Many Women, Many Feminisms: Varied Responses to Violence against Women

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• Zeynep Kaya (Sheffield), Adrija Dey (Westminster) and Miranda Horvath (Suffolk)
• Friday 08 March 2024, 15:00-18:00
• Seminar room, Institute of Criminology Sidgwick Site.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Preeti Dash, ppd29.

Please complete this survey for Registration: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScfEeROyPoehPjmFkmJOaoABO8VY2dphn2yzoQRPkDetX7OmQ/viewform

The Justice and Society Research Centre at the Institute of Criminology, Cambridge, is delighted to invite you to a hybrid research seminar to mark International Women’s Day 2024. The seminar will invite reflections from leading experts in the field of violence against women (VAW) including Zeynep Kaya (Sheffield), Adrija Dey (Westminster) and Miranda Horvath (Suffolk). The event will take place in the basement of the Institute of Criminology (CB3 9DA) from 3pm to 5pm on 8 March 2024. Coffee will be available from 2:45pm and the seminar will be followed by a drinks reception till 5:45pm.

With its roots in socialist feminist activism, International Women’s Day (IWD) was first celebrated over a century ago to demand liberation for women in cultural, political and material terms. In its ethos and orientation, IWD is aimed at working towards the emancipation of the global majority of women, whose gender-based subordination is shaped by intersecting structures of inequality such as race, class and nationality. This understanding of gender as being inextricably enmeshed in other inequalities has not permeated the field of feminist criminology.

A multidimensional approach to gender inequality presents both challenges and opportunities for feminist criminology. For example, while cultural theories of VAW would trace such violence to patriarchal attitudes, materialist feminist theories would zoom out to analyse whether broader economic and political structures shape victimisation, offending and institutional responses in this area. Similarly, deploying intersectionality as a framework for analysis would emphasise the heterogeneity of women’s experiences in navigating, or choosing not to navigate, through institutional processes in the aftermath of violence. The recognition of these multiple marginalisations is therefore crucial to a full appreciation of how violence is used to perpetuate women’s subordination, even though this recognition simultaneously risks fragmentation within the broader feminist community. Engaging with intersecting inequalities also requires us to reckon with how, in the global academy, some theories, policies and approaches (from high income countries) come to be characterised as ‘leading’ or ‘universal’ while others have their significance shrunk to fit only specific (low income) contexts and locales. Adopting a feminist praxis therefore requires constant reflection not just on what topics are included within VAW research, and who conducts research, but also what knowledge comes to be regarded as essential rather than optional.

Against this background, we are delighted to invite you to a conversation among the invited experts, which will draw upon case studies from a range of contexts, including India, Iraq, England and Wales, and will focus attention on the experiences of multiply marginalised women. The event will be conducted in the form of an interview with the speakers, followed by interaction with members of the audience.

Please register for online or in person attendance if you are interested in joining us. To view information about the building’s accessibility, you can view AccessAble’s guide. We will provide live BSL interpretation for this event and you are welcome to raise other accessibility concerns with us through the registration form.

Please note that this event deals with themes that might be distressing to some. We encourage you to seek appropriate support if needed. For example, the NHS provides a list of resources that might be useful in relation to domestic abuse or sexual violence.

We hope to welcome many of you at the event.

This talk is part of the Institute of Criminology Events series.

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