Policy Press

Challenging violence against women

The Canadian experience

By Gill Hague, Liz Kelly and Audrey Mullender

Published

Mar 28, 2001

Page count

76 pages

ISBN

978-1861342782

Dimensions

297 x 210 mm

Imprint

Policy Press
Challenging violence against women

There is widespread recognition among policy makers, professionals and activists in Britain that Canadian work on violence against women has been in the vanguard. However, as Canadian research can be difficult to access from the UK, many in this country are vague about the details.

This report brings together 'state-of-the-art' accounts of Canadian approaches to violence against women and discusses them in the context of current UK policy.

In particular, it looks at:

refuges and women's services and campaigns;

government responses and inter-agency approaches to challenging violence against women;

law enforcement and legal reform;

work with children and young people;

the connection between research, activism and practice.

Challenging violence against women is required reading for policy makers in government, statutory and voluntary sector agencies, for activists in the women's movement against rape, sexual assault and domestic violence, and for academics in Canadian studies, women's studies, criminology and the social sciences.

Gill Hague is the joint coordinator, and a founder member, of the Domestic Violence Research Group at the University of Bristol. She has conducted wide-ranging research on all aspects of domestic violence and has written widely on the subject. She has been an activist against violence against women for more than 25 years.

Liz Kelly is the director of the Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit at the University of North London. She has spent 20 years researching violence against women and children and 25 years as an activist and advocate. Her contribution was recognised in 2000 by the award of a CBE in the New Year's Honours list.

Audrey Mullender is Professor of Social Work at the University of Warwick and an elected Academician of the Academy of Learned Societies for the Social Sciences. She has written and researched extensively on domestic violence as it affects women and children, and in relation to tackling the behaviour of perpetrators.

Contents: Introduction: UK and Canadian approaches to violence against women, and the activist movement; Getting together to make things happen: multi-agency and federal responses; Setting the agenda in the 1990s: the contribution of government and research to social change; Innovation and law reform in the criminal and civil justice systems; Children's and schools programmes; Conclusion and summary.