Women's Shelters Research Articles

Muslim Women Managing Women's Shelters: Somaya, the Muslimwoman and Religion as Resource

This article focuses on Sisters' Shelter Somaya in Sweden, an organization unique in its claim to be a women's shelter by and for Muslim women, and in its combining of Islamic and secular feminisms. Examining the organization's self-presentations, the author argues that there is, however, an ongoing shift from an emphasis on its Muslim profile to a dissolution of the very same. Looking into potential loss in the process (for clients, activists, allies, and feminism at large), the analysis draws on current research on anti-Muslim intolerance and normative secularism. The concept of the “Muslimwoman” is employed to illustrate the stereotyping that continuously associates Muslim women with “victims” inhabiting shelters rather than capable “managers”. Intersectionality is pointed at as an emic strategy adopted by Somaya to overcome division, but also critically analysed as a consensus-creating signifier that hinders diversity. Thus, the article raises the increasingly important issue of the relationship between religion, gender, and feminism in the post-secular turn, and the author calls for critical self-reflection and creative affirmation in the interaction with heterogeneous others.

THE ROLE OF POLICE IN PREVENTING AND COMBATING DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN TURKEY

Actions and implementations continue increasingly in Turkey to stop domestic violence, while the issue preserves its place in public agenda. The Turkish National Police, who has a major role in the fight to stop domestic violence, organizes within its organization as well as with other institutions training seminars to increase awareness for its employees and for other stakeholders. The aim of this paper is to study the behavior, attitude and believes of police personnel against those who have been victim of domestic violence, identify mistakes and offer solutions. With this purpose interviews have been conducted with the administrators of Mor Cati Kadin Siginagi Vakfi [Purple Roof Woman Shelter Foundation] and Kadin Adaylari Destekleme Dernegi- KA.DER [Women Candidates Support Association] to identify the mistakes of police in their responses to domestic violence issues. Additionally an analysis is provided of a survey conducted at Elmadag Vocational Police School with police officers that receive training to become Second Lieutenants in order to see the view of police towards domestic violence.

Pushed by Angels and Hellbent on Better

How families overcome homelessness receives much less research attention than risk factors for becoming homeless. Qualitative focus groups with 14 formerly homeless women were held in diverse neighborhoods in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Grounded in an ecological approach and employing a hermeneutic research design, this study includes their perspectives regarding factors that facilitated successful rehousing. The method was also trauma informed, and specific recommendations for research with this population are offered. The results are divided into two sections. The first identifies factors associated with successfully transitioning out of homelessness. These included perceived benefits of overcoming homelessness, connecting to social services, and the seemingly randomness of stabilization. Second, participants’ recommendations for supporting homeless families are offered. These included the removal of common barriers to housing by addressing poor credit and criminal records; reforming payee systems; providing mediated peer-mentoring programs; ensuring equitable access to emergency shelter for women who become homeless but are not in another risk category (e.g., addiction); offering supportive services in community agency settings; and ensuring that schools are better prepared to assist homeless families. These women also expressed a desire to participate in the broader political realm to have a greater say about the institutions that impact their lives.

Marriage, like income and education, fails to provide shelter for women against HIV infection in sub-Saharan Africa: widowhood and divorce increase the risk.

Since HIV infection and its consequence, AIDS, were first described, many initial assumptions have proven to be wrong. In Africa, it is women who bear the greater burden of the disease. In many ways they are less visible than men, although at least as much at risk, often even more so. Marriage is no protection against infection, and widowhood and divorce leave them still more vulnerable. This is reflected in higher proportions of infection for bereaved and separated wives. Programmes of control, which depend on education, testing and access to treatment should be visible and accessible to all women in sub-Saharan Africa.

Women's Shelters in Turkey. Whose Responsibility?

Les refuges pour femmes en Turquie. Qui en est responsable ?Si l’on consulte diverses sources, les discussions relatives aux refuges pour femmes concernent plutot ceux qui sont diriges par des associations de femmes ou feministes ou par des ong. Dans le cas de la Turquie il existe un autre genre de refuges que je propose de nommer «?refuges pour femmes?» geres par des institutions publiques. En d’autres termes, la responsabilite et la gestion de ce type d’etablissement sont percues comme relevant de la responsabilite publique. Cet article a pour objet de faire apparaitre les dynamiques, c’est?a?dire les demandes des groupes feministes et les reponses des autorites qui ont conduit a cette situation.

The voices of Brazilian women breaking free from intimate partner violence.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a global problem with a direct effect on the health of the victims and their communities. With the intention to inform nursing care delivered to women experiencing IPV, this qualitative study was conducted, specifically to understand the meaning that IPV has for assaulted women and to identify the factors that contribute to breaking the cycle of violence. Data collection included interviews and discussion of photographs. Participants were recruited from within a shelter for women experiencing violence. Findings from five women were inductively coded into three categories: "experiencing violent acts," which describes the period in which the women lived with the aggressor; "marks of the violent acts," which portrays the consequences of IPV; and "women's support," which indicates the current supports or lack thereof for these women. Nurses and other healthcare providers will benefit from hearing the women's voices through their words and photographs and will recognize the need for holistic care that includes the physical, sexual, and emotional needs of abused women.

Boston in the 1970s: Is There a Lesbian Community? And if There is, Who is in it?

This excerpt from Amy Hoffman's memoir, An Army of Ex-Lovers: My Life at the Gay Community News (University of Massachusetts Press, 2007), describes some of the alternative community institutions serving lesbian feminists in Boston in the late 1970s. Hoffman, in her twenties at the time and fairly newly out, is an enthusiastic patron of these institutions. However, after a while, she begins to wonder about them. Boston in the 1970s was racially segregated and tense; a judicial order to desegregate the schools led to racist riots. The women's community was, sadly, no more diverse than the city's neighborhoods, and the alternative institutions, Hoffman realizes, are organized by and cater mostly to young, white, middle-class women like her. They fail to appeal to the needs and interests of poor women of color—although of course some do participate, and others become active in service organizations such as battered women's shelters.

Predictors of employment among sheltered homeless women

The effect of homelessness on the psychological and physical health of women is damaging and long lasting. Understanding of the personal factors that enable homeless women to secure employment and re-enter mainstream society is of utmost importance. A sample of homeless women residing in a US Midwestern nonprofit treatment and transitional living shelter for homeless women and their children were surveyed regarding the extent to which life satisfaction, social self-efficacy, and hopeful thinking predicted women's expected capabilities to obtain employment above and beyond social support provisions, while controlling for participants' age, ethnicity, and education level. Findings failed to reveal that social psychological (i.e., life satisfaction and social self-efficacy) and intrapersonal (i.e., hope) variables predicted homeless women's job procurement self-efficacy above and beyond perceived social support. The social support provision of social integration and younger age significantly predicted women's self-efficacy to secure employment. Implications of results for social justice initiatives and interventions are discussed.

Don't ask don't tell: Battered women living in Sweden encounter with healthcare personnel and their experience of the care given

In recent years there has been increased intimate partner violence (IPV) toward women. Research on the care provided to victims of IPV is limited. The purpose of the study was to gain a deeper understanding of women's lived experience of IPV and their encounters with healthcare professionals, social workers, and the police following IPV. A phenomenological hermeneutic method inspired by the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur was used. The method is based on text interpretation and gives voice to women's lived experience. Twelve women living at a women's shelter in Sweden narrated their IPV experiences. The study revealed that the women experienced retraumatization, uncaring behaviors, and unendurable suffering during their encounter with healthcare professionals. They were disappointed, dismayed, and saddened by the lack of support, care, and empathy. Nurses and other healthcare professionals must understand and detect signs of IPV as well as provide adequate care, as these women are vulnerable. IPV victims need to feel that they can trust healthcare professionals. Lack of trust can lead to less women reporting IPV and seeking help.

The BDP in Turkey and Its Approach to the Gender Question

This article evaluates how the pro-kurdish party Baris ve Demokrasi Partisi (BDP, The Peace and Democracy Party) which was founded in 2008 in Turkey, deals with women’s problems. The research is based on three main pillars: The BDP’s gender approach in the party program, the BDP’s gender approach in the last national election bulletin and the declarations of the BDP members which appeared in one of the most sold dailies in Turkey, Hurriyet (Liberty). The BDP is a gender-sensitive party. It has gender quotas of 40 percent in its statutes and hence benefits from a significant female presence in its decision-making mechanisms. This sensitivity is reflected in the party program as well as in the last national election bulletin. The BDP declares its intention to further strengthen penal laws concerning women’s rights violations, open shelters for women exposed to violence, procure easy access to social security for homemakers, support female presence in political and economic life via gender quotas, supervise gender sensitivity of the medias, eradicate prostitution and finally implement CEDAW (The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women). In the declarations of its politicians, the support for the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) is evident. The women of the BDP gladly underscore that the PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan supports women. The BDP places women’s problems on top of its priorities, right after the Kurdish issue.

Workplace Violence Experiences of Homeless Women and Women Residing in Battered Women Shelters

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a pervasive problem that follows victims from the home into the workplace. Many women who experience violence in their homes are also harassed at work and are abused in the workplace. For the current study, 30 women who reported a history of workplace violence were recruited from a homeless women’s shelter. Of the participants, 13 experienced domestic violence in the workplace; this article focuses on the results obtained from those 13 respondents. This article also discusses the link between homelessness, IPV, and workplace violence.

The use of ‘empowerment’ among organisations supporting victims of domestic violence in Sweden

The aim of this paper is to investigate the prevalence and character of ‘empowerment’ as an approach used by women's shelters, crime victim support groups and municipal crisis centres that provide support for battered women in Sweden. The study was based on a mail survey distributed among representatives of local crime victim support groups and women's shelters run by non-governmental organisations and the public sector (N = 207). The survey showed that empowerment was perceived as similar to the already established ‘help to self-help’ approach. Empowerment was described as a tool for individual change rather than collective action, although links to power-sensitivity and social change did appear in some answers. Contrary to expectations, the use of empowerment was not accompanied by comments on problematic power relations and difficulties in merging a non-directive approach with professional responsibilities. Using neo-institutional theory, results were interpreted in relation to established work-patterns and problems that empowerment was perceived to solve.

Attention to women in gender violence situation with demands in mental health

This article aims discuss the care offered to women in situations of violence with mental and/or passage through psychosocial care network in two devices of the network care for women: Reference Center and Shelter for Women. This is a qualitative research characterized as an intervention research conducted in the year 2011. As methodological tools we used semi structured interviews with screenplays directed to thirteen professionals like social workers, lawyers, interns in psychology and management team. The interviews were analyzed from the perspective of Institutional Analysis French which requires the assumption of events analyzers for critical reading of the dimensions established practices of care staff in the study. Results show that the presence or suspected mental disorder has made ​​impossible the reception of these women on these devices.

The ‘headrag tax’: impossible laws and their symbolic and material consequences

Geert Wilders, the Dutch anti-immigrant politician, whose party received 15.5% of the vote in the elections of June 2010, made his name in part by focusing on the headscarf as an emblem of the Islamic threat in Europe. On 16 September 2009, he (in)famously proposed to levy a ‘headrag tax’ on women wearing a headscarf – a levy for their pollution of the public space. Connecting Islam to gender inequality, he further suggested that the €1000 tax would be donated to women's shelters. The ‘headrag tax’ is an example of what I call an impossible law – a law that would never pass parliament or stand up in a constitutional court. Yet, Wilders' reliance on such proposals shows how these impossible laws can have the power to shape public debate regarding the place of Islam in contemporary immigrant-receiving societies such as the Netherlands. I analyze the parliamentary debate during which Wilders made this proposal and the media responses to it, situating the discussion in larger debates regarding head covering and immigrant integration that have unfolded in the Netherlands over the past decade. I analyze the legal, symbolic and material discourses structuring these debates to show how they delineate the meaning of Dutch national belonging.

A Home with Dignity: Domestic Violence and Property Rights

This Article argues that the legal system should do more to address intimate partner violence and each party's need for a home for several reasons. First, domestic violence is a leading cause of individual and family homelessness. Second, the struggle over rights to a shared home can increase the violence to which the woman is subjected. And third, a woman who decides to continue to live with the person who abused her receives little or no legal support, despite the evidence that this decision could most effectively reduce the violence. The legal system's current failings result from its limited goals -- achieving a narrow concept of short-term safety premised on physical separation in the home. This article argues for creating a comprehensive theory that addresses the rights to a home when there is domestic violence by focusing on each party's dignity, the importance of home and ending domestic violence, as opposed to merely safety. There arc several laws that address the home when there is domestic violence. The civil protection order (CPO) laws are the most prevalent; they exist in all fifty states and Washington, D.C. While most offer a vacate remedy to exclude the perpetrator of abuse from the shared home, they do so with varying effectiveness and petitioner success rates. Also, very few provide any economic support to maintain the home or find a new home if respondent is not excluded. And all 51 jurisdictions provide very few options to support a woman's choice to stay in the shared home with her abuser, despite her decision that it would best end the domestic violence. Beyond these shortcomings, the CPO vacate provisions also clash with property law in problematic ways for the respondents. Thirty-four jurisdictions permit vacating a perpetrator from his home, despite being the sole owner of the property. And there is a trend of making these once temporary vacate orders permanent. This clash can make the legal system seem unfair to perpetrators, which can lower their rate of compliance with the CPO. As a result, perpetrators may increase their violence against women subjected to abuse. This Article proposes a renewed anti-domestic violence movement that is focused on the dignity of and greater home access for both parties. Such a movement could focus on expanding existing laws that would both promote dignity and end domestic violence while ensuring greater home access. For instance, one proposal is for more thorough court fact finding in making the vacate order that includes the abuse as well as each party's risk of potential homelessness and the extent of their personhood interests in the home. Another proposal is to increase the number of home options for the parties by creating shelters for men who are abusive, more jurisdictions that require alternative housing through a CPO, and increased funding for low-barrier battered women shelters and transitional housing.

MVP Model Prevents Gender Violence on Campus

MVP Model Prevents Gender Violence on Campus

Cultures of charity: women, politics, and the reform of poor relief in Renaissance Italy

Renaissance Italians pioneered radical changes in ways of helping the poor, including orphanages, workhouses, pawnshops, and women's shelters. Nicholas Terpstra shows that gender was the key factor driving innovation. Most of the recipients of charity were women. The most creative new plans focused on features of women's poverty like illegitimate births, hunger, unemployment, and domestic violence. Signal features of the reforms, from forced labor to new instruments of saving and lending, were devised specifically to help young women get a start in life. Cultures of Charity is the first book to see women's poverty as the key factor driving changes to poor relief. These changes generated intense political debates as proponents of republican democracy challenged more elitist and authoritarian forms of government emerging at the time. Should taxes fund poor relief? Could forced labor help build local industry? Focusing on Bologna, Terpstra looks at how these fights around politics and gender generated pioneering forms of poor relief, including early examples of maternity benefits, unemployment insurance, food stamps, and credit union savings plans.

The role of the State in protecting women against domestic violence and women's shelters in Turkey

Synopsis Poverty and violence patterns function in an intertwined way for poor women. Because of patriarchal and conservative structure of welfare state in many countries, women's, especially poor women's, dependency on men becomes life-long due to their care taking responsibilities, lack of regular income, adequate education and work skills, decent work opportunities, health insurance and social security. Thus, women often do not have a say in determining their own lives. Such a dependency is itself a major contributing factor in male violence against women. Besides, efforts to increase female employment do not seem to have alleviated neither women's poverty nor domestic violence mainly due to poor conditions in the labour market. This study in general aims to discuss the issues of the welfare, employment and dependency of women and the condition of battered women with regard to gender and family in the welfare state. For this purpose, first, in the process of fight with domestic violence, the obligations of the state arising from the international treaties on women's rights and the prevention of violence against women and the influence of the national and international women's movement in this process are reviewed and analyzed. Second, the role and impact of the patriarchal family structure are questioned in the process of welfare regime transformation in Turkey. Third, the problem of domestic violence as public matter rather than a sole private nuisance, increased state involvement in preventing violence against women and the impact of EU negotiations and women's movement on this process are evaluated. Finally, the study examines the role of women's shelters in the struggle against violence and their contribution to women's welfare and wellbeing during and after their stay in the shelters in the light of the findings of a field study carried out with the battered women living in women's shelters in Turkey.

Colonial Charity in Hong Kong: A Case of the Po Leung Kuk in the 1930s

The Po Leung Kuk (PLK) was a rescue institution in Hong Kong, founded by local Chinese middle and upper class men, devoted to providing shelter for destitute women and children. By producing categories of disempowered and dangerous women, the PLK actually functioned as an institutional tool for the colonial state in dealing with the contradictions between emancipation and morality. The first part of this article examines how the PLK incorporated both Chinese and western forms of charity, each of which sought to confine and reform women who deviated from social norms. The second part of this article reconsiders the nature of charity by examining the operations of the PLK. The expansion of the PLK’s functions from protection of the destitute to classifying women in society reflects an early twentieth-century shift in the discourse of sexuality from a taboo topic contained within marriage to a social problem tied to public hygiene and public order.

Correlates of Readiness to Change in Victims of Intimate Partner Violence

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a social problem associated with significant morbidity; however, victims do not always utilize treatment and resources. One's readiness to change might be one variable impacting his or her pursuit of treatment and other resources. This study investigated correlates of readiness to change, and readiness to change's impact on treatment utilization. Data were collected from 223 women residing in battered women's shelters. Correlational analyses find that generally victims with more psychopathology and distress, as well as more social support, were more ready to change. Posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms, overall distress, and social support were the strongest predictors of readiness to change. Finally, victims higher in readiness to change were more likely to seek mental health treatment and other IPV-related services.