Surviving Domestic Violence: Gender, Poverty and Agency PDF
Preview Surviving Domestic Violence: Gender, Poverty and Agency
Surviving Domestic Violence Surviving Domestic Violence Gender, Poverty and Agency Paula Wilcox University of Brighton * © Paula Wilcox 2006 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2006 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2006 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin's Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-52048-0 ISBN 978-0-230-50618-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-0-230-50618-3 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wilcox, Paula, 1951- Surviving domestic violence: gender, poverty, and agency I Paula Wilcox. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4039-4113-8 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Abused women. 2. Victims of family violence. 3. Women-Social conditions. I. Title. HV1444.W55 2006 616.85'822-dc22 2005055564 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 Transferred to digital printing 2006 For Will Contents List of Tables viii Acknowledgements ix Introduction 1 1 Coercion and 'Consensus' 13 2 Love and Shame 33 3 Mothers and Children 58 4 Home and Security 83 5 Work and Money 109 6 Family and Friends 129 7 Community and Safety 152 Conclusion 171 Notes 184 References 189 Index 206 vii List of Tables 4.1 Meanings of home for women in abusive relationships 108 6.1 Women's family support network immediately after leaving 142 6.2 Women's support network of friends immediately after leaving 142 viii Acknowledgements I would like to thank first and foremost the amazing women who made this book possible; they had such resourcefulness and courage in sur viving domestic violence and were then prepared to share their lives with me so generously. A big thank you also goes to all the women in the local domestic violence forum who supported me throughout the fieldwork and beyond. Friends and family have had a lot to put up with over the last eighteen months. Jo Harrison, Will Johnston, Elaine Flynn, Karen Salinger, I owe you all so much and promise to get back to 'normality' soon! I am very lucky indeed to have had the best possible support from colleagues and friends in the academic world at the Universities of Brighton, Portsmouth and elsewhere; without Sue Balloch there would have been no book proposal, Helen Jones has been absolutely wonderful as my 'friendly reader', as have Lynda Measor, Yvonne Bradshaw, Cathy Humphreys, Helen Baker and Liz Kelly for their perceptive feedback on various chapters. Other people who have been very supportive in various other ways are: Renate Prowse and Chas Wilson Karen Leander, Chris Piggott. Kate Olliver-Kneafsey, Eileen Berrington, Peter Squires, Marilyn Taylor, Evan Stark, Norman Johnson, Tony Jefferson and Christine Jennet. As everyone always says all remaining errors and omissions are my own. To the people I met in Copenhagen where I spent five months writing this book I owe a debt of gratitude for making the stay such a wonderful one (no pun intended!). To the editors at Palgrave Macmillan; Briar Towers, Jill Lake andJen Nelson, thank you for this opportunity and for making it so easy to work with you. Thanks also to the publisher Elsevier for permission to publish material previously published as 'Me mother's bank and me nanan's, you know, support: Women who left domestic violence in England and issues of informal support', Women's Studies International Forum, 2000, 23(1), 1-13. This research study was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. ix Introduction Yes I should think the last seven years have been the worst of the lot ... I wanted to do things with my life and he just wouldn't let me Oill). I'd say I'm a survivor mmm I'm much, much stronger, because now I have to make me own decisions, I can't turn to anybody else for help in a situation that concerns just me, myself .. I just feel a better person all round. If I want to do anything I'll go out and do it and there's nobody stopping me from doing it (Louise). My central focus in this book is on women's agency in the face of the constraints of gender, domestic violence1 and poverty. All of the women participants in this study, like JilF and Louise, took many actions and overcame multiple obstacles in moving through and away from abusive and violent relationships. I have called my book 'Surviv ing domestic violence' to reflect my focus on agency and in tribute to all women who have survived domestic violence, and also as a reference back to Liz Kelly's book 'Surviving sexual violence' (1988) which was influential in my development as a researcher and of course in the field more generally. In this book I try to reflect the changing and complex ways in which women's identities are formed in today's world (Braidotti, 2005). By prioritising women's own words, yet not seeing these as unproblem atic, and by acknowledging my responsibility in analysing and inter preting their words, I hope to contribute towards understanding change and continuity in terms of gender (Lundgren, 1998). By asking women about responses (spontaneous and actively sought) from the people they came into contact with, I hope to contribute towards 2 Surviving Domestic Violence understanding the importance of social networks and communities in enhancing women's agency and in acting against domestic violence (Kelly, 1988). As a feminist researcher and activist, I am committed to research which challenges ideas and practices which perpetuate inequalities and exclusions of all kinds. In this study, however, my data allow me to say more about the intersection of gender with poverty and less about the intersection of gender with 'race' as the women in my sample were all white, working class, heterosexual women. Exploring the intersection of gender with poverty and the impact on agency in domestic violence, I address both institutionalised social relations and discourse. Language is extremely powerful but a focus on text alone does not reflect the het erogeneity of 'reality'. By taking white, working class women's percep tions of their experience of subordination in abusive heterosexual relationships as my starting point (Ramazanoglu with Holland, 2002, p. 99) I claim the possibility of knowledge (even if partial) of 'reality'. Studying violence brought me right up against the materiality of embodied existence, whilst studying women in poverty brought me face-to-face with the tangible materiality of poverty, and these experi ences influenced my hybrid feminist approach; to ignore the material realities of women's lives and reduce violence and poverty to discourse alone would be doing a disservice to the lives of the women who par ticipated in this research so generously. My interest in domestic violence was shaped by my own childhood experiences of violence in childhood, of paternal aggression, and by adult experiences of interviewing and working with women survivors of domestic violence.3 For many people, like myself, first knowledge of violence is discovered in childhood, rather than constructed, in the sense that first experiences of physical violence impact directly on the body. 1 well remember the visceral nature of shock and embarrassment felt in my own body when a seven-year-old friend of mine (a girl) threatened to hit me with a stick if I jumped over a certain space and then carried out her threat. I had mistakenly assumed she was joking. I also draw on tools and insights from social constructionist approaches, conceptualising agency as constructed by women in communicative interaction with others, such interactions however being mediated by relations of power and by cultural discourse. Through interaction, norms for women in relation to heterosexuality, the family, marriage and motherhood are communicated, and the responses women receive to disclosing abuse contribute to women's understandings of domestic violence. My own example of experienc-
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