Violence against Black Women: Gender, Race and State Responses

Abstract

The current housing crisis is being seriously exacerbated by central government's policies. The Housing Act 1988 consolidates the fundamental erosion of public housing as, for example, in the 'right to buy'. The purchase of council homes consolidates inequality because it benefits those in the best council accommodation more than those in the worst estates. Here people may well not even like their homes enough to want to own them or may not be able to afford mortgage repayments on even their poor-quality homes. Privatization of public housing in its various forms is working to worsen the already bad housing prospects of homeless families. The impending rise in council rents (estimated to be as much as £20 a week on some estates) will add to the factors which are forcing the more reluctant public sector tenants to join the private sector, where market forces override any policy or moral considerations. As others have pointed out, the wide-ranging changes in welfare and housing being implemented by central government are having a disproportionate effect on women, who have more restricted access to housing in all sectors, but most particularly in the private rented and owner-occupier sectors because of their lower wages (Austerberry and Watson, 1986). Women as a group are most likely to rely on public housing at affordable prices, and will therefore be most seriously affected by the Thatcher Government's policies. The women's refuge movement in Britain arose in the 1970s to meet the desperate situation of women seeking to escape from violent assaults in their homes, most commonly at the hands of their spouses. As a spontaneous initiative, the refuge movement was closely related to the women's movement, and operated mainly on the basis of the feminist ethos of the times: the principles that Women's Aid took up