| Late
1800s |
With Queen Victoria’s ascension to the
British throne, lawmakers begin enacting reforms
regarding women.
Life-threatening beatings are
considered grounds for divorce.
|
| 1917 |
Bolsheviks give Soviet women full
political power and legal equality, and
establish mother and child welfare centres.
|
| 1924
|
A French court rules that a husband does
not have the right to beat his wife. Prior to
this, the Napoleonic code prevailed: “Women,
like walnut trees, should be beaten every
day.”
|
| 1920s
|
Psychoanalysis
incorporates the myth of female masochism into its conception of the normal psychology. It is
argued that women derive gratification from the
violence they experience.
|
| 1940s
|
After Mao Tse Tung’s Revolutionary Army
rids villages of enemy control, women speak of
their oppression, of being sold as concubines,
raped, and beaten. “Speak bitterness”
meetings are later viewed as the first known
attempts to convert “private women’s
issues” into public issues.
|
| 1950s
/ 60s |
The
civil-rights, anti-war, and
black-liberation movements challenge
traditional thinking and lay the
foundation for the feminist movement.
The criminal justice system views arrest
as inappropriate for solving the complex social
and psychological problems demonstrated in
‘family squabbles’.
|
| 1962 |
In New York, domestic-violence cases are
transferred from criminal court to family court
where only civil procedures apply. The husband
never faces the harsher penalties he would suffer if found guilty in criminal court.
|
| 1963
|
Betty Friedan authors The Feminine
Mystique, capturing the discontent of a
generation of middle-class women struggling between aspirations for fulfilment and an
ideology that assigns them to the home.
|
| 1966
|
Beating, as cruel and inhumane treatment,
becomes grounds for divorce in New York, but the
plaintiff must establish that a “sufficient”
number of beatings have taken place.
|
Late
1960s/
early
1970s
|
US feminism develops into two major
branches: women’s rights
feminism like National
Organization of Women, and a women’s
liberation movement exemplified by socialist
feminist and radical feminist groups. The
emerging movement details the conditions of
daily life that allow women to call themselves battered. Women’s hotlines and crisis centres
provide a context for battered women to speak
out and seek help.
|
| 1970s
|
“We
will not be beaten” is the mantra of women
organizing to end domestic violence. A
grassroots organising effort begins in the US
and rapidly spreads.
|
| 1972 |
In Canada, women’s advocates and Haven
House in Pasedena, California establish the
first shelters for battered women. Interval
House, Toronto’s first refuge house, opens.
|
| 1974 |
Transition House, Vancouver’s first
refuge house, opens in January 1974.
Erin Prizzey publishes Scream Quietly
or the Neighbours will Hear in England, the
first book about domestic violence. The Centre
she establishes develops into the first UK Women’s Aid.
Police statistics published in the US
confirm that domestic violence is not just a
ghetto or lower-class issue.
Britain holds Parliamentary Select
Committee Hearings on Violence in Marriage. Much
of the testimony describes the roots of domestic
violence as lying in individual inadequacy. This
is the popular contemporary theory.
Holland and Australia open their first
refuges.
|
| 1975
|
After seven years of debate, a new family
law goes into effect in Italy. It explicitly
does away with the ancient concept of sole authority in the father. Wife beating is also
made illegal.
Brazil passes a penal code that prohibits
husbands from selling, renting, or gambling away
their wives.
|
| 1976
|
8200 women from 33 countries meet in
Brussels for the International Tribunal on
Crimes against Women. A resolution on domestic
violence is sent to the government of all
countries.
|
| 1977
|
In England, the Homeless Persons Act is
passed, which gives a battered woman priority in
obtaining housing. Many women live in refuges
for up to nine months due to housing shortages.
|
| 1978
|
128 women from 13 Western nations gather
at the International Conference on Battered
Women in Amsterdam.
|
| 1979
|
“Battered spouse” and “battered
woman” are new categories added to the
International Classification of Diseases.
|
| 1981 |
There are nearly 500 battered women’s
shelters in North America. In England, there are
approx 135 refuges, seven of which are not
government funded.
|
| 1985
|
In Seattle, the first support group for
battered lesbians is started.
Evelyn White publishes Chain, Chain,
Change: For Black Women Dealing with Physical
and Emotional Abuse, the first book about
African-American women and abuse.
|
| 1987
|
In the US, the National Coalition Against
Domestic Violence establishes the first national
toll-free domestic-violence hotline.
|
| Late
1980s
|
US studies show that one out of seven
wives report being raped by their husband;
two-thirds of these rapes were not singular
phenomena.
|
| 1993
|
The United Nations recognizes domestic
violence as an international human rights issue
and issues a Declaration on the Elimination of
Violence Against Women.
|
| 1997
|
Forty Latin American activists and
researchers from the United States and Puerto
Rico meet in Washington DC for the National
Symposium on La Violencia Domestica: An Emerging
Dialogue Among Latinos. From this symposium the National Latino Alliance for the Elimination of
Domestic Violence is formed.
|
| 1998
|
The Asian Institute on Domestic Violence
holds its first National Forum on domestic
violence.
|
