Journal of Gender-Based Violence vol 1 no 1 39 Centre for Gender and Violence Research,

University of Bristol #JGBV Print ISSN 2398-6808 Online ISSN 2398-6816

https://doi.org/10.1332/239868017X14919099292452

editorial
Marianne Hester, Marianne.Hester@bristol.ac.uk
University of Bristol, UK

To cite this article: Hester, M. (2017) Editorial, Journal of Gender-Based Violence, vol 1 no 1, 39,
DOI: 10.1332/239868017X14919099292452

Welcome to the first issue of the Journal of Gender-Based Violence (JGBV).We are proud
that this is the first international journal on gender-based violence based in Europe
that promotes the work of scholars from across the globe, across disciplinary and topic
boundaries, and including policy, theory, practice and activism. Currently European
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gender-based violence scholarship is not well represented in the international journals,

and we aim to plug this gap. We want to support intellectual rigour and theoretical
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innovation, showcase real world impact, and express our commitment to social justice
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and tackling gender-based violence in all its forms.

Our intention is to showcase contributions both from well-established and emerging
scholars, postgraduate students and guest commentaries from speakers outside of
academia. This is also reflected in this first issue, where there are articles by a range
of internationally renowned scholars, early career researchers and practitioners.Topics
range from new approaches to the measurement of gender-based violence and
domestic violence in European contexts; using ideas about migration and displacement
to re-think the journeys of women leaving violent men in the UK; and the abuse
experienced by family, friends and colleagues who journey alongside survivors; to
constructions of false allegations and women-blaming in Indian domestic abuse
cases; and evaluation of whole family interventions. The Policy and Practice section
considers why prostitution should be considered part of the continuum of gender-
based violence, and in the Open Space section there is reflection on a favourite text,
and a tribute to a sexual violence campaigner.
We have chosen the title Gender-Based Violence deliberately for the journal,
to acknowledge that violence and abuse is situated in socio-historical contexts, is
linked to gendered inequalities, and takes many forms. The ethos of the journal sits
within the framework provided by the United Nations (UN) in the Beijing Platform
of Action 1995, and by the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating
Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence 2014 (the Istanbul Convention). Gender
inequality is both a cause and consequence of violence and abuse against women.
Gender-based violence is violence that is rooted in gendered power imbalances and
inequalities, and results in, or are likely to result in, physical, sexual, psychological or
economic harm or suffering to women in particular, including threats of such acts,
coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private
life (Council of Europe, 2011,Article 3a).We will consider for publication high-quality
contributions that contribute to the understanding of any form of gender-based
violence, policy and/or activism, on topics such as sexual violence, domestic abuse,

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honour-based violence, prostitution, trafficking and/or reproductive violence and

abuse in a wide range of intimate, familial, community, societal and global contexts.
The JGBV will continue to document the voices and experiences of victims and
survivors of gender-based violence, to publish work regarding those who perpetrate
gender-based violence, and of the varied and complex social structures, conflicts,
inequalities and gender norms through which gender-based violence is produced and
sustained. It will also include work that looks beyond the dominant configuration of
mens violence against women and girls, work that takes into account how vulnerable
and/or minoritised groups and individuals may experience or be impacted by and
resist gender-based violence.We are interested in articles that incorporate analyses of
gender-based violence and also take into account intersections with other identities
and power relations, such as ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, faith, disability and
economic status. We invite interest from scholars working across the social sciences
and related fields including social policy, sociology, politics, criminology, law, social
psychology, development and economics, as well as disciplines allied to medicine,
health and wellbeing.
The journal has been in gestation for a considerable time. We have to thank the
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publisher David Croom, who first suggested to Marianne Hester that there was room
for a new journal of gender-based violence, and that the focus on policy, theory,
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practice and activism by the University of Bristols Centre for Gender and Violence
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Research made this an obvious home for such a journal. We especially thank the
Policy Press, who have taken the idea forward and given the JGBV a welcoming and
supportive home.We have brought together a fantastic team and Editorial Board with
expertise on the many aspects of the continuum of gender-based violence, covering
different global regions, and we thank Professor Lorraine Radford for taking on the
task of chairing the Board.
Given the length of time taken to make the decision to launch the journal, it is
pertinent to ask, why now? Linked as we are with many international networks,
we recognise that while there is a need to celebrate the many advances made with
regard to gender-based violence, this success is neither inevitable nor protected.
For many activists, struggles to maintain policy and other advances in the face of
ideological as well as financial challenges mean that the need for rigorous evidence
and communication is as important as ever.
What a time to be launching a journal on gender-based violence! We did not
anticipate that the JGBV would be launched in the context of Brexit, with the
UK contemplating leaving the European Union (EU), nor the elevation of Donald
Trump as President of the US. However, the tumultuous contexts that have resulted,
and the misogynies and hatreds that have emerged, make the space for knowledge,
debate and reflection that the JGBV can provide even more important and relevant,
and reminds us of the importance of resistance. In the Open Space section of this
issue, Geetanjali Gangoli discusses aspects that are of particular relevance to current
discussions about fake news and distortions of truth and evidence, and points to
the importance of resistance. Revisiting the work of the historian Gerda Lerner,
Gangoli looks at how gendered inequalities, or patriarchy, became created, defined and
established in a process that took nearly 2,500 years to its completion, that included
the ownership and enslavement of women, and the commodification of womens
bodies (their sexuality and reproduction). The picture she paints has many current
echoes, for instance, in Donald Trumps sexism and distain of women as exemplified

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in his tweet, grab them by the pussy. You can do anything, in his ownership and
promotion of the Miss World competition, and in the recent contracts for Trump
escort services in China.These activities construct women as inferior and seemingly
complicit in their own inferiority. But as Gangoli and Lerner remind us, we need
to question everything, and fake news and false truth in particular: being sceptical
towards every known system of thought; being critical of all assumptions; ordering
values and definitions (Lerner, 1986, p. 228). Periods of rapid change or apparent
crisis tend to provide spaces where the gender order is in question, and hard gains
may be undone (Hester, 1992). For instance, the economic crash in 2008, and the
policies of austerity that followed in many Western countries, have tended to have a
particularly detrimental effect on women, and increased gendered inequalities with
regard to income and independence (Walby, 2015). This is also reflected in threats
to close and silence Women Studies departments in India, including in premier
institutions such as the Tata Institute of Social Sciences.These departments have had
a strong history of feminist activism and challenging academic and political misogyny
in India (Oberoi, 2017). Wars and conflicts, such as we see in the Middle East and
Africa, create contexts of increased violence against women, deepened further with
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consequent migration and displacement of people (UNHCR, 2002). Gangoli, in her

article about Lerner, ends with the powerful thought that patriarchy not only has a
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beginning but an end, and that perhaps what we are seeing in the current resurgence
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of misogyny and other hatreds is actually that patriarchy seems to have nearly run
its course, because in actuality it no longer serves the needs of men or women and
in its inextricable linkage to militarism, hierarchy, and racism it threatens the very
existence of life on earth (Lerner, 1986, pp. 228-229).
We begin the issue with two articles, by Sylvia Walby and Judith Towers, and by
Andy Myhill, engaging with the problem of how we might measure the prevalence of
gender-based violence in populations, and in particular, the measurement of domestic
violence. This is, of course, an issue that has been debated at great length, but we
felt it was important to revisit it here, and to provide some interesting new ways of
thinking that takes the debate beyond the gender-neutral or gender-asymmetrical
impasse. How we measure gender-based violence, and what we measure, provides
potential links across space and time, asks questions about whether we can compare
or not, and what that means. Walby and Towers argue that we need comparability,
and therefore take an approach that can capture violence and gender generally
and robustly. This is best done, they argue, by focusing on events that are considered
criminal offences notably physical violence causing physical harm or threat of
harm and sexual violence such as rape and to include repeat offences as that is
where different gender and violence configurations diverge.They use the offence of
violence (as defined in England and Wales legislation) because they see it as providing
comparability through crime codes nationally and possibly internationally, and it
sets a level of unacceptable harm and thus severity. Their approach leads to some
interesting questions, including what a focus on criminal offences tells us about the
world, and the location of victim/survivor experience.They do not discuss the more
social dimensions of defining something as a criminal offence (which is something
Dave and colleagues focus on in their article in this issue). Criminal offences are
social constructs that reflect social morays/norms at particular junctures in history
and particular social and cultural contexts. Criminalising domestic violence, so that
acts that would in other contexts be seen as crimes are not just deemed a domestic

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when intimate partners are involved, was a long and hard fight by feminists (Hague
and Malos, 2005). As textbooks on criminology tell us: The question of how we
define crime, and how we define the perpetrators and victims of crime, is inextricably
bound up with social processes. Crime and victimisation are not socially neutral
concepts, nor is societys conceptualisation and response to these phenomena static
(White and Perrone, 2015, p. 2).
Walby and Towers use a formal legal definition approach to defining a criminal
offence, where the state has decided what is or is not legal (that is, not allowed). Physical
violence is relatively straightforward in this respect, but other offences such as sexual
violence may be less so. For instance, in England and Wales the offence of sexual
violence is linked to consent (whether or not the victim consented to the event), and
interpretation is particularly open to gendered interpretation. Moreover, currently in
England and Wales, the only specific offence concerning domestic violence is about
coercive control (introduced in 2015), not physical violence as such (although physical
violence may form part of coercive control). The offence of coercive control allows
for a variety of non-physical and physical behaviours and harms, and as a pattern
over time. This is in contrast with physical and sexual violence offences, which are
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incident-based (assessed anew each time they occur). Myhill takes up the debate at this
point, suggesting that offences such as coercive control may more accurately reflect
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their experiences than physical violence offences. Focusing on coercive control is

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important in devising measurements, because that provides and reflects the multiple
tactics of coercion and control employed by primary perpetrators of domestic
violence.Taking the point of view of victim/survivors, he argues for an emphasis on
non-physical behaviours and their impact, citing Kirkwoods (1993) classic quote of
a survivor talking about the verbal and emotional abuse she experienced from her
partner as more damaging than his physical violence.Thus, while Myhill concurs with
Walby and Towers, that we need ways of more accurately measuring acts of physical
violence and their impact, he argues for amalgamating this approach with measuring
the nature and impact of coercive and controlling behaviour. Focusing only on events
that are deemed criminal offences, as Walby and Towers do, may exclude the many
other threats that make up ongoing coercive control and have a detrimental impact.
He concludes that, a true gendered picture of domestic violence measurement needs
to take account of all aspects of mens abusive behaviour towards women, to situate
physical violence in context. This also allows us to assess severity of abuse, possible
needs for intervention and to see who are the primary perpetrators and primary
victims. Both Myhill and Walby and Towers contributions are ultimately critical of
the Violence Against Women surveys that have been used across Europe (FRA, 2014)
and the global World Health Organization (WHO) survey (Garca-Moreno et al,
2005), as these include only female respondents. They all agree that to understand
violence and gender, surveys need to include (at least) male and female respondents.
The current concerns with migration, migrants and forced displacement of people,
due to war and famine, provides a pertinent context for the article by Janet Bowstead.
We are aware that women experience gender-based violence in their home context,
in transit and in their destination while escaping conflict and war.This perspective is
also relevant for women fleeing domestic violence. Bowstead takes a new approach to
understanding what happens when women try to get away from violent relationships,
using the lens of forced migration to look at the often protracted journeys women
make to ensure safety. By locating the womens journeys in a framework that takes

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account of both time and space, she is able to show how complex and segmented
the journeys tend to be, and that the policy and practice contexts the women find
themselves in contributes to the fragmentation and complexity of their experience.
The English policy context of localism, whereby local authorities are expected
to make local decisions regarding funding and support, only contributes to the
fragmentation of the womens journeys, as there may be no continuity in rights to
housing or other support across different localities. She found lack of recognition
that by relocating to an unfamiliar area for safety women were significantly reducing
their level of risk but increasing their level of need due to lack of friend and family
connections in the new unknown place. She argues that the shift in the UK to a
focus on risk assessment has, seemingly, led to a neglect of need assessment to the
detriment of the women seeking safety from violent men, and for greater recognition
and understanding of the journeys that women make, so that more effective responses
can be provided by agencies and authorities.
Anjali Dave and her colleagues provide a fascinating account of the intensely
gendered construction of Indian law on marital cruelty and its implementation.They
focus on Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code, a criminal offence hard fought for
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by the Indian womens movement as a means of recognising and tackling marital

cruelty. Marital cruelty is seen as a range of behaviours that may lead women to
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commit suicide or other severe mental or physical harm, or harassment to coerce them
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into giving up property or other resources. Dave and colleagues, in a detailed analysis
of Section 498A cases, show how the formal means of closing a case by labelling it
false or as resulting from a misunderstanding actually repositions women as the
ones making false allegations. This does not take into account the ways in which
women may creatively use the domestic violence laws to negotiate space in abusive
relationships (Gangoli and Rew, 2015). It has many echoes of the way rape cases
have also been treated in other countries, where the closure of cases for reasons of
lack of evidence has resulted in them being labelled false accusations, and women
blamed for this. As Kelly has said, writing about cases in many European countries,

The issue of false allegations in rape cases cannot be understood without

reference to the ways in which rape law and its interpretation has historically
problematized the words of a woman when what they were speaking
about was sexual violation.Whilst the letter of the law has been reframed in
many countries, legacies remain sedimented into institutional cultures and
practices, creating a risk of over-identification of false allegations by police
and prosecutors. (Kelly, 2010, p. 1345)

Dave and colleagues remind us that we need to create laws and justice that are
contextual, reflecting womens lives and relationships, and that tackle the violence and
injustices they experience. Legal approaches also have to be linked to wider services,
to enable dismantling of myths and to support women seeking to end violence.
Complementing the articles regarding formal support and intervention that women
experiencing domestic violence may seek (see, for example, the articles by Bowstead
and Dave), Alison Clare Gregory examines the role of informal support networks,
as provided by family, friends and colleagues. She challenges what she considers the
two-dimensional view of abuse that fails to take into account the wider harms and
abuse by the perpetrator against those not considered primary victims. Using an

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ecological framework, the article raises questions about the different levels at which
formal policy on domestic violence focuses, which tends to leave out the meso level
involving the role of families and friends. Gregory illustrates the positive and negative
role informal supporters can play, but also the impact of the abuse, and sometimes
direct abuse by the perpetrator against these friends, colleagues and family members.
Drawing on previous research, which, incidentally considers collateral damage
(Dobash and Dobash, 2012) in domestic violence cases, Gregory considers the more
mundane and everyday experiences of these network members: from direct abuse
from perpetrators, to the physical, emotional and psychological impacts of supporting
a victim. Gregorys work suggests that wherever informal networks are present or
involved in providing support, they may not always be visible, yet the perpetrators
may use deliberate actions to prevent their support.
The articles by Bowstead and Dave on the one hand, and by Nicky Stanley and
Cathy Humphreys on the other, provide contrasting situations and experiences by
victims/survivors of formal support agencies. Stanley and Humphreys look at the
situations where survivors may or may not want to stay with violent partners, or
where complete separation is not possible due to child contact arrangements with
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domestic violence perpetrators. As they say,Finding ways to work with families who
still wish to stay together but without violence, or pursue post-separation arrangements
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without violence is an ongoing challenge.Their answer is to look at the possible use

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of a whole family intervention in such circumstances, and the article draws on an

evaluation of such an intervention. While there are different, more or less effective,
whole family approaches, the intervention Stanley and Humphreys evaluated was
delivered by a team with specialist domestic violence and abuse workers who could
work flexibly with individual family members as well as seeing family members
together, and where the safety and wellbeing of children and victims were core
objectives. While the women in Bowsteads study were forced to migrate to other
parts of the country to escape extremely dangerous men, the families that Stanley
and Humphreys consider as possible recipients of a whole family approach appear
to experience a much wider range of severity of domestic violence and abuse. The
question remains, however, whether it is possible or safe for the whole family (mother,
father, children) to be seen together. Stanley and Humphreys provide examples where
this has been possible, but also where it was necessary to keep and see primary victims
and perpetrators separately due to the severity of risks for the victim. They suggest
that, with adequate resources and staff with in-depth knowledge of domestic violence
and abuse, it is possible to construct a whole family intervention where there is the
potential for recovery and change for all family members, and where it is not the
mothers who are blamed.
The final two articles are part of the Policy and Practice and Open Space sections in
the JGBV. In Policy and Practice Maddy Coy argues the case for including prostitution
in strategic approaches to violence against women and girls. Situating prostitution
in the context of gendered inequalities, where the majority of those selling sex are
women and girls, and those buying are men, she shows how Kellys framework of
the continuum of violence against women provides an important analytic lens to
understanding prostitution as part of that continuum. The Open Space is a space for
reflection, and we hope to ensure that the journal builds on the substantial work of
our fields by revisiting key texts or people, to bring their work to a new audience or
to remind us of the development of theories and ideas over the past 30 years. In this

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issue we have Gangolis reflection on Gerda Lerners work (see above) and a piece
by Alison Boydell, Janet Veitch and Jo Wood regarding the campaigner on sexual
violence, Jill Saward. Following an attack on her family where she was also raped,
and which was subsequently trivialised by the courts, Jill Saward became a fervent
campaigner against sexual violence and for justice for victims/survivors, using her
own experience as a potent weapon in the fight with government, in the media
and on behalf of womens organisations. It is a fitting tribute to end our first issue
of the JGBV.

Editor in Chief Marianne Hester

Co-Editors Nadia Aghtaie
Geetanjali Gangoli
William Turner
Emma Williamson

References
Council of Europe (2011) Article 3a. Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and
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Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence, http://eige.europa.eu/

gender-based-violence#_ftn2
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Dobash, R.E. and Dobash, R.P. (2012) Who died? The murder of collaterals related
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to intimate conflict. Violence Against Women, vol 18, no 6, pp. 662-671

FRA (Fundamental Rights Agency) (2014) Violence Against Women:An EU-wide Survey.
Main Results Report.Vienna: FRA
Gangoli, G. and Rew, M. (2015) Strategic co-option? Indian feminists, the State and
legal activism on domestic violence. In N. Aghtaie and G. Gangoli, Understanding
Gender Based Violence. National and International Contexts. London: Routledge. pp.
183-202
Garca-Moreno, C., Jansen, H., Ellsberg, M., Heise, L. and Watts, C. (2005) WHO
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Hester, M. (1992) Lewd Women and Wicked Witches: A Study of The Dynamics of Male
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Kirkwood, K. (1993) Leaving abusive partners. London: Sage
Lerner, G. (1986) The Creation of Patriarchy. NewYork and Oxford: Oxford University
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Oberoi, S. (2017) TISS Womens Studies Centre faces threat of closure: Another
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studies-dissent-silenced/
UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) (2002) Guidelines on
the International Protection Regarding Gender-related Persecution. Geneva: UNHCR
Walby, S. (2015) Crisis. London: Wiley
White, R. and Perrone, S. (2015) Crime, Criminality, and Criminal Justice. Oxford:
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