Mäns våld mot kvinnor - ett diskursivt slagfält. Reflektioner kring kunskapsläget

Abstract

In Sweden, men’s violence against women in close relationships, often named as women abuse, has for the last two decades been a topic in the women’s movement as well as a topic on the political agenda, among them The Protection of Women’s Integrity reform, resulting in different assignments to authorities both on a local and central level to work out different solutions to the problem. This report started off primarily as one of these assignments with the aim to present and discuss contemporary knowledge on women abuse in Sweden. The aim of the report has been somewhat extended but deals primarily with the production of knowledge about women abuse as stated in the original assignment from the National Board of Health and Welfare which also made the report possible by contributing economically. The aim of the report is to explore what understandings are expressed in different texts concerning men’s violence against women, the male perpetrator and the female victim and to discuss the implications of these specific understandings in relation to different practices assigned to deal with (and resolve) the problem. The report is based on approximately 150 texts, produced by those who have an academic interest in the question as well as by those who meet with the problem in their different professions and occupations. The report consists of five sections. In the first two sections the problem is presented and discussed as a juridical one, as figures of different statistics of male violence, and as different official ways of defining and dealing with the problem. The third section is an overview of what definitions are given the status of truth, and by whom, thereby constructing a specific space of knowledge. Differences and similarities, changes and continuities over time are highlighted. At first sight there might seem to be a mutual understanding of the problem, one dominating discourse on how to understand male violence against women, expressed both by academic producers, representatives for women shelters and in political documentation, locating the problem within a gender-power perspective. Taking a closer look, the space of knowledge rather appears to be one of a struggle. The struggle mainly has to do with how men’s violence against women is conceptualised: (1) as an expression of male power or powerlessness; (2) the male perpetrator as gradually or totally different from other males; (3) male violence as culturally accepted or unacceptable acts of violence. The section concludes with an overview showing that the space of knowledge is a highly contested one where naming and defining of terms can be understood as a struggle for power on a discursive level. The fourth section consists of a detailed outline of three different ways of locating and explaining the problem of male violence against women, namely as an individual, a marital or a societal problem. The section ends with a discussion on possible consequences of these perspectives. The examination is based on texts produced by three persons, chosen as representatives of opposite views. The section concludes with a discussion on whether these contradictive explanations partly might be understood as differences in objectives, goals and purposes of the studies. The fifth section is to be understood as a provocative exploration of what problems and possibilities, in a broader sense, there may be, producing a certain form of knowledge on violence in intimate relationships, the male perpetrator and the female victim. The discussions focuses upon descriptions picturing violence as a bad but inevitable part of women life, naturalizing the problem; the question of equality, both as the problem and as the solution of the problem; descriptions of the female victim creating images of weakness, sickliness and powerlessness; the problem of excluding or including same-sex partner violence in existing feminist theories, and the recurrent question of “why doesn’t she leave?”