"Family violence, domestic violence, violence against women…?" | @DrSophieYates discusses the importance of using the right terminology in this space.

Published journal article: https://bit.ly/2XPoT4T 

Summary article on @policyforwomen: https://bit.ly/34mOkgF 

Gendering language can be especially controversial in the context of a new domestic abuse criminal offence like those introduced in England and Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Portugal, Montenegro and Sweden.

On the one hand, the law should be gender-neutral and criminalise coercive control no matter who engages in the conduct (men or women). On the other hand, this linguistic neutrality can give the false perception that the offence will (or should) be operationalised equally.

In order to overcome this in England and Wales, statutory guidance documents emphasise that the coercive control offence is *intended* to be operationalised in the context of an acknowledgement that *most* domestic abuse is gendered & perpetrated by men against women.

Our research has seen that intention come to fruition. Of 107 convicted offenders in our recent study, 106 were men, and had perpetrated the abuse against women.

Indeed, I know of only 5 cases where women have even been charged with the coercive control offence, and these cases further emphasise the gendered nature of the behaviour.

One case involved a women coercively controlling her male partner. Another involved a women coercive controlling her female partner. And three cases (more than half) involved a *male* co-offender (the victims were their dad/husband, ex-partner of the woman, & the man's parents).

All this as a very long-winded way of saying - the law needs to be gender neutral to capture appropriate cases of wrongdoing, but we also need to operationalise the law in what @DrSophieYates so eloquently describes as the 'context of gender inequality'.