Violence Against Women: the Devastating Legacy and the Transforming Struggle

Professor Gill Hague, School for Policy Studies, Bristol University

This seminar will outline, in a broad-brush coverage, violence against women issues from across the world, with examples including the WHO 2005 Multi-Country Study on Domestic Violence. It will demonstrate that gender violence has been a devastating legacy for women throughout history in almost all known societies. Some of this material is distressing. However, the lecture will also address the transforming struggles against gender violence which have made substantial gains in the last thirty years, mainly as a result of the activities of women’s organizations/ activists, and despite resistance and, sometimes cutback. Using examples of these transforming struggles from around the world, the lecture will end on an uplifting note to take us forward in continuing the struggle.

Biography:
Gill Hague, Professor of Violence Against Women Studies, was a founding member of the Violence Against Women Research Group, Bristol University, now the Centre for Gender and Violence Research, one of the largest sites of gender violence research, working locally, nationally and internationally. Professor Hague has worked as an activist, practitioner, academic and internationally-known researcher, producing over 100 publications on violence against women. She has attempted throughout to raise the voices of abuse survivors, and to work towards empowerment within an activist frame. She has been involved with many trans-national projects in different countries on gender-based violence, led by women’s organisations in the countries concerned (e.g. India, South Africa and Brazil.). She recently led, with Dr. Nazand Begikhani and Dr. Aisha Gill, international research on honour-based violence in Kurdish communities, the first-ever national UK study of disabled women and domestic violence, and a pioneering Ugandan project on bride-price and domestic violence. At the end of her career, Professor Hague has worked on violence against women, alongside women’s movement and activists, for nearly 40 years.

Organiser: Bloomsbury Gender Network hosted by the SOAS Centre for Gender Studies

Contact email: rs94@soas.ac.uk