| II. Theories Dictate Remedies
excerpted Wrom: BXFGGMEPYOQKEDOTWFAOBUZXUWLSZL
of Domestic Violence in the African Context , 11 American University
Journal of Gender, Social Policy and the Law 847-863 (2003) (73
Footnotes Omitted)
We care about the theories underlying analyses of domestic violence
in Africa because they influence the actions that are perceived to be
necessary to address the problem. For example, if domestic violence is
rooted in gender inequality, then a variety of measures to improve the
status of women are helpful; by contrast, if it is rooted in individual
pathology, then therapeutic intervention is presumably called for.
Indeed, perhaps one reason that psychological explanations are eschewed
in Africa is that intensive therapy would be virtually impossible in
that setting, due both to its unavailability and unaffordability. In
this section, I point very briefly to the types of remedial
interventions that appear to be called for by the various theories I
have described as current in the African literature on domestic
violence.
A. Rights Theories
Rights theories of domestic violence see abuse as resulting from a
failure to recognize the individual human rights of women. Remedies
based on such a theory would presumably involve proposals for legal
reform and education about the legal and political rights of women. The
provision of a domestic violence code, offering women orders of
protection from the court system, would be a direct outcome of such an
analysis. Legal reform of this type is repeatedly proposed in articles
by African domestic violence activists. Others suggest use of
international and regional conventions and mechanisms both to monitor
the problem in their countries and to lobby African governments to
incorporate their obligations under international law into domestic law,
as has been done in South Africa.
B. Feminist Explanations
Feminist explanations of domestic violence, seeing it as a result of
the pervasive inequality of men and women, counsel much broader
intervention. Law reform would be part of a broader solution--for
example, reform of laws concerning marriage, divorce, child maintenance,
inheritance, and reproductive rights--as well as the provision of direct
remedies for domestic violence. Given a lack of confidence in the
capacity of the legal system--especially a male-dominated legal
system--to deal with many of these issues, organizing campaigns and
widespread public education about gender equality would also be in
order. Activities to remove the economic and social domination of men
would form part of this campaign, including the support of women-owned
enterprises, education and training of female children and adult women.
Socializing women to be more independent is also necessary, perhaps by
changing school textbooks and promoting mass media campaigns. Of course,
attempting to influence the socialization of women alone is
insufficient; while girls are socialized to be submissive, boys are
socialized to dominate them, and changing the first without the second
might well lead to an increase in violence.
C. Cultural Explanations
Cultural explanations, which emphasize the power of tradition and
norms within African culture, would lead to similar re-socialization
campaigns and education to change attitudes about male-female relations
in general. Again, law reform would be in order, for example, to extend
property rights to women upon divorce; but there are limits to the
effectiveness of this route because of the frequent disjuncture and/or
lag between law and social change. In addition, many issues regarding
family law are reserved under African constitutions for decision under
customary law, immunizing them from change by the central legal system.
Thus constitutional change would be necessary to pursue this route, and
this would be costly or perhaps even impossible politically.
D. Society in Transition
What are the implications of seeing domestic violence as the
outgrowth of a society in transition? Will it diminish with time as the
society modernizes? In a generation or so, the conflicts arising from
change may be less intense and the tensions raised by them should
diminish. There is some basis in the American experience to hope that
this will happen. For example, in the early part of the twentieth
century, there was a large influx of Polish immigrants to Chicago. They
were mostly from rural villages in Poland and brought with them the
customs and beliefs of their previous life, including the custom of
beating their wives and the belief that this was appropriate behavior
within a marriage. Upon arrival to the United States, many of the wives
learned that this was not legally acceptable conduct; in time, the
children of those families began to develop different notions of marital
relationships and of male-female relationships in general. But the
transition was not easy. In fact, the stress of moving to an environment
that was so different in terms of the norms concerning marriage and in
which wives often worked as well as their husbands--not together on a
farm, but in separate workplaces distant from their homes--seems to have
exacerbated the problem. When the man felt that his position was
threatened, he lashed out and tried to reassert his control by means of
violence. Other studies show, however, that attitudes changed with the
generations. One study of Italian immigrants' attitudes toward male
dominance in the family in New York in the 1920s, for example, suggests
that 64% of women under the age of thirty-five questioned the
traditional authority of the husband within the family, while only 34%
of those over thirty-five did the same. American-born wives also
objected to wife beating by immigrant husbands in a way that first-
generation women did not. Thus we can speculate that domestic violence
caused by the disruption of traditional culture in Africa may also
decrease as that culture adjusts to the many changes that have been
thrust upon it and as new generations develop different expectations of
marriage and family life.
E. Culture of Violence
Finally, what prescriptions result from regarding domestic violence
as a product of a culture of violence in post-colonial Africa? The first
and most obvious are measures of crime control such as more and better
trained police, greater enforcement, and stiffer penalties for
conviction of domestic violence offenses. Measures that are repeatedly
suggested in South Africa include increasing the police resources
devoted to domestic violence, training police to take domestic violence
seriously, and increasing the penalties for conviction. Like most
strategies focused on punishment, however, these activities need to be
combined with remedial measures to address the conditions that have
given rise to the culture of violence in the first place. Examples
include the provision of educational opportunities and employment for
young men, along with education about alternatives to violence as a way
to resolve conflicts.
Conclusion
Clearly, the only adequate explanatory theory for the incidence of
domestic violence in Africa is a multi-causal one. Thus, multiple
remedies are required to decrease the rate of violence against women.
This perhaps accounts for the lack of a grand theory of domestic
violence in Africa and the co-existence of what might appear to be
inconsistent theories. An author convinced that nothing short of a total
reconstruction of gender relations in society will address the problem
of domestic violence may, nonetheless, include advice about how to use
provisions of international human rights conventions to accomplish
piecemeal legal reforms. There is a certain pragmatism at work here,
embracing whatever arguments are necessary to address the particular
problem at hand while not making things worse for the future. This is
what we often do here as well, but Schneider's interpretation of liberal
democratic "rights" theories and feminist theories as existing
in a creative dialectic with one another makes it transparent why this
is the correct approach in Africa right now. To eliminate, or even just
substantially diminish, domestic violence there will require, as in the
United States, an effort on many fronts, including piecemeal legal
reform as well as major social reconstruction and the investment of
resources on the part of society to provide safety for women.
[a1]. Professor of Law and of Gender Studies, Northwestern
University. |
