Customer Reviews

Listening to Battered Women: A Survivor-Centered Approach to Advocacy, Mental Health, and Justice (Psychology of Women Book)

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This book proposes a radically new way of helping battered women: instead of requiring battered women to accept solutions that seem "right" to the experts but may not work for the women themselves, the women should be empowered to shape their own solutions. The book challenges advocates, prosecutors, and mental health workers to listen to battered women instead of dictating to them and to craft solutions that reflect the battered women's own needs and priorities.

The authors point out that many current policies meant to protect battered women from their abusers -- such as mandatory arrest, "no drop" prosecution, enforced separation from the batterer, and so on -- may not reflect the woman's own priorities. Of course, all battered women want to end the violence, but they also want to presreve outside sources of income, keep their families together, maintain community ties, and avoid immigration problems, among other things. Many existing policies to help battered women (often designed with white, middle-class women in mind) interfere with these priorities and can actually discourage battered women from seking help. It is time for the "experts" to realize that the woman herself is the best "expert" about her own needs.

The authors begin their book by reviewing how three different groups -- domestic violence advocates, mental health workers, and prosecutors -- have attempted to help battered women over time. They trace how a Feminist approach that emphasized empowering the battered woman gradually evolved into a system in which experts and professionals force rigid solutions onto victims. The experts and professionals mean well, of course, but they are primarily accountable to constiuences other than the women (e.g., government agencies, funding sources, professional societies) and therefore cannot be flexible even when the solutions they are forcing on women are not working for them. The authors' solution: return battered women to the center of the process and let their voices be heard the loudest.

This book represents the next generation of thinking about battered women and is a "must read" for anyone involved in helping domestic violence victims. I highly recommend it!

There are many books out there about intimate partner violence but none are as cutting edge as this one. This book is going to be helpful for all - from those who know little about the problem to those who are on the 'front lines' in the fight against violence against women. Goodman and Epstein are honest about the problems facing mental health providers, advocates, and those in the justice system, and they call for change on behalf of the women who need it the most - victims and survivors. The book provides an overview of the problem of IPV (its present and historical scope and impact), a comprehensive critique of each system's response within its own historical context, and future directions for us all to move in. It is full of important information and new ideas and most importantly, it's very readable. As a former domestic violence advocate, I see this as an important book for all of us in the field.

Any of us who are aware of and/or concerned about domestic violence walks in with a set of perceptions, biases, opinions . . . but very few of us bring a solid foundation in research and analysis of the topic. The authors have done a great job of assembling the key pieces to help us better understand the issue, the reasons that our current best efforts may not be the right ones, and offer alternatives that could have far more impact. I'd say that this is the best book on the topic that I've read.

This book forced me to confront false perceptions I had about who the women being battered are and why they are being battered. These incidents are not occurring equally across all socio-economic groups. They are happening mainly to women of color at the lower end of the socio-econimic scale. While it once made sense to frame this issue as something that happens to all women everywhere, so that the moral and political will could be built to address it, that notion is now clearly hurting the effort to deliver services to those that need them the most.