Nationwide, in 2008, there were 1,817 females murdered by males in single victim/single offender incidents that were submitted to the FBI for its Supplementary Homicide Report. Key findings from the report dispel many of the myths regarding the nature of lethal violence against women:

• For homicides in which the victim to offender relationship could be identified, 92 percent of female victims (1,564 out of 1,694) were murdered by someone they knew.
• Twelve times as many females were murdered by a male they knew (1,564 victims) than were killed by male strangers (130 victims). For victims who knew their offenders, 64 percent (997) of female homicide victims were wives or intimate acquaintances of their killers.
• There were 278 women shot and killed by either their husband or intimate acquaintance during the course of an argument.
• Nationwide, for homicides in which the weapon could be determined (1,662), more female homicides were committed with firearms (52 percent) than with any other weapon. Knives and other cutting instruments accounted for 21 percent of all female murders, bodily force 15 percent, and murder by blunt object seven percent. Of the homicides committed with firearms, 71 percent were committed with handguns.
• In 86 percent of all incidents where the circumstances could be determined, homicides were not related to the commission of any other felony, such as rape or robbery.

And for what it’s worth, the most dangerous state for women? It would seem that in Nevada, women, never mind the casinos, women are gambling with their lives by even being there.

And via the National Women’s Law Center, this horrific reality that women have to face when deciding what to do when they are trying to escape a violent situation:

Did you know that many shelters for battered women will not allow male children (sometimes as young as eight) to stay with their mothers? So a woman is left with three options: 1. Don’t use the shelter and continue parenting while in an abusive home situation; 2. Use the shelter to escape the abusive home and leave her son with the abusive parent; or 3. Identify another source of housing that doesn’t provide the additional security or support provided by the shelter, but allows her to stay with her son.

And finally, a coalition of organizations have put together the Workplaces Respond website which addresses domestic and sexual violence in the workplace.  The website has some very substantive tools to help address these issues as well as an excellent primer about this issue including these staggering facts:

• Women are much more likely than men to be victims of on-the-job intimate partner homicide. Spouses, boyfriends/girlfriends and ex-boyfriends/ex-girlfriends were responsible for the on-the-job deaths of 321 women and 38 men from 1997-2009, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics.
• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that the cost of intimate partner rape, physical assault and stalking totaled $5.8 billion each year for direct medical and mental health care services and lost productivity from paid work and household chores. Of this, total productivity losses account for nearly $1.8 billion in the United States in 1995. When updated to 2003 dollars, the cost of intimate partner rape, physical assault and stalking is more than $8.3 billion. And in 2010 dollars, it would be considerably more. Much of these costs are paid for by the employer.
• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates the annual cost of lost productivity due to domestic violence is $727.8 million (in 1995 dollars), with more than 7.9 million paid workdays – the equivalent of more than 32,000 full time jobs – lost each year.

Much like being aware of breast cancer, being aware of domestic violence seems really quite inadequate.  Perhaps next year we can observe Domestic Violence Eradication Month and Breast Cancer Eradication Month.

The focus of her book is on women in Peru, and while providing us a glimpse rarely seen into the intersection  of violence, poverty, gender and resistance  in Peru, as Alcalde notes, her findings are in many ways relevant beyond borders.  I was particularly interested in her use of “testimonios” which she discusses in the interview, which was conducted by email.

1.  Can you talk a little about what led you to write the book and what your goals were in your research?

In the mid and late 1990s I was a graduate student in anthropology and I visited Lima to see family and to look into possible topics for my dissertation research.  I had just finished an MA in Latin American Studies and I knew I wanted to continue my focus on Latin America, that I wanted the topic to be relevant to women’s lives in Peru, and that I wanted to focus on something I could work on for a long time. Meeting with members of nonprofit women’s organizations in Lima convinced me that intimate partner violence against women was a particularly relevant issue that needed more attention.

Violence in Peru had received a lot of attention, but it was the 1980s-1990s violence between the state and the insurgent group Shining Path. In anthropology, violence, ethics, and advocacy had also received significant attention, but in relation to inter-group violence, human rights violations, and genocide, not specifically men’s intimate partner violence against women.  When I returned to the States, I began to write grant proposals and solicit fellowships, volunteered at a shelter, and read as much as I could about domestic violence to prepare to return to Lima to do fieldwork and work with shelters for at least a year.

Drawing on my fieldwork, in writing this book my overarching goal has been to make the largely unfamiliar setting in which women’s lives unfold in Lima familiar and the largely invisible and intersecting forms of violence women experience, as well as the strategies women create to resist violence, visible.  Drawing on women’s life stories and my analysis of these and the broader context, throughout the book I’ve also sought to challenge stereotypes about women, particularly about poor women of color, in abusive relationships; to address the gap between activist practice and academic research on domestic violence; to contribute to a theory of everyday resistance that speaks directly to the experiences of women in abusive relationships, and that moves beyond simplistic dichotomies of staying and leaving; and to show multiple dimensions of women’s lives. In connection to the last point, I examine how violence affects women’s lives in their roles as mothers, daughters, sisters, workers, wives, migrants, and community leaders without reducing women’s lives to episodes of violence. It was also important for me to move beyond the dominant focus on physical violence in domestic violence literature to bring more attention to sexual, psychological, and economic violence in women’s lives.

2.  Why Peru?  In what ways does what you learned apply to other Latin American countries and throughout the world in general?

I worked in Peru because I wanted my work to somehow connect with and contribute to women’s well-being in the place I am from. However, because men’s violence against women crosses national, cultural, social, racial, and economic borders beyond Latin America, this book is not just about women in Peru or Latin America.

One aspect that I think is applicable to other settings has to do with the connections among different forms of violence in women’s lives.  We tend to focus just on state violence, or just on institutional violence, or just on domestic violence, and in doing that we miss the opportunity to examine how all these forms of violence intersect in women’s lives.  Women’s experiences in Lima make visible the continuum of violence in women’s lives, and caution us against placing any one form of violence above the other.

Another point that could apply to other places has to do with the intersection of racism and violence within intimate relationships. Especially in the life stories of indigenous women who had moved from rural areas to the capital and who spoke Quechua (an indigenous Andean language), I found that societal prejudices about race sometimes included men’s use of ethnic slurs, followed by physical and sexual violence, against their intimate partners. Racism may also play a role in men’s intimate violence against women in other settings.

3. In your introduction you talk about the concept of empowerment, explain your thoughts on that.

I have struggled with the concept of empowerment because I think it is overused but rarely defined, and because I find that the effects of empowerment are sometimes romanticized.  I worked with very poor women, who are incredibly creative, strong, and aware of the different forms of oppression (for example, based on race, class, and geographic location) in their lives.  In using empowerment, I wanted to be sure I situated it as clearly as I could within the context of their lives to show both women’s incredible actions and the limits of becoming individually empowered as a result of those actions.

No matter how much inner strength and power women felt, there was only so much a woman could do individually to leave an abusive partner, protect herself in cases of marital rape, stand up to abusive police officers, or protect her children from gangs in her neighborhood.  To me, underlining the limits of empowerment does not take away from the strength of a woman, but instead cautions us against romanticizing empowerment and encourages us to instead work collectively to put an end to the broader structures of racism and class bias, among other things, that prevent individual women from leading violence-free lives.

In one part of the introduction to the book, I use the term empowerment to refer to women’s increased sense of control, knowledge, and feelings of safety during the interview process or as a result of it. I also point to the limits of this form of empowerment, noting that a safe space for discussion and knowledge of available resources did not necessarily lead to a woman’s permanent escape from situations of intimate violence.  In the rest of the book, the term empowerment is tied to my discussion of women’s everyday forms of resistance to violence.  I draw attention to the forms of oppression women contest through their resistance and to the limits of their resistance, to avoid romanticizing resistance and to better understand the complicated worlds in which women must maneuver.

4.  What about the use of testimonials in your work and in reporting about domestic violence, why is that important and what needs to be considered in regard to their use?

In general, testimonios make abstract notions like violence and poverty real to us by showing us the effects of these in the life of an individual.  Across Latin America, it is difficult to find a woman’s published testimonial which does not mention domestic violence.  I admire testimonials because they make clear that women’s lives are partly shaped by violence that includes but is not limited to intimate violence and by factors that include but are not limited to gender.

Like a testimonio, my book draws on women’s words and experiences to break silences about violence against women and to emphasize connections between women’s personal experiences and broader political, social, economic, and cultural contexts.  But, the book focuses on the lives and experiences of many women rather than on the life of just one individual or family, because I want to depict variation in women’s experiences and challenge images of homogeneity in regard to women in domestic violence situations.

The main vehicle through which the book explores the most intimate aspects of poor women’s lives and the processes whereby these lives intersect with other forms of violence are the life stories of thirty-eight women in Lima.  But, rather than presenting women’s words as readers’ main source of information, I draw on multiple sources as I present different aspects of women’s experiences.  So, The Woman in the Violence builds on previous work in testimonial literature, yet it is more an analysis of women’s experiences than primarily a description of these experiences.

5.  What would you say are the key conclusions to be drawn from your work?

One conclusion is that to arrive at a more holistic portrait of women’s lives, we should analyze women’s experiences of intimate partner violence as these intersect with other forms of violence, such as institutional and structural violence.  Another conclusion is that women’s gender is a significant source of subordination but it is far from the only or perhaps even the most significant identity marker that shapes women’s experiences of violence—in Lima, race, class, and geographic location were also significant. I think a third key conclusion is that women resist violence—intimate, institutional, and structural—in their everyday lives in many ways that are often invisible to us yet which speak volumes about the need for collective action to challenge the sexism, racism, and other everyday forms of violence individual women encounter on a day-to-day basis.

Thank you so much for your questions, and for providing me with the opportunity to share my work with you.  I really appreciate it.

Note:  In the interest of full disclosure, Alcalde is the sister of M. Gabriela Alcalde, Director of the Kentucky Health Justice Network and a longtime friend and colleague of mine.

Domestic violence can be defined as a pattern of behavior in any relationship that is used to gain or maintain power and control over an intimate partner.Abuse is physical, sexual, emotional, economic or psychological actions or threats of actions that influence another person. This includes any behaviors that frighten, intimidate, terrorize, manipulate, hurt, humiliate, blame, injure or wound someone.

Domestic violence can happen to anyone of any race, age, sexual orientation, religion or gender. It can happen to couples who are married, living together or who are dating. Domestic violence affects people of all socioeconomic backgrounds and education levels.

There is a wealth of information available about domestic violence, here are just a few resources.  Become aware, become involved:

• The National Domestic Violence Hotline (has a section on their website with information for immigrants)
• The Domestic Violence Awareness Project
• The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (and also here for some excellent statistics)

U.S. Department of Justice Office on Violence Against Women

“Amid the launch of the federal Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Marriage initiatives two years ago, social service agencies and industry experts have begun to recognize the importance not just of helping victims of domestic violence but also of treating the batterers themselves in programs such as the House of Ruth’s Gateway Project.

“No matter how many women you take in, it isn’t going to cure the problem,” said Toby Myers, vice chair of the National Center on Domestic and Sexual Violence, a nonprofit based in Austin. In May, Andrew Klein, editor of the National Bulletin on Domestic Violence Prevention, wrote that abuser intervention programs “serve a critical need” in making sure that batterers comply with their sentencing and don’t repeat their abuse.”

“In 2005, the latest year for which figures are available, the Justice Department gave abuser programs only a fraction of the $113.9 million that was doled out for domestic violence prevention through its largest grant program, Stop Violence Against Women. About 35 percent went to victim services, about half to law enforcement and prosecution services and just $5.4 million, or about 5 percent, to courts for programs including abuser intervention.”

While in no way should already inadequate funds be siphoned from services to  victims, clearly you can’t cure the problem by only treating the result, you have to address the cause, and 5.4 million dollars is clearly a drop in the bucket on that front.

]]> http://www.feministpeacenetwork.org/2008/10/07/only-5-of-doj-domestic-violence-funds-goes-to-treat-batterers/feed/ 0 http://www.feministpeacenetwork.org/2008/10/02/for-2nd-year-in-a-row-nevada-1-in-number-of-women-murdered-by-men/ http://www.feministpeacenetwork.org/2008/10/02/for-2nd-year-in-a-row-nevada-1-in-number-of-women-murdered-by-men/#comments Thu, 02 Oct 2008 11:28:44 +0000 Fempeace http://www.feministpeacenetwork.org/2008/10/02/for-2nd-year-in-a-row-nevada-1-in-number-of-women-murdered-by-men/ [...]]]> A hearty congrats to the state of Nevada for this dubious honor.  Might want to think about canceling that trip to Vegas…

“For the second year in a row, Nevada, with a rate of 3.27 per 100,000, ranked first in the nation in the rate of women killed by men according to the Violence Policy Center (VPC) report When Men Murder Women: An Analysis of 2006 Homicide Data. The annual VPC report details national and state-by-state information on female homicides involving one female murder victim and one male offender. The study uses the most recent data available from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s unpublished Supplementary Homicide Report and is released each year to coincide with Domestic Violence Awareness Month in October.

Ranked behind Nevada were: South Carolina at 2 with a rate of 2.84 per 100,000; Alabama at 3 with a rate of 2.20 per 100,000; Oklahoma at 4 with a rate of 2.10 per 100,000; Louisiana at 5 with a rate of 1.97 per 100,000; Vermont at 6 with a rate of 1.90 per 100,000; Texas at 7 with a rate of 1.82 per 100,000; Arkansas at 8 with a rate of 1.74 per 100,000; Arizona at 9 with a rate of 1.72 per 100,000; and, Tennessee at 10 with a rate of 1.70 per 100,000. Nationally, the rate of women killed by men in single victim/single offender instances was 1.29 per 100,000.

VPC Legislative Director Kristen Rand states, “These findings alarmingly demonstrate how domestic violence can escalate to homicide. More resources need to be made available to protect women and prevent such tragedies.”

Nationwide, 1,836 females were murdered by males in single victim/single offender incidents in 2006. Where weapon use could be determined, firearms were the most common weapon used by males to murder females (907 of 1,675 homicides or 54 percent). Of these, 73 percent (666 of 907) were committed with handguns. In cases where it could be determined if the victim knew her killer, 92 percent of female victims (1,572 out of 1,701) were murdered by someone they knew. Of these, 60 percent (949 out of 1,572) were wives or intimate acquaintances of their killers. More than 12 times as many females were murdered by a male they knew than were killed by male strangers. In 88 percent of all incidents where the circumstances could be determined, the homicides were not related to the commission of any other felony, such as rape or robbery”

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