Paper Topic:

Violence Against Women Prevention Act of 1998

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Violence Against Women Act

Introduction

Feminists activists in the antiviolence movement have been ambivalent about the relationship between violence against women and the state (Matthews 1994 :151 ) theless , for over two decades , feminist activism around violence against women has focused on the law more than any other institution . Feminist antiviolence campaigns continue to treat the law as a contributing factor to the problem of violence against women , as well as a venue through which the problem of violence

against women can be addressed (Caufield and Wonders 1993

Over the last quarter of a century in particular , there have been many efforts to change the legal system by developing policies designed to recognize and ultimately reduce violence against women (Bock and James 1992 . Lawsuits , legal advocacy work , and changes in statutes have improved police and court practices . Given these developments activists , advocates , and scholars continue to formulate new legal approaches designed to respond to violence against women (MacKinnon 1993

Surprisingly , however , putting gender-based (bias ) violence on equal footing with other forms of bias-motivated violence has been at best delayed , and in many ways outright denied (National Institute of Justice 1996a . Until recently , the movement to recognize bias motivated violence as a social problem generally has not recognized gender as a source of bias-motivated crime (Levin 1994 . That is , girls and women have not been seen as victims of bias-violence because of their gender

The Violence Against Women Act As An Innovative Idea

The VAWA constitutes an innovative idea . One reporter described it as a novel approach ' to violence against women that was virtually unthinkable by mainstream politicians just a few years ago (Rabin 1994 . The VAWA emerged as infant legislation in 1990 , was signed into law by President Clinton as Title IV of the Violent Crime Control and Enforcement Act of 1994 (Public Law 103-322 , and has marked a major change in our national responses to crimes such as domestic violence sexual assault , and stalking (National Institute of Justice 1996b :iii in large part because it contains a historic civil rights provision designed to address gender-motivated violence (Goldscheid and Kraham 1995 :505

Origins and Rationale

Busch recently observed that as the battered women 's movement grew the federal government , although reluctantly , responded to the problem of domestic violence . However , it was not until some twenty years later , in 1990 that a federal bill was introduced in Congress that contained the first federal legislation against spousal abuse (1995 :4 ) The VAWA began to take official form in 1990 , but did not gain much public attention until a few years later . In its original formulation , the VAWA was organized around specific categories of concern and attendant Titles that required an estimated 2 .3 billion dollars to implement and enforce (See Appendix

Most notable for our purposes here , Title III of the VAWA rejects the notion that acts of violence against women (e .g , domestic violence battery , rape , harassment ) merely constitute private injuries...

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