ABSTRACT
The Scottish Government follow the UN line that “Domestic abuse is both a cause and consequence of gender inequality”. For three years the Scottish Government funded a development post to raise awareness of men’s experience with the hope of improving mainstream service response to the problem. This chapter aims to reflect on those three years in the hope of encouraging wider consideration of changes that might improve approaches to domestic abuse for men, women, and families. Equalities legislation looks to protect people from discrimination based on protective characteristics, one of which is “sex”. The Equality Unit framed domestic abuse as Violence Against Women or Gender Based Violence. The common perception is that domestic abuse is gendered and only women can be victim. Michael Johnson’s typology seeks to distinguish domestic abuse as a pattern of controlling behaviour from discrete incidents. Johnson and Evan Stark both maintain that coercive control is uniquely gendered and a manifestation of societal gender inequality.
