Collection: Journal of Gender-Based Violence Editors’ Choice

 

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Editors' Choice Collection Journal of Gender-Based Violence

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The goal of this study is to identify the extent to which a set of risk factors from the ecological model are associated with intimate partner sexual violence victimisation in Mexico.

To achieve this goal, a structured additive probit model is applied to a dataset of 35,004 observations and 42 correlates.

Findings indicate that age at sexual initiation, women’s sexual and professional autonomy, and social connectedness are associated with their victimisation risks.

The findings provide evidence of factors that were previously unknown in Mexico or were solely based on theory but lacking empirical analysis. There are four key contributions. First, findings indicate that factors closer to the individual, such as personal experiences and interpersonal relationships, are more influential in explaining the women’s risks of IPSV victimisation. Second, significant factors were identified, including age at first sexual intercourse, autonomy in sexual and professional decision-making, and social networks. Third, it was possible to identify high-risk population subgroups that are often overlooked, such as women who had their sexual initiation during childhood. Finally, the introduction of some emerging indicators allowed for the examination of the experiences faced by women in various aspects of life, such as decision-making power and social networks.

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Current understanding and conceptualisations of obstetric violence typically focus on abuse carried out on pregnant women during births in medical facilities. However, data from an empirical study of freebirthing in the UK (intentionally giving birth without health care professionals present) inadvertently exposed examples of obstetric violence during births at home. This is an under-researched area and such empirical examples are rare. The article introduces the literature on obstetric violence, highlighting some of its limitations with regards to understanding the phenomenon within the home setting. Using archival examples, it also demonstrates how obstetric violence in the home is not a new phenomenon, thus problematising any presumption that this type of violence is rooted in the hospital as institution. Further, data from The Freebirth Study both reaffirms and challenges current understanding of obstetric violence, particularly around consent, the temporal nature of the abuse and the ways it can manifest. Finally, with recent moves towards legislating against obstetric violence, the article argues for legislative change to recognise abuse in the home.

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While the practice now seems to be relatively uncommon, in the recent past some medical doctors have instructed their students to perform intimate exams on unconscious patients without first securing their informed consent. Concern about the issue has led some American states to introduce legislation explicitly banning such exams. We consider if Australian states should do the same. Noting that there is little substantive evidence suggesting that the practice continues in Australia, we argue that the creation of specific laws lacks justification; such exams already contravene existing health law, which prohibits the conduct of any physical exam without first ensuring the patient’s consent. Furthermore, even if the practice continues, additional legislation will do little to address the more fundamental issue; a culture that considers the practice morally acceptable. We therefore argue that professional bodies, including student organisations, should issue formal position statements that not only reject such exams unequivocally, but also offer guidelines for best practice. Teaching hospitals and medical schools should adopt similar policies on the matter and ensure that these are discussed at relevant junctures in the curricula. Such policies should ensure accountability by setting out clear reporting lines that establish clear sanctions for those who instruct medical students to perform such exams.

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The COVID-19 crisis has spotlighted particular insidious social problems, including gender-based violence (GBV), and their relationship with movement and confinement. As well as changing configurations of GBV, the experience of the global pandemic and the immobilities of national lockdowns have created space to imagine GBV – to connect with past experiences in the context of our rethinking of current experiences across multiple spaces. In this article we explicate a transdisciplinary feminist collaborative autoethnographic storying of GBV during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the ‘trans/feminist methodology’ of Pryse (2000), we seek to contribute knowledge of GBV through the lens of COVID-19 using our own experiential life storying. In this article we show the potential of this method in understanding lived experiences over time that are situated in a specific context. Our experiences of GBV, as viewed through the pandemic, are presented as fragments, which then make up a collective narrative that illustrates our shared experiences of GBV in all its forms, across multiple spaces and throughout our life histories. In this common story, GBV is considered to im/mobilise – to stagnate our range of mobilities to varying degrees across these spaces and times.

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This article explores the process of ‘identity erasure’ that is a feature of domestic violence and abuse. Data are taken from semi-structured narrative-style interviews with 14 women who had experienced abuse from a male partner.

I draw on Erving Goffman’s (1968) work on ‘total institutions’. Goffman uses the term ‘mortification’ in describing the attacks on identity and self that occur in ‘total institutions’ such as psychiatric hospitals, prisons and concentration camps. These attacks take the form of: loss of contact with the outside world, ritual degradation, the removal of possessions, and lack of control. Their effect is to erase the inmate’s prior identity, and render them compliant.

For the women who participated in this study, their abusers attempted to achieve compliance by adopting many of the tactics that Goffman describes. Drawing on participants’ words, I discuss some of the behaviours adopted by their abusive partners: isolation from support networks, surveillance, deprivation of privacy, and dispossession. I argue that, for women, the home/abusive relationship becomes a total institution. Understanding the abusive household as a ‘total institution’ can help friends, family and professionals to more fully appreciate, and therefore provide women with more appropriate help to overcome, the barriers to leaving.

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This article presents findings from a study that investigated the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on domestic violence shelters’ policies and practices. This study was conducted in partnership with feminist organisations in two regions in the Quebec, Canada. Qualitative data were collected from nine domestic violence shelters, using a web-based questionnaire. Thematic content analysis was conducted using NVivo. The research findings reveal that the COVID-19 pandemic has created significant challenges for shelters, as they have had to ensure women’s and children’s safety while preventing the spread of the virus. In this context, they have had to adapt their services and practices, and it has sometimes been difficult to maintain their feminist approach. Nonetheless, shelters have been creative and have developed multiple strategies to overcome these challenges and to ensure women’s and children’s access to services. The research findings contribute to our understanding of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, and highlight the essential role that these organisations have played to ensure women’s and children’s safety at a time when they have been particularly vulnerable.

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