a fact and go against human rights. Healthcare and nurses have a responsibility in providing good reception and good nursing care. Women exposed to intimate partner violence have torn experiences of nurses nursing care. Aim: To describe nurses’ nursing care towards women that are victims of intimate partner violence. Method: A literature study based on nine qualitative scientific articles with a content analysis. Results: Two main categories and four sub-categories emerged about nurses’ care of abused women. The main category Aspects related to care with the subcategories Nurses’ treatment and Nurses’ nursing measures. The main category Aspects related to communication with the subcategories Nurses’ identification of intimate partner violence and Nurses’ sensitivity. Conclusion: A deficiency in nursing care is between nurses and women exposed to intimate partner violence. Organizational factor, social structures and uncertainty about referrals can affect nursing care. Screening for intimate partner violence, knowledge and experience of intimate partner violence as well as the women participating in their own care is important to provide good care. Clinical significance: Discussions regarding attitudes toward intimate partner violence and how the nurses nursing care can be facilitated on organizational level need to be carried out. Training about intimate partner violence is still needed in workplaces and nursing school to provide better care to women exposed to intimate partner violence. Screening should be implemented and insured in nursing care.

Domestic violence is acknowledged as a social problem but the research is often focused on younger individuals. The people who is affected by domestic violence is not just a group of homogeneous women but can vary in age, social and economic status. Elderly people are also often viewed as a homogeneous group of individuals. This can result in a neglection of their individual needs. The age limit is rising which results in a growth in the elderly population. This causes an increased pressure in the existing systems to adapt new strategies to meet the elderly populations needs. There is a lack of previous research in the area of elderly women who is affected by domestic abuse and how the municipality works with the problem. There for in this study we aim to identify how a municipality care department work against domestic violence amongst elderly women and what strategies they are using to combat the social problem.

In international humanitarian discourse, gender-based violence against women have long been recognised as a human rights violation and described as the most extreme expression of unequal power relations between men and women (UN 1993). Using a qualitative content analysis to examine the GREVIO reports of Denmark, Finland, and Sweden, the aim of this thesis is to outline the differences between and within these states regarding their response to violence against women. Drawing on insights from feminist political theory, and especially Nordic feminist theorists, these differences are made visible using the three concepts: hegemonic discourse, contradictory effects, and boundaries (Kantola and Dahl 2005). The theoretical background is complemented by theoretical contributions from feminist understandings of violence against women. In analysing the main differences between the states, many of these differences can be derived from the fact that the three states frame the violence differently, with Sweden adopting a gender-based frame while Denmark and Finland adopt gender-neutral frames of the violence. In analysing differences within states, there are two distinct forms of differences: differences due to a gap between principle and practice, and differences between various parts of the country. The findings of this thesis may provide a base for future in-depth studies of the Nordic, women-friendly, welfare states.

Routine Activities Theory (RAT) is one of the most widely used theories to explain victimization. It has been applied to a wide range of criminal victimizations, such as property crimes (Miethe, Stafford, & Long, 1987) and urban murder (Messner & Tardiff, 1985). While traditional RAT has been used to explain violence against women, the feminist perspective of RAT developed by Schwartz and Pitts (1995) provides a better explanation by incorporating cultural factors that shape the conditions that give rise to offending. The current study draws on feminist RAT in order to explore three different types of victimization involving women: stalking, dating violence and sexual violence. In doing so, the current study extends the RAT and feminist RAT literature by more thoroughly exploring what it means to be a capable guardian and by incorporating literature on bystander intervention. Though bystander intervention literature and feminist RAT literature are similar in that they view people as having the ability to prevent violence and crime, the two areas have developed relatively separately and have rarely been integrated together. In addition to expanding the literature on RAT, this study also contributes to the bystander intervention literature by analyzing willingness to intervene in three types of cyber violence against women. Though bystander intervention research has greatly expanded throughout the years, research involving intervention into cyber stalking, cyber dating violence, and cyber sexual violence/harassment are greatly lacking. The current study employed a web based survey to assess bystander intervention in cyber violence and expand feminist and cyber RAT by analyzing victimization. College students were asked to judge their likelihood of intervention in situations involving potential dating violence, sexual harassment, and stalking. In addition, they were asked about their routine activities and components related to the theory, as well as dating violence, sexual violence and stalking victimization. Unsurprisingly, students preferred to intervene in a direct manner. In addition, there were inconsistent findings regarding victimization and routine activities theory. The results of the study are discussed in terms of implications for the development of bystander intervention programs and will expand the feminist RAT literature.

Intimate partner sexual violence (IPSV) is a public health problem andprimarily affects women. Almost 30% of all women who have been in arelationship with a man, have experienced physical or sexual violence by theirpartner in their life. Even though sexual violence is being investigated inIndia, the determinants of sexual violence are thus far little investigated,specifically the determinants of IPSV. The purpose of the study was toexamine the demographic and socioeconomic determinants of IPSV againstwomen in India. The study was carried out using a quantitative method basedon secondary data from the National Family Health Survey 4 (NFHS-4). Thevariables used was age, residential area, education, religion, wealth index andemployment (current/all year/seasonal). Descriptive statistics, Chi-square testand a multivariate logistic regression analysis were used to analyze the data.The results indicated that younger women experienced more IPSV than olderwomen, and women in rural areas lived through more IPSV than women inurban areas. However, were women with urban residency were more likely tobe exposed to IPSV, which indicates that urban residency can be a risk factorfor sexual violence. A remarkable finding was that the prevalence of IPSVamong working women was higher (9%) than nonworking women (6%), butthat the adjusted ORs showed no correlation between working status andIPSV. Current study has added further evidence of IPSV in India, usingnationally representative samples. Younger women with lower educationshould be emphasized and seen as a risk group for IPSV. An in-depth studyregarding the partner’s characteristics in India is warranted and an importantstep to chart additional determinants for IPSV. / <p>Betyg i Ladok 201214.</p>

This thesis identifies discourses of women leaving abusive male partners by examining the works on the matter by famous IPVAW researchers Viveka Enander, Carin Holmberg, and Margareta Hydén. Using discourse analysis, and thus a social constructivist approach, I have studied how the researchers explain women’s leaving processes and the resistance associated with those by drawing on the theories of Normalization of Violence and Neutralization of Violence respectively. Further, this thesis examines both what women are included in the research studies and how women leaving their abusive partners are portrayed in the material. By using an intersectional perspective, I explore who is missing from the research material and what impact their absence might have. I argue that discourses have an impact on people’s lived realities, thus who is depicted as a victim of abuse by being included as a subject in research is highly important. In short, the findings draw attention to how researchers within the same field provide different modes of explanation and thus comes to different conclusions based on the theories chosen for the study, ultimately leading to that they (re)produce different discourses which create a discursive struggle. The thesis also highlights the necessity of including an intersectional framework when researching women exposed to violence.

The aim of this following study is to clarify the differences between the swedish parties, the social democrats and the moderates strategies for how to prevent men’s violence against women at the national party level. This study is a textanalysis which aims to examine which strategies the parties think is a need for a better gender mainstreaming, the ideological perspective is taken to account when studying the parties strategies. To do the analysis, i have used the ideologies liberalism, conservatism and socialism, to study how different values are weighed against each other which is a general recommendation how something should be conducted. This can also be called a normative statement for how the parties apply ideological points of departure in their strategies. The analysis shows that the parties have differences in their proposals for action. The main difference between the parties is that the Moderates were mostly on improving the judical system, focing more in the individual, which can refer to liberalconservatism. The Social democrats had lower penalty and more measures in terms of knowledge, method development, follow up where the state had the main role. This can further refer to socialism.