Mellan systerskap och behandling : Omförhandlingar inom ett förändrat stödfält för våldsutsatta kvinnor

In Sweden, support for abused women has historically been a task for female volunteers in women’s shelters. However, due to amendments in the Social Services Act, some local municipalities have in recent years initiated services for people with experience of violence in intimate relationships, often women and men, abused as well as abusers. These specialised public sector units have an approach to the question of violence that differs from “traditional” feminist ideas associated with the women’s shelter movement. The main purpose of this research was to examine local support practices in this particular “support field” and to further the knowledge about underlying tensions and the linkages to different understandings of violence against women. The research questions focused on (1) dominating understandings of the problem and how these were expressed and challenged within the support field, (2) local support practices in regard to legal and organisational conditions, (3) hierarchies, boundaries, sense of community and exclusions (4) overarching changes in the support field and consequences for support seekers and support providers. Inspired by an ethnographic approach, a range of qualitative methods were used: individual and group interviews, participatory observations and retrieval of policy documents. 24 interviews, with 32 people from five shelters and three specialised units, were completed. The participatory observations were performed in two sites. Finally, a web based survey was distributed to 320 recipients: women’s shelters, local crime victim support organisations and public sector specialised units. After removing incomplete surveys, 207 filled out surveys remained. The overall response rate was 65 %. A theoretical framework based on concepts such as field, doxa, capital and boundary work was used. The results of the study showed that the question of violence against women has been institutionalised in Swedish policies and that two dominating understandings were present: a gender power perspective and a relational perspective. The results pointed out that local women’s shelters worked in close partnership with the public sector and were doing “social services-tasks”. The shelter staff had a heavy administrative workload and spent little time on influencing public opinion. Hence, core ideals such as independence, anonymity for women and sisterhood were challenged. Among professionals in the specialised units counselling was favoured over practical tasks. The professionals framed counselling as professional, whereas women’s shelter work was often understood as practical and unskilled. The gender mixed approach of the specialised units was favoured over interventions for women only. Services for abused women in the support field were informed by two, sometimes conflicting, support ideals: (1) aimed at emancipating women, (2) ai med at changing women. Furthermore, processes of “us and them” were identified in the support field and certain groups of women were potentially excluded from help as well as excluded from becoming shelter workers. The overall analysis of the thesis pointed to a shift from gender power analysis to a relational perspective and that the support field has been consumed by the social services