What is the Violence Against Women Movement?

It was once legal for a husband to beat his wife. When people hear this, they often think of the 1700s or 1800s. You may be surprised to learn the actual timeline for criminalizing violence against women.

In the United States, congress did not pass the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) until 1994 (US Department of Justice, 2020). However, violence against women was not recognized as a crime in the United States until 1996 (US Department of Justice, 2020).

This legislative change was do to the Violence Against Women Movement. The movement argued that violence against women is a human rights issue (Sakrin, 2018).This movement challenged the cultural norm that women should accept violence. It caused legislative change to punish men for harming women in the United States and in many other countries all over the world (Kalmanson, 2018).

References

Kalmanson, M. (2016). Filling the Gap of Domestic Violence Protection: Returning Human Rights to U.S. Victims. Florida State University Law Review, 4, 1359.

Sarkin, J. (2018). A Methodology to Ensure that States Adequately Apply Due Diligence Standards and Processes to Significantly Impact Levels of Violence Against Women Around the World. Human Rights Quarterly, 40(1), 1–36. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1353/hrq.2018.0000

US Department of Justice (2020, August 01. Violence Against Women Act. Retrieved on November 05, 2020, from https://www.justice.gov/ovw/blog/violence-against-women-act-ongoing-fixture-nation-s-response-domestic-violence-dating