Battering by men is the most significant cause of injury to women in our society. It is also a major cause of child abuse, murder, substance abuse and female suicide attempts. This volume, the result of 15 years of research conducted by the authors - a social worker and physician respectively - explores the theoretical perspectives of this dramatic expression of male domination, together with health consequences for women and clinical interventions.
The authors found that the traditional resources women turn to for help reinforce male domination: the medical, psychiatric and behavioural problems presented by battered women arise because male strategies of coercion, isolation and control converge with discriminatory structures and institutional practices to make it extremely difficult, sometimes impossible, for women to escape from abusive relationships. Stark and Flitcraft argue for a political space to be opened up within families, communities and the economy - a space where male coercion is simply not tolerated.
Author Biography
Evan Stark is a sociologist, forensic social worker and award-winning researcher with an international reputation for his innovative work on the legal, policy and health dimensions of interpersonal violence, including its effects on children. Dr. Stark's award-winning book, Coercive Control: The Entrapment of Women in Personal Life (Oxford, 2007), was named the outstanding social science book published in 2007 by the Association of American Publishers and influenced the United Kingdom and other countries in Europe to expand their definitions of domestic violence to include coercive control. With a Ph.D......University, he is Professor Emeritus at Rutgers University where he held appointments in Public Affairs, Public Health and Women and Gender Studies. Dr. Stark has held visiting appointments and Fellowships at the University of Essex, the University of Bristol, the Escuela Superior de Economia y Negocios (ESEN) in El Salvador and, most recently, as the. Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the University of Edinburgh. Since his retirement, Dr. Stark has done extensive work on imporiving the response to abuse women in Turkey, as part of the State Department's "U.S. Speaker and Specialist Program" as well as in Serbia, Taiwan and throughout the United Kingdom.
