ABSTRACT
Participants’ stories of how they became involved in collective action cannot be considered in isolation from a constellation of everyday conditions and social inequalities as well as experiences of abuse that shaped their lives. In addition to mistreatment by male partners, nine of the eleven participants had experienced physical, psychological, emotional, and/or sexual abuse as children. As adolescents and adults, some participants had also been sexually assaulted by men they were dating and had been sexually harassed in high school, the workplace, and the university. Sources of inspiration, such as a mother ‘s political activism or a father’s spirituality, as well as poverty and racism were also central to the stories women told and the meanings they made of their experiences of abuse. Women explicitly recognized and named their experiences of violation as abuse in different ways, under a range of circumstances, and at different moments in their lives.
