The Lifetime Spiral reveals patterns of victimization by enumerating the types of violence, vulnerabilities, and harms women and girls face. It also implicitly shows the presence of different abusers located over the lifecourse. A grandmother may withhold nutritious food for a baby girl, a brother may perpetrate incest, a priest may molest a teen girl, a father may insist on a forced marriage, a college student may date rape a classmate, a co-worker may engage in sexual harassment, a husband may batter during pregnancy, a brother- or sister-in-law may stalk, a family may silence or shame, a community may ostracize homosexuals, an ex-boyfriend may kill.
In addition to physical, sexual, economic and emotional abuses; violence is about living in a climate of fear, shame, coercive control, and devaluation. It is often experienced in the context of additional oppressions based on race, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, type of labor performed, level of education, class position, disability, and immigration or refugee status. Raising awareness about the historical nature of gender violence confronts victim-blaming, informs advocacy, and empowers survivors.
Related Resources
From Gender Violence to Gender Democracy: What Will It Take? 2011
How do we go from cultures of power and control to cultures of equality?
Engendering Change: Transforming Gender Roles in Asian & Pacific Islander Communities, 2007
This report asks and analyzes some critical questions, forcing us to take a hard look at all the factors that have to come together to effect transformation.
Lifecourse Experiences of Intimate Partner Violence and Help-Seeking among Filipina, Indian, and Pakistani Women, 2010
IPV often recurs over the lifecourse and survivors’ decisions to seek help are shaped by their history of positive and negative experiences of help-seeking, and because their preferred and actual sources of help change over time. Using the Life History Calendar to interview 143 Filipina, Indian and Pakistani domestic violence survivors, this research enhances our understanding of help-seeking over the lifecourse and makes recommendations for system responses to domestic violence in Asian communities.
Colonization and Violence against Women, 2002
By Val Kalei Kanuha
This talk explores the connection between colonization and patriarchy, and how this dynamic perpetuates gender violence.