Do Good Intentions Beget Good Policy? Two Steps Forward and One Step Back in the Construction of Domestic Violence in Ontario by April Lucille Girard-Brown A thesis submitted to the Department of Sociology In conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen‟s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada January, 2012 Copyright ©April Lucille Girard-Brown, 2012 Abstract The construction of domestic violence shifted and changed as this issue was forced from the private shadows to the public stage. This dissertation explores how government policy initiatives - Bill 117: An Act to Better Protect Victims of Domestic Violence and the Domestic Violence Action Plan (DVAP) - shaped our understanding of domestic violence as a social problem in the first decade of the twenty-first century in Ontario. Specifically, it asks whose voices were heard, whose were silenced, how domestic violence was conceptualized by various stakeholders. In order to do this I analyzed the texts of Bill 117, its debates, the DVAP, as well as fourteen in-depth interviews with anti- violence advocates in Ontario to shed light on their construction of the domestic violence problem. Then I examined who (both state and non-state actors) regarded the work as „successful‟, flawed or wholly ineffective. In particular, I focused on the claims and counter-claims advanced by MPPs, other government officials, feminist or other women‟s group advocates and men‟s or fathers‟ rights group supporters and organizations. The key themes derived from the textual analysis of documents and the interviews encapsulate the key issues which formed the dominant construction of domestic violence in Ontario between 2000 and 2009: the never-ending struggles over funding, debates surrounding issues of rights and responsibilities, solutions proposed to address domestic violence, and finally the continued appearance of deserving and undeserving victims in public policy. This exploration is important because it speaks to issues of power, given that within and between these advocacy groups certain voices are privileged and silenced to varying degrees, and the outcomes of these complex processes contribute to the shaping of public policy and perceptions outside the state apparatus. ii Preface and Acknowledgements I was born into a family that thrives on taking up causes through volunteer and advocacy work. We volunteer our time and other resources in a number of areas including aiding those with special needs, shoveling driveways, protesting to save parks, ending the corruption in unions and eliminating violence in families. It is no wonder then that I came to be the person I am. My own passion for advocacy came shortly after the sudden death of my father. Left with a number of unanswered questions and flooded with information about his childhood history of family violence, I had a desperate need to try to „make sense‟ of the world. Coupled with my own experiences with violence as an undergraduate and volunteer work with victims of violence, I was determined to apply my predisposition towards activism and my new found love of research to this very problematic issue. Although not initially interested in policy, knowing that my work could somehow make a difference was always important to me and manifested itself quite clearly in the positive response I received for my honours thesis on attitudes towards sexual assault and date rape drugs (see Girard & Senn, 2008). This interest in my work left me wondering if more could be done and if I could somehow use the research that I do to inspire change. I simultaneously started to notice, through my firsthand experience volunteering with a shelter for abused women, shifts in the development of my position as a feminist thinker. Having only read academic work that focused on the need for one collective women‟s movement that spoke with one voice in order to fight gender inequality, sounded like an inspirational utopia. However, it did not take long before I started seriously questioning feminism and what it meant to me. As a white, middle-class, well-educated, able-bodied, iii heterosexual woman, I recognize my position of privilege and find it essential to maintain an open mind and recognize the diversity of experiences that surround me. Therefore the first time that another woman told me that I was not a feminist because of a position I chose to support, I was left reeling. How could someone advocating anti-violence use a form of violence? Of course, it did not take long for the second, third and fourth encounters of a similar nature to arise, at which point I stopped letting things get to me and refused to be bullied into a narrow framework I did not support. I believe these experiences were important to my development as a feminist in order for me to recognize the varied positions within and outside feminist movements, particularly that men are not the sole source of oppression, bullying and various forms of violence. This led me to the recognition that although the experiences of violence for men and women are often different, men‟s violence against women is not the only source of violence experienced by women (or men for that matter). My conflicting interpretations of „reality‟ often leave me oscillating between various positions and feeling like I do not have a „home‟ from which to espouse my position. I see violence as something that needs to be eradicated in all its forms without creating a hierarchy of those deemed more or less worthy of support. However, it is not just fighting within and between groups of women that concerns me, but the exasperation with attempts to be heard by all levels of government to address the complexity of this violence and the frustration with the lack of long-term sustainable progress to end violence in intimate relationships. Women‟s anti-violence organizations have fought long and hard to be heard and it still amazes me that, although there has been some progress, change has been mind-numbingly slow and often not very progressive. For instance, I still see women blamed for being sexually assaulted or failing to be „good‟ iv mothers when they are being abused, while men are excluded from any and all discussions of violence. These experiences have inspired my doctoral work on policy development in Ontario. I have always found it interesting that advocacy groups seem to be constantly battling provincial and federal levels of government, and unfortunately each other, for the same things. With the varied and rich histories of social movements, their relationship to violence in intimate relationships and how this shapes government policy making is important. Equally important is how these constructions and battles shape how domestic violence is perceived outside government, advocacy and community organizations impacting how the majority of people will respond to the problem. For these reasons, I find this incredibly fascinating and feel that by recognizing how we have constructed domestic violence and the battles waged over this social problem can aid in determining new courses of action for the future. However, a project such as this does not take shape without a number of people. Before explaining who these important individuals are and the role they played in the development of my dissertation, I should comment on the „life events‟ that have sometimes propelled and other times stalled the development of my work over the last five and a half years. For the first time in my life I moved away from my support network and found myself hundreds of kilometers away from those who helped me make it this far. This was a hard transition for me, one which fed the „burn out‟ that later resulted and was incredibly hard to overcome. After completing my coursework at one post-secondary institution I found myself without a committee and felt the need to relocate for the sake of my research. This was a wise move, but resulted in a commute between my home in v Ottawa and Queen‟s University. Over the course of these past five and a half years I have married an incredible man, bought my first home and recently discovered that I am going to be a mother. I also spent 2011 driving between Windsor and Ottawa to care for and spend time with my terminally ill mother-in-law. These experiences - for better or worse - have shaped my life and work and despite everything I am very proud of what I have accomplished while at Queen‟s University. As a result of my work at Queen‟s I am indebted to a number of people who helped make this possible, though I am not sure „thank you‟ is enough. I need to start first by thanking my committee, particularly for their commitment the last few months to ensuring I could get this done by the deadline that I had set for myself thereby allowing me the opportunity to tell my mother-in-law that I was in fact „finally‟ going to get my doctorate before she passed away. A big thank you first to Gillian Balfour for quickly agreeing to take part in my defence and taking the time to be there. Thank you to Abbie Bakan for providing a much needed perspective outside Sociology and for your willingness to look over other projects I was working on. Much thanks to Roberta Hamilton for her very speedy and thorough editing skills. Your feedback was always very detailed and thought provoking. My thanks to Cathie Krull for always being honest with me about my work to ensure it was the best that it could be. And last but certainly not least, my endless thanks to Laureen Snider for tolerating such a „high maintenance‟ woman for five and a half years! You had absolutely no idea what you were getting yourself into but you survived it (we both did!).