Violence against women is one factor in the growing wave of alarm about violence in American society. High-profile cases such as the O.J. Simpson trial call attention to the thousands of lesser-known but no less tragic situations in which women's lives are shattered by beatings or sexual assault. The search for solutions has highlighted not only what we know about violence against women but also what we do not know. How can we achieve the best understanding of this problem and its complex ramifications? What research efforts will yield the greatest benefit? What are the questions that must be answered? Understanding Violence Against Women presents a comprehensive overview of current knowledge and identifies four areas with the greatest potential return from a research investment by increasing the understanding of and responding to domestic violence and rape: What interventions are designed to do, whom they are reaching, and how to reach the many victims who do not seek help. Factors that put people at risk of violence and that precipitate violence, including characteristics of offenders. The scope of domestic violence and sexual assault in America and its conequences to individuals, families, and society, including costs. How to structure the study of violence against women to yield more useful knowledge. Despite the news coverage and talk shows, the real fundamental nature of violence against women remains unexplored and often misunderstood. Understanding Violence Against Women provides direction for increasing knowledge that can help ameliorate this national problem.

Prevention of Violence Against Women and Girls argues that women and girls are vulnerable across all areas of society, and that therefore a commitment to end violence against women and girls needs to be embedded into all development programmes, regardless of sectorial focus. This book presents an innovative framework for sensitisation and action across development programmes, based on emerging best practices and lessons learnt, and illustrated through a number of country contexts and a range of programmes. Overall, it argues that SDG 5 can only be achieved with a systematic model for mainstreaming an end to violence against women and girls, no matter what the priorities of the particular development programme might be. Demonstrating how the approach can be applied across contexts, the authors explore cases from the energy sector, health and humanitarian intervention, and from countries as varied as South Sudan, Myanmar, Rwanda, Nepal, and Kenya. Drawing on nearly three decades of experience working on gender, health, and violence against women programmes as both practitioners and academics, the authors present key lessons which can be used by students, researchers, and practitioners alike.

This book examines the strength of laws addressing four types of violence against women--rape, marital rape, domestic violence, and sexual harassment--in 196 countries from 2007 to 2010. It analyzes why these laws exist in some places and not others, and why they are stronger or weaker in places where they do exist. The authors have compiled original data that allow them to test various hypotheses related to whether international law drives the enactment of domestic legal protections. They also examine the ways in which these legal protections are related to economic, political, and social institutions, and how transnational society affects the presence and strength of these laws. The original data produced for this book make a major contribution to comparisons and analyses of gender violence and law worldwide.

A health-care provider is likely to be the first professional contact for survivors of intimate partner violence or sexual assault. Evidence suggests that women who have been subjected to violence seek health care more often than non-abused women, even if they do not disclose the associated violence. They also identify health-care providers as the professionals they would most trust with disclosure of abuse. These guidelines are an unprecedented effort to equip healthcare providers with evidence-based guidance as to how to respond to intimate partner violence and sexual violence against women. They also provide advice for policy makers, encouraging better coordination and funding of services, and greater attention to responding to sexual violence and partner violence within training programmes for health care providers. The guidelines are based on systematic reviews of the evidence, and cover: 1. identification and clinical care for intimate partner violence 2. clinical care for sexual assault 3. training relating to intimate partner violence and sexual assault against women 4. policy and programmatic approaches to delivering services 5. mandatory reporting of intimate partner violence. The guidelines aim to raise awareness of violence against women among health-care providers and policy-makers, so that they better understand the need for an appropriate health-sector response. They provide standards that can form the basis for national guidelines, and for integrating these issues into health-care provider education.

"Women have made significant inroads into politics in recent years, but in many parts of the world, their increased engagement has spurred physical attacks, intimidation, and harassment intended to deter their participation. This book provides the first comprehensive account of this phenomenon, exploring how women came to give these experiences a name - violence against women in politics - and lobbied for its increased recognition by citizens, states, and international organizations. Tracing how this concept emerged inductively on the global stage, the volume draws on research in multiple disciplines to resolve lingering ambiguities regarding its contours. It argues that this phenomenon is not simply a gendered extension of existing definitions of political violence privileging physical aggressions against political rivals. Rather, violence against women in politics is a distinct phenomenon involving a broad range of harms to attack and undermine women as political actors. Drawing on a wide range of country examples, the book illustrates what this violence looks like in practice, as well as catalogues emerging solutions around the world. Issuing a call to action, it considers how to document this phenomenon more effectively, as well as understand the political and social implications of allowing violence against women in politics to continue unabated. Highlighting the threats it poses to democracy, human rights, and gender equality, the volume concludes that tackling violence against women in politics requires ongoing dialogue and collaboration to ensure women's equal rights to participate - freely and safely - in political life around the globe"--

Based on a series of international workshops sponsored by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundations, this cutting-edge volume advances theories, methodologies, and policy analyses relating to various forms of violence against women. Under the skillful editorship of Rebecca Emerson and Russell P. Dobash, Rethinking Violence Against Women is the joint effort of recognized anthropologists, psychologists, philosophers, sociologists, and historians in the field. Divided in three parts, this text takes a comprehensive examination of the following topics: +