ABSTRACT
The social backdrop to emergence of violence against women into public awareness has been unequal power relations between the sexes resulting from the primary location of women’s lives in the family and men’s dominance in the public sphere. Sexual abuse within institutions supposedly ‘caring’ for intellectually disabled and mentally ill women also began to be exposed within the Victorian community services department. Feminist practice and theory make connections between rape, coercive sexuality, sexual assault and sexual harassment, found in the main to occur in intimate interpersonal relationships, as well as in so-called ‘stranger rape’. Addressing violence against women became a focus of the National Agenda for Women, adopted in February 1988 as part of the set of goals for women by 2000. Policy makers faced dilemmas about how to increase safety for women, given the ‘continuum of violence’, the entrenched nature of gendered power relations, and the patriarchal attitudes repeatedly described by policy advocates.
