The Violence Against Women's Act (VAWA)

In February 2011, the council of Australian Governments (COAG) introduced the National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children 2010-2022. The policy includes a 12 year national action plan aims to interrelate the significant work conducted by all Australian governments, community groups/organisations and individuals aiming to reduce the level of violence directed towards woman and children.

Women have been active since the beginning of the early 1800’s and struggle until today’s day, to fight for equality. There were two women movement waves. The first wave was focused on the equality of the women by working on voting rights. The second wave from 1963 to 1982 concentrated on social issues. As in “Collective Action for Social Change”, Aaron Schutz and Marie Sandy stated in their book “women were tired of being second class citizens”. The civil rights movement spillover inspired women to create social movements by acting and building organizations focused on the issues that affected the women. The social issues were child care, domestic violence, contraception, and women’s health. One of the major topics that the feminists focused on was domestic violence that still exists in today’s day worldwide.

For centuries domestic violence has been perceived as a private matter private of which the government has not been concerned about nor was it considered the government’s business to intervene on behalf of a battered spouse. The unlawful nature of this failure for state or federal government intervention against this crime contributed to the systematic abuse of women in the family. The traditions, customs, and common law found in both British and American societies continued right up until the last decade of the 20th century and left the battered wives and very frequently, her children, at the mercy of the husband. It wasn’t until the 1990’s when the government began to do something to protect mothers, wives, and lovers from intimate

The report responding to section 40507 of the Violence Against Women Act from the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs, National Institute of Justice, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services- National Institute of Mental Health determined that:

Throughout history, women have continuously found themselves as the subjects of oppression. Although the treatment of women has drastically changed over time, women are still exposed to much of the violence that exists today. Per the National Organization for Women, “young women, low-income women and some minorities are disproportionately victims of domestic violence and rape” (National Organization for Women, 2016). Women-centered violence is highly prevalent and reoccurring all over the world, even in our local communities. Individuals may be hesitant to consider just how much violence against women affects their communities.

Joe Biden and the United States Congress recognized the severity of violence against women and the need for national policy by passing the Violence Against Women Act in 1994. The original Violence Against Women Act, for short VAWA, provided provisions holding offenders accountable for their crimes and ensured programs to provide services for victims of violence (whitehouse.gov, n.d.). VAWA improved the criminal justice response to violence against women with federal funds given to law enforcement officers, prosecutors, judges, etc. every year to ensure adequate training and understanding

Each change that has been made to VAWA over the few decades has made some attempts to fill in the holes left by the previous enactments. However, recent executive orders have arguably begun to strip away what VAWA had built. These recent changes are only making this already vulnerable group of women even more vulnerable.

The mandatory arrest law, falling under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), though originally passed in 1994, has been reauthorized in 2000 and 2005. With the VAWA expiring in 2011, reauthorization of this act, including its

VAWA is a wide-ranging law which, among other things, mandated research into sexual and domestic violence, funded community efforts against sexual and domestic violence through grants, proposed changes in the evaluation and determination of evidence, affirmed victims' rights of

Domestic violence used to be considered a private family matter and was not considered a societal problem until feminists in the 70's started pushing the matter. Beginning in the 1970’s, social policy toward female victims of domestic assaults focused on improving legal response and

The main way the population is trying to assist in stopping these offences is through raising awareness of the issue. In 2013 the International Violence Against Women Act was submitted to the United States Congress. This Bill was made in hopes of making a foreign policy that will help empower women in other countries. In addition to this bill, there are multiple advocacy groups that were formed to help raise awareness within the U.S. border of such crimes, as well as raise funds for groups in other countries. The advocacy groups work in hopes of raising funds for these women to help fight the unfairness that is brought upon them simply due to their

With the Violence Against Women Act, all parts of it mostly cater to those individuals who are already victims of violence. There is not much prevention criteria in this act and it would enhance its efficiency if an assembly/program were added into it. Evidence has shown that the VAWA has enhanced lives of many, but making students more aware of this issue, will enhance lives and prevent more violence against women.

As far as the legal position is concerned, our Parliament has passed an Act called ‘The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005’ with the aim to provide more effective protection of the rights of women, who are victims of violence of any kind, occurring within the family, within the domestic spheres.

When the sex of a girl or a woman drives the infliction of violence towards them, it is regarded as a form of gender based violence (Heise et al., 2002). Violence against women, regardless of the form, can occur in various stages of the woman’s life (Murthy and Smith, 2010), and refers not only to physical and sexual acts of violence, but also encompasses verbal abuse, emotional torture, economic deprivation, and social disregard (Kapoor and Dhingra, 2013).

This research paper will try to highlight the loopholes in the legislative provisions for women in the Indian constitution. Legislations for women have been there since the British rule. Independent India is not an exception. But some Indian customs and traditions set restrictions towards women ignoring them to be an individual. Social construct is such that women do not come out to speak about their plight in the public. Since independence, Indian women has got the right to vote and many rights enshrined in the constitution, but the violence against women in the private domain remained unseen in the legal provisions of the country. Many movements took place to make the violence against women in the private domain to get legal sanction. Anyways, women get much legislation under the Indian constitution for their protection yet none of these legislations have clearly considered domestic violence as a crime till 2005. The failure of the existing provisions to address the domestic violence as a crime has led to the implementation of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act in 2005. This study is an attempt to analyse the awareness level about the act. This study will deal extensively with the legal