Media reporting of violence against women (VAW) has the potential to contribute to improving the community's understanding and response to this social problem. However, journalists are not immune to ...gender biases and myths concerning VAW. Both can affect how the subject is framed. We look at an Australian training programme implemented to improve VAW news reporting practices such as including social context, family violence experts and help-seeking information for survivors, challenging myths and avoiding perpetrator exoneration and victim-blaming. We compare journalists' reporting before and after training and also compare the trained reporters' content with a matched comparison sample written by untrained journalists to see if training translates into best practice reporting. We conclude that reportage practices have improved overall in recent years and that the training model, in which participants were selected to take part, appears to be effective in improving some key elements of best practice reporting, but some areas of concern remain. We recommend more targeted programmes with curriculum additions to better address some reporting deficiencies we identify.
This article is a conversation between two academic experts, Callie Rennison and Nikki Jones, who endeavor to sum up what has been accomplished in eliminating violence against women in the United ...States during the 25 years of the journal’s existence. Domestic violence, rape, and sexual harassment are discussed. Although prevalence rates are down in domestic violence, rape and sexual harassment remain persistent problems. Looking at violence against women from an analysis of President Trump voters in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Rennison and Jones observe the extent to which the current ideas and attitudes of women—both young and old—will need to change before violence can be eliminated. Rather than viewing events in the United States as totally negative, they see them as presenting new opportunities for greater understanding of violence against women and for new methods of prevention and perpetrator accountability.
Editor’s Introduction Renzetti, Claire M
Violence against women,
12/2019, Volume:
25, Issue:
16
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
To close out this year, the 25th anniversary of the journal, we offer a second special issue. The contributions to this issue were written by scholars from several disciplines on a variety of topics, ...but all with the goal of not simply looking back, but also looking forward.
Abuse directed at visible and audible women demonstrates that cyberspace, once heralded as a new, democratic, public sphere, suffers similar gender inequalities as the offline world. This paper ...reports findings from a national UK study about experiences of online abuse among women who debate feminist politics. It argues that online abuse is most usefully conceived as a form of abuse or violence against women and girls, rather than as a form of communication. It examines the experiences of those receiving online abuse, thereby making a valuable contribution to existing research which tends to focus on analysis of the communications themselves.
Even after enactment of the Protection of Women From Domestic Violence Act 2005, over the last 10 years, the rate of decline of prevalence of spousal violence against women has remained low in India. ...This study attempts to explain the experience of spousal violence using a social–ecological framework. We analyzed the National Family Health Survey 2015 to 2016 (NFHS-4) data of 66,013 ever-married women aged 15 to 49 years. Participants in the domestic violence module of the NFHS-4 reported their experience of violence committed by their husband within the 12 months preceding the survey. Multilevel logistic regression analyses were done to determine the association between spousal violence and different explanatory variables of various levels of social ecology including variables on women’s empowerment. About one fourth of ever-married women reported experiencing any form of violence during the last year. The experience of spousal violence was significantly associated with social ecology at multiple levels. At the individual level, the odds of experiencing physical violence were higher among younger women, who married at a younger age, had an age gap of 3 to 4 years with her husband, and had more children. Women in vulnerable groups, with poor economic status, and members of marginalized communities had higher odds of experiencing spousal violence. Women had high odds of experiencing spousal violence if living in a social ecology with unfavorable social norms, higher rates of domestic crimes, and a higher prevalence of underage marriage. The association of spousal violence with women’s empowerment remained inconclusive. The results argue for manipulating contextual factors to empower women to challenge gender-related equations and investing in education for gender sensitization at the higher level social ecologies.
This article brings together a quantitative approach which seeks to map and understand actor centrality and connectivity in relation to Twitter using social network analysis, with a qualitative set ...of interdisciplinary concerns around media representations of men's sexual violence against women. Our focus is #HimToo, a short-lived Twitter-backlash to #MeToo concentrated around the Brett Kavanaugh hearings and confirmation. We explore how #HimToo flourished and floundered across two key periods: the first related to the broadcast confirmation hearings; the second a backlash triggered by a Kavanaugh-supporting mom. With a dataset of over 277,000 Tweets, we argue that the first period shows an actor-centric conservative engagement which is dominated by female commentators, but displays a male orientation. The second period presents both a serious and satirical response to the first. Whilst there is a significant reorientation of both activity and actors in this second period, we identify persistent gendered and generational patterns which warrant a more cautious response from feminist critics. We thus connect our analysis to debates about social media connectedness, gendered patterns of social media ab/use, and the role of social media in a highly polarised political climate in the USA.
The aim of this study is to shed light on how Swedish female survivors of male intimate partner violence experience support from social workers during post-separation violence. This is explored ...through an interview study with sixteen survivors. Hester's three planet model is utilized in the analysis. The results show that while the survivors described positive experiences of support from social workers on the Domestic violence planet, they felt social workers in the family law system on the Child contact planet enabled post-separation violence, and reported that this contributed to them feeling betrayed rather than supported.