A Review of Feminist Scholarship on Domestic Violence and Innovative Pathways Forward: An Introduction to the Special Issue

Abstract

Domestic violence continues to be a significant and global problem for women and girls (World Health Organization, 2017). This special issue is designed to highlight the excellent recent scholarship on domestic violence, with emphasis on work from the past decade, and to identify the substantial areas in which additional work is needed, especially for BIPOC and trans women as well as gender non-conforming individuals. An intersectional, feminist framework provides the necessary lens through which many current and future advances have and can continue to be made. We sought to reflect this approach through the selection of topics as well as the composition of BIPOC and queer authors and reviewers of the articles in this special issue. The articles included address domestic violence theory, methods, measurement, social context, application, and policy. Below, the articles are introduced and summarized. The issue opens with an article by Beth Richie, Valli Kanuha, and Kayla Martensen, Colluding With and Resisting the State: Organizing Against Gender Violence in the U.S., that traces the history of the battered women’s movement in the U.S. from the lived experiences of two queer scholar-activists. They address the heteronormative, white beginnings of the battered women’s movement; the grassroots movements to include women in the margins initiated by and for women of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, and sex workers; the influence of Crenshaw’s (1991) intersectionality framework, which originated from a critical race, feminist lens for viewing violence against Black and other multiply marginalized women; an evaluation of the unintended