A Safe<\/em> blog by Gill Hague, Professor Emerita of Violence Against Women Studies<\/strong><\/p>\n Women\u2019s Aid and the services in the present domestic violence sector arose originally out of pioneering women\u2019s activism, fighting for social change. The direct connection from today back to the movement against violence against women of the 1970s is one which is sometimes now forgotten. Some present-day domestic violence workers know little of the redoubtable feminist heritage on which their work was founded.<\/p>\n A new book published on May 26th 2021 records the history of the women\u2019s liberation movement and the movement against domestic violence specifically, in this and other countries. The book features input from Women\u2019s Aid and charts the struggle to take on domestic violence, and to set up refuges, reflecting on their early concerns, passions and politics. Now refuges are commonplace, even though facing cutbacks and fragile funding, but back at the beginning they were entirely new to everyone. No-one had seen anything like them before.<\/p>\n The book is called History and Memories of the Domestic Violence Movement: We\u2019ve come further than you think<\/em>. It records the dynamic history we all made while many of the older activists from the early days are still here. Charting the movements against domestic abuse and for the liberation of women, the book is non-academic and contains anecdotes, some memoir, testimonies from survivors and interviews. It is illustrated with a few poems.<\/p>\n Ideally, this would have been a collectively written account.\u00a0However, that has not been forthcoming as yet.\u00a0Meanwhile, this book was coordinated and written by myself, but so many activists from the early years and later were willing to contribute that it has become at least the beginning of a collective effort to record our history.<\/p>\n The great mobilisation of women<\/strong><\/p>\n It was the women\u2019s liberation movement from about 1970 that led the way. The book celebrates everything that the activists made and continue to make, as in the famous quote:<\/p>\n “The great mobilisation of women began with a vision, supported by action. The vision was of a world transformed. “<\/em><\/p>\n (Dobash, R. E. and Dobash, R., 1992)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Full of zeal and passion, the movement quickly took up the cause of men\u2019s violence, moving forward with verve, campaigning for change and beginning the setting up of refuges. A coordinating network was established, initially in 1974, as the National Women\u2019s Aid Federation. This later split into the four federations, one for each of the UK countries.<\/p>\n The federations coordinated the nascent network of projects which were beginning to appear all over the UK, most of them established after endless, dedicated work by collectives of women, working unpaid. Since then, Women\u2019s Aid and the domestic violence movement have continued without pause to support and empower women and children experiencing violence, often transforming the lives of survivors, and attempting to both campaign for abused women and to develop culturally-specific, culturally-sensitive responses taking on equality and diversity issues.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n The first brave initiatives started out on an unknown path<\/strong><\/p>\n Looking back, the original refuges of the domestic violence movement were quite revolutionary. And women trying to get away from domestic violence immediately arrived at these previously-unknown and brand-new projects. Immediately. <\/em>They threw their fates to the winds to try to get help. These were acts of almost unimaginable courage at the time.<\/p>\n The new women\u2019s initiatives confronted in clearly visible ways men\u2019s rights and power within the family and society. Not only were women walking out of their marriages and relationships as soon as they found there was somewhere safe to go. They were then going to live with groups of other women. The very fabric of marriage and relations between men and women was being bravely challenged in a quite brazen way. The establishing of refuges was, and is, without doubt, something to celebrate. This short book is part of honouring the women involved and the pure audacity of it, at its beginning.<\/p>\n Radical early politics<\/strong><\/p>\n The radical early politics of refuges are revisited in the book so that we can perhaps learn from them today. Refuges always tried to do things differently. They mainly operated as collectives for twenty or thirty years, until the move to domestic violence organisations having CEOs developed around the 2000s. Being a collective is a brave and extremely challenging way to work, especially while dealing with something as traumatic as domestic abuse. The women concerned worked out innovative ways of doing this. One way was to try to break down power differences between the women providing the services and those using them. Some of these policies have been lost today, but they involved the women in the refuge being members of the collective, and being involved in decision-making at both local and national levels in Women\u2019s Aid. \u00a0These were brave and pioneering moves forward to flatten hierarchies and share power. They transformed the lives of many (although of course not all) women and children.<\/p>\n Challenges as time went on<\/strong><\/p>\n The book discussed the later challenges mounted by Black and minoritised women who recognised that the developing movement was not addressing the intersectional barriers they faced. As a result, the independent Black Women\u2019s Movement developed services and social action, sometimes working within Women\u2019s Aid and the wider movement, and sometimes separately. Leading the way were organisations like Southall Black Sisters, the London Black Women\u2019s Project, the Asian Women\u2019s Resource Centre, Brent, the network of projects provided by and for South Asian women across the UK countries, and pioneering developments in Scotland and Wales. However, many Black and minoritised women\u2019s projects still face discrimination today and have been disproportionately affected by the cutbacks and lack of funding since 2010, as recorded by Imkaan, Women\u2019s Aid and others.<\/p>\n Changing the world<\/strong><\/p>\n The book starts in the early days but then records developments to date within Women\u2019s Aid, charting its 50-year history. It also reflects on the now wide-ranging domestic violence and abuse sector in the UK, including attention to organisations like Refuge, SaveLives, Ava, Solace and inter-agency initiatives and consortiums. It charts the rape crisis and sexual violence movement, and the campaigns and service development around \u2018honour\u2019-based violence, FGM and forced marriage. And it records the struggles, in later years, around funding and the development of competitive commissioning frameworks.<\/p>\n The book reflects on the present emphasis on risk above all else, and the tendency towards \u2018empire-building\u2019 in some domestic violence and housing services. The coverage of the movements internationally includes looking at different attitudes to refuge provision in some parts of the global south, and the development of trans-national feminist joint projects which attempt to avoid dominance from the west.\u00a0The book also addresses legal frameworks, activist campaigning, policy and strategy development, and the evolution of activist-oriented feminist research.<\/p>\n Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n The emphasis throughout the book is on what the activists did, our triumphs, victories, inadequacies and defeats – but mainly on the fact that, even though domestic abuse by men continues to occur almost universally, the transformations have been massive since the early days.\u00a0 The movements against domestic abuse have changed the world in terms of support, campaigns, services, policies and awareness, despite cutbacks and backlashes. The landscape is unrecognisable to what went before in the 1950s\/1960s. We have indeed come far in this huge and brave endeavour to take on male violence.<\/p>\n The cover and dedication of the book<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong>The book is dedicated to survivors of violence and to the inspiring activists all over the world who have fought for so long, many of whom the author has had the honour of working with. The cover features a \u2018zapatos rojos\u2019 protest held in Mexico City, on International Women\u2019s Day, 2020. Each shoe, coloured red for blood, represents a woman killed. This huge demonstration was partially dedicated to Ingrid Escamilla Vargas. In February 2020, she was murdered, and mutilated in horrific ways, too distressing to talk about, by her husband.<\/p>\n The book is also dedicated to her memory.<\/p>\n Perhaps we can all take forward work challenging violence against women and girls in the name of Ingrid Escamilla Vargas.<\/p>\n Gill Hague, Professor Emerita of Violence Against Women Studies<\/strong>Commentators on the book include Pragna Patel of Southall Black Sisters, the ground-breaking Black women\u2019s organisation established in 1979.\u00a0 She states, “Gill Hague\u2019s marvellous book maps a critical period of feminist struggles in the UK, capturing their diversity, vision, passion, creativity and energy\u2026 If we are to defend the gains that have been made and build on them in future struggles for women\u2019s liberation and wider social justice, we must know what came before us. A must-read.”<\/p>\n Publication and event details<\/strong><\/p>\n The book is published by Policy Press on May 26th<\/sup>. \u00a0It can be ordered at: History and Memories of the Domestic Violence Movement:<\/a>\u00a0We’ve Come Further Than You Think<\/a>\u00a0with 20% discount from\u00a0Policy Press.<\/a><\/p>\n