In my work to educate health care providers and employers about domestic violence, this issue of the "cost of domestic violence" has come up quite alot. In all the research I have found, and cited, the cost is laid out in terms of the cost of "victimization" rather than being framed in terms of the cost of people (mostly men) being (actively, purposefully) violent.
Cited "health care" and "workplace" costs, for example, are the costs related to victims. Though there are many problems with this way of framing the issue, one big one is that the way we define the problem (i.e. the cost of/to victims of a passive thing - "domestic violence" - not an active person) has everything to do with the way we deal with it. As an employer, for example, if I am aware that one of my employees who is a victim of domestic violence is absent alot, my incentive has to do with getting her to work more often, or replacing her with someone more productive. My focus is then completely on her behavior - how she responds, getting her in counseling, whether she is following through, etc. Many very progressive and caring workplaces have created policies for "helping victims" - to be safe at work, get appropriate referrals, have flexibility in scheduling, etc. Very few - and I'd love to hear of more - workplaces take a stance on employees who batter. Those who do, such as Polaroid Corporation, report very powerful results, yet taking up this issue is generally avoided. Why? The steps I am taking in my own little corner of the world have to do with the way I talk about domestic violence - as active, purposeful, violent behavior used by people, most often men, to control and maintain control of their intimate partners. I present it as rooted in sexism and sexist violence supported by the wider society/institutions as a means to keep women oppressed. Men who use violence are conditioned in a culture, and most often in their own families, to experience maleness as domination and their own identity as men as dependent on being dominant. The other thing I'm trying to do, and would love help on if people have ideas, is to reframe all the statistics I cite. For example, in my community local surveys indicate the number of "women who are being abused". I have translated that statistic to reflect the number of men abusing women in our community, and the numbers of women and children impacted by their violence. I also include statistics I have about women who are abusive to their female partners, women abusive to men, and men abusive to their male partners. I believe this translation is important, and might also lead us to different research on the matter. I wonder what different statistics we would use if we were talking about this as gendered-male violence, and if we talked about it in an active voice. For now, I'm just making things up. When I say, for example, the cost to the health care system, I say, the cost of having batterers hurting members of our community (or of hurting our employees) is $x. Casting and reframing this issue as a crisis related to a cultural definition of masculinity (and power), and as behavior perpetrated by men in light of this conditioning and their own exposure to violence isn't easy. But it does lead to different solutions, and it may help us focus energy and resources on root causes. Maybe scary, but also possible. If people are interested, Jackson Katz has done very good work on reframing the issue in these ways. He has a web site at http://www.jacksonkatz.com Take care everyone, Elaine ***End-violence is sponsored by UNIFEM and receives generous support from ICAP*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe end-violence OR type: unsubscribe end-violence Archives of previous End-violence messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/end-violence/hypermail/
