Conceptualising domestic violence against women: Between gender-based universal human rights duty and gender-blind national responses

Abstract

Despite widespread international acknowledgement of domestic violence against women and a plethora of governmental commitments to eliminate it, the issue remains as prevalent today as it was at the beginning of the domestic violence revolution in the 1970s. This thesis examines one set of reasons for the ineffectiveness of existing human rights instruments in combating men’s domestic violence against women on the ground. It analyses whether the understanding of domestic violence within the human rights framework assists national legal responses in regulating to prevent domestic violence and protect victims. Feminist legal theory is employed to evaluate existing legal systems and to identify the most efficient empirically grounded and theoretically informed legal conceptualisation of domestic violence. This thesis reveals significant conceptual gaps in the legal conceptualisation of domestic violence between human rights standards on the one hand and the national legal systems examined – those of Ireland and Lithuania – on the other. Critical analysis reveals that, contrary to gender-based universal human rights approaches and despite recent legislative reforms, the legal concept of domestic violence is gender-blind. It fails to capture gender-based empirical realities on the ground, rendering national legal systems devoid of an empirically informed theoretical basis for addressing the problem. Despite the differences in the contextual backgrounds of the two case study countries, the legislation on domestic violence is underpinned by patriarchal beliefs in both. Bringing together these case studies sheds new light on the issue and on possible avenues to overcome gender blindness vis-à-vis domestic violence, a trend that is on the rise throughout Europe. Only through gender-based understanding of domestic violence against women can countries comply with existing international obligations, build bridges between law and empirical realities and ensure a comprehensive understanding and the effective elimination of gender-based domestic violence against women.