ABSTRACT
In many nations, refugee women’s experiences of violence have remained the ‘silent scourge’ (Kishor 2005). In her thesis ‘Only rape’, Pittaway (2001) chronicles a series of barriers she traversed in convincing Australian policy makers to acknowledge the degree (and nature) of torture and trauma experienced by refugee women to Australia. Pittaway’s efforts, in the face of threats and inducements from government to conceal her research, reveal the degree to which there remains signifi cant dominant discursive investment in an ‘invisible’ refugee woman (Indra 1999; Kelley 2001). A gendered account of the refugee journey is critical to any consideration of policy or service for refugee women. In the context of a research project about the material effects of representations in policy (and in the feminist spirit of rendering refugee women’s experiences visible), I include information here about certain gendered aspects of the refugee experience.
