Domestic violence policies in the Netherlands: A regime of deficiency

Abstract

In a number of countries, domestic violence is represented as a governable phenomenon that is amenable to policy interventions. Over the past 40 years in the Netherlands, however, this approach has not resulted in a reduction of domestic violence. Yet new policy strategies continue to be designed to improve existing interventions. In this article, we focus on a Dutch policy measure that aims to detect early signals of violence and abuse. We argue that this strategy, by approaching domestic violence as a technical problem, fails to take into account structural and symbolic violence. As a consequence, the impact of domestic violence policies on women, particularly poor women, and especially women with a migration background, is to intensify their difficulties. Moreover, these policies deploy a technology that shapes the subjectivity of professionals engaged in protection practices, while maintaining the status quo of inequality and violence against women. The connection between these two flaws of domestic violence policies leads us to claim that the current approach is constituted as a regime of deficiency.

Stay Home, Stay Safe? The Impact of the COVID-19 Restrictions on the Prevalence, Nature, and Type of Reporter of Domestic Violence in the Netherlands

“…The current study focuses on officially reported incidents of domestic violence in the Netherlands. Domestic violence is used as a generic term for violence perpetrated by someone within the domestic circle of the victims, hence including IPV and child maltreatment, as well as violence against parents and elderly abuse (Mellaard & Meijl, 2021 ).…”

Revisiting Empowerment Through Critical Praxis: Perspectives of Front-Line Workers Supporting Refugee Women Experiencing Gendered Violence in Australia

“…However, in addition to poorly defined and under-theorized concepts of empowerment, the choices and resources available to women are increasingly limited. Women seeking help for DV are now often met with similar sets of choices guided by the same general set of values, beliefs, and practices that form the dominant discourse of the GV movement in most western countries (Kasturirangan, 2008;Mehrotra et al, 2016;Mellaard & Meijl., 2021; see also Vaughan et al, 2015, for an Australian context specific to refugees). Centered on gender equality, and often focusing on legal interventions and individualistic notions of breaking up the family (Merry, 2011;Ong, 2003), it is not difficult to see why many women-let alone refugee and migrant women, or even workers supporting themmight find these choices disempowering (Kasturirangan, 2008;Mellaard et al, 2021).…”

“…Earlier feminist activism based on empowerment traversed both the micro and the macro, drawing on collective strategies aimed at both individual and structural change (MacDowell, 2019). Now, however, hierarchical models of service delivery and overly bureaucratic processes limit the decisions women can make (Mellaard & Meijl, 2021). A focus on resourcing for women's shelters and front-line services, the movement's alignment with the rise of therapy culture, public health approaches to risk and surveillance, and the ongoing pursuit of criminalization, have diverted resources away from both material resources and the development of alternative policy and practice responses (Bumiller, 2008;Goodmark, 2018;Mehrotra et al, 2016).…”

“…With the institutionalization of gender equality as a strategy of “add women and stir,” mainstream concepts of empowerment were mobilized as part of the transnational campaign to address women's inequalities (Squires, 2013). Empowerment as a term was particularly successful in taking liberal feminist ideals into the Global South (Baines, 2017; Merry, 2011). A focus on human rights in countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia brought interventions by liberal, second-wave feminists wanting to “save” poor, oppressed, and backwards women (Mohanty, 1988).…”

Stay home, stay safe?

“…de aard van of het type huiselijk geweld). Bovendien kan huiselijk geweld meerdere vormen aannemen, zoals lichamelijk, seksueel of psychisch geweld (Mellaard & Meijl, 2021;Ten Boom e.a., 2019). Slachtoffers, plegers, omstanders en professionals kunnen bij (vermoedens van) huiselijk geweld contact opnemen met Veilig Thuis, het centrale meld-en adviespunt in Nederland voor huiselijk geweld en kindermishandeling (hierna: huiselijk geweld).…”