Shelters for battered women: Social policy response to interpersonal violence

Shelters for Battered Women: Social Policy Response to Interpersonal Violence

NANETTE J. DAVIS Portland State University

Shelters for battered women can be divided into four categories: feminist, social service, custodial, and family welfare. Each has a distinctive ideology, social organization, rationale, and procedures. This organizational study involved interviews and participant observation of eleven shelters in two cities.

Shelters for battered women occupy an uneasy niche in social intervention programs. Shelters-also known as refuges, safe houses, transition houses, Frauenhauser, or crisis centers-are the first specific community institution for the treatment of women who have been battered.’ The need for such community-based structures is profound. The Attorney General’s Task Force emphasized that “Battering is a major source of injury to women in America.“* The National Crime Survey found an estimated 2.1 million were battered in a twelve-month period. During the average six-month time period following their initial victimization, an estimated 32% were victimized again. For the years 1978 through 1982, the Crime Survey also shows that a third of the incidents of domestic violence against women would be classified by police as rape, robbery, or aggravated assault. Nationally, seven out of every ten incidents of domestic violence were committed by the woman’s husband, ex-husband, boyfriend, or ex-boyfriend. At the same time, the survey reported that an estimated 52% of all incidents of domestic violence were brought to police attention. The other 48% were not reported to police.3 Other estimates of the “dark figure” of domestic violence are even higher. For example, some studies *Direct all correspondence to: Professor Nanette J. Davis, Department sity, Portland, Oregon, 97207. Telephone 503-464-3926.

The Social Science Journal, Volume 25, Number 4, pages 401-419. Copyright @ 1988 by JAI Press, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISSN: 00357634.

of Sociology,

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show that there are an estimated ten unreported cases for every call made by a battered woman to the police.4

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE The overwhelming bulk of battered women’s studies have focused on victims. Ferraro’s work on the process of victimization, Pagelow’s studies of victims’ experiences, and the Dobash and Dobash theses of wives as the “appropriate victims” of violence, among other leading works, contribute to understanding the normality of woman battering, and the sources of violence as located in patriarchal family arrangements and economic institutions.5 Straus and Gelles continue to document the existence of sustained violence against women in a large proportion of American households.6 Unfortunately, these studies fail to address shelter programs. Despite the paucity of scholarly studies, many observers claim that shelters are the most important resource for women caught up in a violent relationship.7 The principal of protection guided the initial move to establish shelters, although the first ones in England were little more than women’s aid societies.8 The movement to aid battered women has since proliferated. It now provides housing for many thousands of victims of domestic violence each year. Today there are over 900 women’s shelters in the United States.9 The growth of the shelter movement has not been matched by systematic studies of this intervention mode.10 In part, this paucity of literature relates to the assumption that “it goes without saying” that shelters are necessarily “good” and should be supported. During the formative years of the 1970s the social mandate for supporting shelters had been tenuous at best. Feminist scholars aimed primarily to uncover the victims’ problems, rather than to jeopardize the uncertain institutional status of these organizations by exposing any possible limitations or deficits.’ I More recently, research has moved beyond the victim-centered approach to inquire about the impact of shelters on women’s experience. Three themes are: the shelter as a short-term refuge, the woman’s decision-making process, and the impact of the shelter experience in stopping the violence. First, shelters offer a short-term refuge from violent relationships by providing alternative housing for women and their children at low or no cost. The emphasis has been on temporarily separating the violent couple, and assisting the woman in locating social services, permanent housing, and legal aid in the event she chooses to divorce or to move into independent housing. A second theme in the literature assesses the decision-making process that leads women to leave or stay with violent partners. Much of this research focuses on factors involved in women’s return to the violent home (e.g., fear, traumatic bonding, perceived lack of options, no resources>.‘2 Leaving a violent relationship appears to be the best way to avoid further violence. According to Snyder and Sheer, only 12% of victims who established new living arrangements are subjected to new violence.‘3 But how many women actually leave their assailant is a moot point. Pagelow and Walker optimistically predict that following a shelter experience, as many as 50% to 60% of victims move into independent housing. I4 This figure appears too high.15 In view of the nonrepresentative sampling and lack of control groups, it is impossible to know if the alleged beneficial changes can be attributed to the shelter or to other factors (e.g., women’s age, repeated shelter experiences, and so forth). For example, clients who have not made a serious

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commitment to seize on opportunities outside the home may benefit little from a shelter stay. Instead, the flight to a shelter may be perceived by the assailant as flagrant “disobedience,” accelerating the violent episodes. Berk and co-authors conclude that a shelter stay depends primarily on the woman’s capacity to change and to communicate this decision to her violent partner. Once the assailant is convinced that a shelter stay implies that the woman is serious about changing (and thus represents a “credible threat to sever the relationship) less violence should follow.“‘6 Whether the research supports or disconfirms this sociopsychological effect remains largely conjecture. A third theme is the impact of the shelter on stopping the violence. Using a variety of recruitment techniques in Milwaukee, Bowker collected information on 150 former victims of woman-battering who had not been abused for at least a year. Victims were asked about strategies they used to end the violence, and for assessment of these strategies. On the basis of victim evaluations, Bowker concludes that although shelters are valuable, they did not rate as high as other intervention modes (e.g., a restraining order). Moreover, shelter residents were somewhat more likely to experience new violence.17 Sherman and Berk discuss the deterrent effects of arrest.18 But because 84% of respondents had experienced a shelter stay, it is difficult to separate the specific strategy clients used from the attributes of the victim, the assailant, and the battering relationship. Berk et al. surmise that women who use shelters may be involved in far more violent relationships than women who seek help from friends or clergy.19 In summary, the literature on battered women in general and shelters in particular offers little information on the problems of shelters. Because analysts presume shelters to be homogenous social entities, they have failed to explore them as changing social phenomena, having contradictory agendas and goals, depending on political economic constraints and group ideology. Women’s shelters have a distinctive history. Moreover, they reflect contemporary tensions both within society and the feminist movement.

STUDY RESEARCH The study research on women’s shelters offers an ambiguous project for feminist scholars. On the one hand, there is an ideological directive to “leave well enough alone,” and avoid criticism of vulnerable and essential institutions, especially during periods of shifting political currents. 20On the other hand, shelters offer a fascinating, if often bleak, glimpse of a newly formed “total institution.“*’ While ostensibly a voluntary and alternative resource for women, shelters embody many features of custodial systems (e.g., rule-ordained, ovecrowded, limited resources, exclusionary, and we-them authority structures). How, then, can a basically authoritarian model of service delivery yield democratic results, including the empowerment of victims, which enables them to assume control over their own lives? Government attempts to “privatize” shelters prompted the initial interviews of shelter staff in British Columbia in 1985. “Privatism” was the drastic cutback in state services and subsequent shift to the private sector to meet welfare needs.22 The four shelters observed in the study did not respond uniformly or passively to this external threat. The issue was not simply the government’s role in shaping the shelters’ structure and ideology, although this was an important ingredient in their subsequent change. A more complex array of internal and external factors appeared to be redefining the nature

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and direction of the shelters. Studying seven additional shelters in a West Coast American city that has long had a solid repuration for public funding of social services (1986-1987) generated renewed interest in seeking information on how shelters were meeting new challenges as a result of an expanded agenda (e.g., more of everything: clients, programs, networking, competition), declining public resources and support, and the partial or whole eclipse of the feminist model in many shelter settings. The research consisted of protracted observation and interviews with staff, clients, program leaders, and politicians. *3The eleven shelters studied in the West Coast cities (Canada and the United States) were primarily located in large, older homes, and held between ten and fifteen beds. Bedrooms typically accommodated two family units (two women and their children), although single women might be placed in dormitory-style rooms. Staffing varied widely, depending on the organization, style, and ideology of the shelter. In welfare hotels, eight-hour shifts were typical, whereas in a shelter run by a religious order, round-the-clock staffing was an essential aspect of the program. In this shelter, volunteers kept the crisis telephone lines open, and four women staff members regularly resided on the top floor of a four-story house that held up to eighteen women and children. Most shelters were staffed twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, but there were exceptions. For instance, one inner-city shelter that houses up to thirty-five women and children locked its doors on weekends (Friday evening until Monday moming), taking in no new residents over this period. Shelters were typically overcrowded and understaffed, and depended heavily on volunteers, who played an important role in house maintenance and child care. Most shelter residents included in the study were young (age 19 to 35), had one to three children, had been seriously physically and emotionally abused, and were without resources at the time they entered the shelter. Despite some shelters’ rules specifying that shelter stays are limited to those women determined to leave violent relationships, many victims are unable to meet the criteria. After a short stay, if alternative housing is not available, an estimated 20 to 50% return to their assailant (no systematic count was provided, except in one instance). Still, other shelters make no demands on the woman’s post-shelter plans, and are primarily concerned with the appropriate behavior of residents during their immediate stay.

CHANGING POLICY STRATEGIES AND THE SHELTER MOVEMENT Institutional responses to family problems can be traced to the workhouses of seventeenth-century England, which accommodated the surplus populations generated by the newly industrializing society. 24For the first time, mechanisms to control and discipline dysfunctional families had the legitimation of the state. In North America, reformers of the nineteenth century, concerned over the threat posed by immigration, urban poverty, and crime, were instrumental in the creation of “houses of refuge.“*5 Designed to house both delinquent, dependent and/or neglected children, the working class perceived these shelters as coercive attempts to impose middle-class conceptions of the family on them.26 At the same time, the family was defined as the chief agency for the socialization of children. But many parents seemed incapable of carrying out their parental function, in terms of the newly emergent demands of industrialization. The child-welfare system, therefore, expanded at a phenomenal rate with child savers

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engaging in heroic efforts to intervene in family situations. Even constitutional challenges to the pm-em putriue doctrine were unsuccessful at restraining the state’s interests.*’ Reformers defined poor parenting as the inevitable precursor to a life of crime. This justified the government measures. Institutions were perceived as mechanisms for mitigating the influence of dysfunctional families by intervening before permanent harm was done.28 By the nineteenth century, women who failed to conform to the role defined for them in the industrial state were punished, both as a deterrent to others and as a means of preventing the passage of their bad example on to the succeeding generations of children in their care. During this period, women were most commonly imprisoned for gender role violations, such as prostitution, infanticide, husband-killing, and other offenses that appeared to be inconsistent with their family roles.29 The use of the penal code and imprisonment increased as criminalization became one means of repressing socially marginal behavior30 Institutionalized responses to family problems, be it through the child-welfare, mental-health, or juvenile-crime justice systems, continued to predominate during the first half of the twentieth century. The juvenile courts existed to identify and intervene in cases where children failed to conform .31 This was especially true for girls, who in training schools were educated in hygiene and child care, the explicit purpose being to prepare them for motherhood, skills their mothers presumably had been unable to pass on.32 Women who did not easily accept their role within the family were increasingly likely to be labeled mentally ill, and placed in long-term institutions, or to drift in and out of refuges run by Salvation Army volunteers and other religious groups.33 From the 1930s through the 1950s institutionalization was the dominant mode of social control for surplus populations of women and children.34 In the frenzy of deinstitutionalization inmates from prisons and mental hospitals in the 196Os, much was forgotten about why institutions existed in the first place. Because industrialization effectively stripped family and community resources by turning over social control to state auspices, institutions had become the resting places for defamilized persons: unemployed men, battered women, neglected and abused children, the mentally ill, the retarded, and those who were elderly, poor, or general misfits.35Forcibly ejected from institutions, these populations turned to overburdened community and welfare agencies. 3’ During this same period, social and economic turmoil resulted in a break with traditional values and the emergence of social protest movements. Reforms in state structures, along with rising divorce rates, led to a variety of community enrichment programs to attempt to quell the social unrest. In this era of expanding community ideology, the public paid little attention to women victimized by domestic violence.36 Their story remained largely untold until radical feminists began emphasizing the relationship between class struggle and women’s oppression. Among radical feminists, “the priority is the struggle against patriarchy.“37 And the home was identitied as the battlefield. The movement to aid battered women had two foci. First, the family was reconceptualized from a place of absolute stability and security (the home as “haven”) to one of relative danger and potential violence. 3s Physical abuse of women and children was identified by reformers and taken up as a social problem with grass roots activists mobilizing resources to create an alternative to violence. The second emphasis was the creation of shelters as transitional institutions: the “bridge between home and the

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larger society.” At the same time, shelters were perceived as political bases for grass roots actions against gender stratification with its entrenched political, economic and legal barriers against equality.39 Even prior to the movement to aid battered women, a few isolated shelters were formed to house victims of alcohol-related violence. For example, in Pasadena, California, women from Al-Anon opened the first shelter, Haven House, for women battered by alcoholic husbands. Between 1964 and 1972, using peer support and self-help, Haven House sheltered over 1,000 women and children. The feminist shelter, then, was not the first nor the original model. Rather, feminist shelters offered an ideological perspective that treated the family itself as problem-causing, and erected an alternative mythology about sisterhood that opposed the dominant myth of the nuclear family. 4o Over the 16-year period from 197 1 to 1987, feminist-designed shelters, once the leading shelter type, came to confront a drastically different environment than that which originally supported these social movement organizations. Today, feminist shelters compete not only with other intervention modes (e.g., restraining order, prosecution, community support groups, and specialized counseling services), but also with other shelter models.

FOUR CONTEMPORARY MODELS OF WOMEN’S SHELTERS The research identified four distinct models of women’s shelter care among the eleven observed shelters (the study included no observation of shelters for homeless families with men). The four models are: feminist, social service, family welfare, and custodial. Each model offers a distinctive ideology, social organization, rationale, and set of procedures (see Table 1). Not every observed shelter fits neatly into one type, however. Many shelters offering services to women in transition are themselves in transition, and seek an identifying framework. A few shelters embody mixed principles, offering contradictory intervention ideologies.

Table I.

Opposing

Ideologies

in

Feminist, Social Service, Custodial,

Women’s Shelters: and Family Welfare

Social Feminist Cause of problem

Perception women

of battered

Service

Male oppression; institutionalized sexism: gender and power imbalances

Learned helplessness; internalization victim role

Self-determining person; sister; survivor

Crisis client; victim-blaming mode

Custodial

of

Family Welfare

Individual pathology; mental illness, abuse, alcoholism, family disorganization

Individual pathology; breakdown of family relations

Helpless, hopeless, & homeless

Member of family unit; crisis client; dependent person (continued)

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Table 1 (continued) Feminist

Social Service

Custodial

family Welfare

Purpose of shelter

Protection; client transition to autonomy; safe house in context of women’s advocacy

Short-term intervention; shelter as safety net

Serve the homeless

Sanctuary; return to family; safe house in context of community reform

Dominant principle of intervention

Social movement ideology; selfhelp; identification with women

Social casework; bureaucratic mode

Serve inner-city, revolving-door clientele; esp. homeless women and children

Social casework; moral renewal of family; moral distinctions between staff & clients

Shelter organization

Grass-roots, informal, nonhierarchical; participatory democracy

Hierarchical; topdown communication; rule centered

Informal; few or no

Hierarchical; rule of moral superiors; highly structured

Mode of financing

Unaffiliated; women’s contributions

Affiliated; federal, state, & local govt. support

Precarious; in transition; local sources

Affiliated; government & private monies

Role of men

Excluded, total separation; negative evaluation of clients’ abusive partners

Excluded; but not closed system

Indifferent; no ideological position

Included; couple, male counseling; overall positive; belief that some men willing to change

Politics

Women’s advocacy; radical change in political & economic structure

Normalization; agency-centered goals

Advocacy for the homeless; battered women lack distinct political identity

Family advocacy, unity & renewal of family unit

Major limitations

Client resistance to autonomy goals; multiple restrictions to self-help & radical change

Shelter recognized as band-aid remedy; inadequate resources to alter conditions that produce victims

Failure to address issues of violence; pervasive sense of defeatism; lack of success myths

Failure system; cycles of violence and dependency; complacency attitudes of society

Long-term goals

Social policy solutions to women’s political & economic dependence; end violence against women

Fully assimilated programs into community agency agendas; professionalization of services

Secure federal funds for family shelters; expand service network to meet survival needs of all homeless persons

Revival of traditional values; increase state’s ability to dictate family

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Feminist Model Shaped by the women’s movement, the feminist model focuses on institutionalized sexism as the primary cause of domestic violence. As expressed by a feminist staff person, domestic violence is not the individual woman’s problem; rather, “it is a problem in society because men have control over women’s lives.” Power imbalances between men and women account for women’s “learned helplessness,” including the passivity and apathy that is said to characterize abused women. Feminist shelters promote a perception of the domestic violence victim as an equal (“it could happen to anyone” or “it happened to me”); a woman, having the capability of free choice; a sister, with whom one shares a life destiny; or a survivor-sentiments that bond staff into a strong womancentered ideology. A few staff members also believe that many battered women have internalized the victim role. In this sense, they are crisis “clients,” and thus may be unwilling and unable to make independent choices or take responsibility for themselves. The dominant principle of intervention in feminist shelters is to provide a “safe environment,” a place removed from the abuser that is free of violence or the threat of verbal or physical attack. Written guidelines and informal socialization explicitly indicate that women may not overtly express anger or otherwise strike out against staff members, clients, or their own children. The “safe house” concept links the feminist ideology of protection to the issues of individual rights and social control. One feminist shelter’s handout to clients specified it this way: “. . women and children have the right to be safe from the danger of domestic violence. We are opposed to all forms of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse or the threat of violence as a means of control over others.. . We support the right of individuals to informed choices regarding the direction of their lives. Our goal is to provide advocacy and service within an nonjudgmental supportive atmosphere.” This statement directs efforts toward a woman-centered experience, a self-help approach that involves identification with other women, and grass roots sisterhood. Participatory democracy is the organizational value, said to be necessary to promote residents’ “empowerment,” a concept that refers to the capacity for self-care and taking charge of one’s own destiny. First, a democratic collective structure focuses on equal participation by staff and clients. Second, nonhierarchical decision making requires equal sharing of information on domestic violence and mutual openness between staff members and clients regarding self-disclosure of personal experience. This feature accounts for feminist shelters’ preference for utilizing formerly battered women as staff members and volunteers. Third, women in crisis remain the shelter’s first priority. Hence, all organizational goals and activities tend to remain subordinate to the direct service commitment. Fourth, ongoing organizational participation by clients theoretically builds up reserves of community good will and the return of clients as volunteers, financial contributors, and staff members. Organizational reality may tell a different story. Equal participation is negated by women’s relatively short stays, averaging a few hours to a few weeks. The emotional state of the women (described by one staff person as “highly disorganized” or “in turmoil”) also makes equal participation or sharing difficult. A glimpse at shelter “guidelines” obviates any illusion that participatory rule-making exists. Such rules clearly specify the fairly stringent limits of client freedom (e.g., curfew hours, daily schedule norms, children’s hours, use of space, television viewing times, and so forth). Mutual

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self-disclosure may undermine staff authority; and client needs in a greatly understaffed, underfinanced setting may be ignored or shortchanged. The reserves of community and client goodwill that should logically follow the intensive commitment by shelter staff are frequently missing. Instead, potential and former clients my be prone to denigrate the shelter (e.g., noisy, overcrowded conditions, shabby furnishings, too many children, too many rules, lack of privacy), which is usually located in a working-class or transitional neighborhood. In effect, movement norms conflict with institutional needs for order in a crisis-oriented milieu. Feminist shelters are financially vulnerable. Ideally, they are unaffiliated with the state or local political circumstances. Client and patron contributions supposedly support the work. Yet most clients (estimated by one staff person at 95%) contribute only a miniscule amount of the total costs of their upkeep (approximately $18-$25 per day per person). Food stamps and small monetary payments from the residents help support a woman and her children; they do not contribute to the larger costs of house maintenance and staff salary. Because social provision, as such, is primarily viewed by activists within the larger context of political action (while almost all the activity centers around direct services), financial strain, in addition to the gap between movement rhetoric and organizational practice, can be particularly demoralizing. When “privatization” (the shift from government support to private resources) struck a group of feminist shelters in the Canadian city studied, the response was contision, outrage, fairly inept political barnstorming, and partial closure of the shelter (perhaps in retaliation for funding cutbacks). Where do men fit into the feminist model of shelters? This can be answered simply: At this stage, they do not. Rules may be as specific as those of one shelter that stated that all residents’ visits with abusive partners be outside a ten-block boundary. At the same time, the women’s partners are categorically forbidden to be on the premises, or even to have the shelter’s address and phone number. While this may appear excessive to some clients and funding groups, many staff members report that an abusive man often seeks out his deserting partner to punish her further. In the process, he may jeopardize both the residents and the property. According to staff members, feminist shelters have a dual mission: serving as women’s advocates in providing social support and services, and as a social change agent in the world of law and bureaucracy. At issue is the need for the radical transformation of economic and political structures. Both as individuals and as members of organizations, feminists have pushed hard for pro-women’s legislation, opening up resources to battered women and their children for housing, social services, and job training. As organizers recognize though, the day-to-day pressures of providing even minimal services may obviate the larger political task. Instead of focusing on long-term goals, such as legal or political changes, feminist shelters must cope with surviving as an organization. Funding, referral networks, overcrowding, conflicts among clients, staff shortages, inadequate community services, reprisals from partners, and hostile neighbors are constant problems. Social Service Model Today, many shelters for battered women justify their existence as resource centers: places for distributing goods and services to women and children in crisis. Such shel-

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ters may be referred to as family shelters; that is, temporary housing for the entire family, including men, while primarily serving homeless and battered women. The social casework ideology, offering both a medical model and a victim-centered approach, prevails and shapes beliefs about causes of the problem. Whereas social and economic conditions are perceived as background factors that contribute to women’s victimization, the discourse tends to concentrate on the individual woman, and her deficiencies and needs. Victim blaming is explicit in this crisis-client model, which typically defines clients as out of control. This perception reinforces a rule-ordained setting. As one nonfeminist staff member, whose shelter work has been focused exclusively on social service, pointed out in an interview with respect to those in shelters: “A lot of women [who come to shelters] live on crisis energy, and they want to recreate that in the shelter. They try to manipulate staff and others to keep things stirred up.” Empowerment issues are often muted (despite the staffs ostensible allegiance to them). Because the program is geared to “individual and personal emotions.” This involves “trying to get women to get back to themselves.” Creating change in women’s and children’s lives is believed to be the necessary first priority. This means focusing on protection, networking, counseling, support, and advocacy in the court or welfare agency. There is little time, money, or staff to go beyond this service role. The diversity of women’s needs and the safety-net doctrine popularized by the Reagan administration implies that services are primarily focused on survival needs (food, housing, clothing, infant supplies, medical care) rather than relating to the individual woman. Even where staff goals include intensive individual work, the participants may be unable to comply. At one house, for example, the interviewer observed the difficulty staff members had with breaking into the “quagmire of multiple life problems,” which included poverty, lack of income and education, and self-expressed alienation (“no one cares”). An interviewer described the typical demeanor of this largely welfare population as: “listlessness, exhaustion, lack of proper nutrition, and resignation to their lifestyles.” Staff members concurred with this assessment, often expressing discouragement about the difficulty of realizing long-term goals of integrating these women into the economic and social mainstream. Most regular staff members have college degrees, but the pay is rarely commensurate with the duties and position. Although funded by state and local governments, support for women’s shelters has always been scanty, according to the staff. In one instance, a shelter hired a male director (presumably) to put a “professional face” on the program as a bid for expanded public support. Critics like Ferraro and Johnson say that because the social service model has co-opted feminist practice and adapted it to fit bureaucratic needs, it is useful to compare the feminist model with the social service model.41 The early feminist shelters were oriented toward ideology, not service, and concentrated on raising the consciousness of the battered women. Many founders were former victims. In fact, one shelter pioneer was killed by her violent husband. Symbols and imagery focused on such heroic women, whose suffering and death reallied the movement. Staff and board members stood together in common opposition to male oppression. They were a sisterhood of survivors, many of whom had themselves been battered, sexually abused or raped. In feminist shelters today, advocacy continues to be a dominant theme. Self-help is another theme: women helping women to alter existing oppressive relationships. Shelters organization is informal: an absence of hierarchy, maximum participation of residents, and a distancing

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of the organization from mainstream institutions. Long-term goals are to work toward ending the political and economic dependence of women. As such, counseling couples or violent men is discounted. The social service model is a direct response to a supply-demand situation. The success of the women’s shelters led to the co-optation of the practice by social agencies. These agencies were concerned about creating centers for homeless women and children. In turn, this signaled the decline of the woman-sponsored shelter, especially in their role as political change agents. As feminists, many social service workers held strong sentiments regarding women’s autonomy, prefening to preserve much of the feminist ideology. These shelters took on the trappings of a woman-centered residence, but funding directly attached it to the welfare and correctional bureaucracies. Rules have multiplied, even as the political discourse has been neutralized. Participatory democracy in social service shelters appears unrealistic, in view of the relatively short stay for most women, and the problems of the revolving-door clientele. Order is a major problem in these settings, and overt conflict between staff members and clients and among clients tends to be a commonplace feature. Issues such as child management, breaking curfew, bringing in visitors, and other acts of “disobedience” absorb staff attention. The social service model is highly adaptable. Bureacratic services are rendered on the traditional bases of location, residents’ social class and expectations, and the networking capabilities of the staff and board. Thus, publicly supported inner-city settings may be very short-funded, have few programs, depend heavily on volunteers, and have welfare clients; whereas suburban areas and privately sponsored shelters are more likely to have a variety of programs, professional staff, and more resourceful clients. The original feminist concept of ending violence against women carries little weight in a house organized around time schedules, rapid turnover, conformity to funding requirements, and board expectations that often run counter to staff preferences. For example, the board and staff members may disagree about rules, the degree of autonomy allowed for clients, program goals, and resource allocation. For feminists locked into the social service delivery mode, shelter work often becomes a duty, an ideological obligation rather than an act of sisterhood. Burnout is a common experience. Movement from a volunteer or low-paid staff position to professional status reduces the job drudgery, but apparently fails to rejuvenate the lagging feminist ideology. The social service model remains primarily a political career commitment, in which services are geared for a largely revolving-door welfare population.

Family Welfare Model The feminist and social service shelters now co-exist with a type of facility that has emerged in response to religionists’ perception that secular society encourages and contributes to the breakdown of the family. This spiritual movement, observed in both Canada and the United States, rejects the feminist and bureaucratic approach in favor of a religious perception of social justice and community. From the liberal perspective within this submovement, shelters are “healing centers” that aim to transform single persons, as well as family and community life by “the recovery of alternate social, economic and political relationships which promote partnership, cooperation and mutual commitment, rather than dominance, violence, and submission.“4* A conser-

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vative version of this submovement also exists, which parallels the increasing popularity of organizations seeking to advance the traditional role of women within the home. Such groups typically oppose liberal divorce laws, public-supported day care and abortion.43 In the United States, pro-familism is not only represented by various religious groups, but is part of the political agenda of the “New Right.” Marchak notes that part of this agenda may involve the encouragement of “a more puritanical sexual code, women playing traditional motherly and wifely roles, and men being unchallenged heads of families.“44 This can lead to the passage of family laws that legislatively encourage the reconstitution of dysfunctional families. The situation is worsened when financial support for resources is reduced. According to proponents of this view, every effort should be made to reunite the family. The apparent increase in family violence is seen to be, in part, the result of an undue emphasis on the individual situation of women at the expense of the integrity of the family. Yet, focus is placed on the woman, and consistent with traditional social casework, the ultimate goal may be adjustment and acceptance, rather than actual modification of a destructive life situation. The shelter, therefore, provides sanctuary and support until a woman can cope. This family-centered approach was the philosophy espoused in one shelter that was observed. As one staff member said, the shelter “gives the woman and family an opportunity to interact and formulate relationships and support that they might not otherwise have.” In this shelter, the extreme nature and extent of the violence experienced by many residents is especially troublesome to the staff because it violates their perception of the world: the loving family as the basis of the social order. In some, cases the dangers involved in reconciling partners cannot be denied. When confronted with this situation, abused women are supported in their decision to seek independence by applying for social welfare benefits. The process is family-centered, but when necessary, the definition of family must be revised to exclude the man. Focus then shifts to the mother-child family unit. The organizational structure of this type of shelter is hierarchical. The residents play no role in making decisions and are given responsibility only for their children and assigned housework, duties that are consistent with the traditional role of women in the home. The daily routine is structured around a timetable, and residents adhere to a curfew. Controlled access to the house prevails. Residents’ sign-out and reentry is permitted by staff only; visitors must be cleared in advance. A woman’s agreement to abide by house rules is a major criterion for admission. Noncompliance is grounds for eviction. Examination of the rules afftrrns the authoritarian mode: Wake up is at 7 a.m. By 8:20 a.m. each resident is expected to be dressed for the day, have her bed(s) made and sleeping area clean, her bathroom routine completed, and her children fed. Housekeeping is to be finished by 9 a.m. Curfew is 10 p.m. unless otherwise arranged. Lights out is 11 p.m. Allowance is made for women who work an evening shift. Bedtime for children is 8 p.m., therefore women with children need to be in the house by 7:30.. . No radio playing in the bedrooms after 8 p.m.

Women signing a contract agree to these rules and many others (household chores, child care, phone use, and so forth), including the requirement that they attend daily in-

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“community meetings” as well as any classes and group sessions that are made available (e.g., mothers’ group, women’s support groups). Nor is there talk of options, choices, or alternatives for women in the sense promoted by both the feminist and social service resource models. Appropriate dress, relationships with others, and above all, responsibility for children dominate the discourse. For instance, this shelter has an entire set of rules to be followed by mothers with children, including mode of supervision, type of discipline, bedtime routines, specified play areas, and insistence that children are the individual mother’s responsibility. Flexibility in jobs, out-of-shelter relationships, and child care arrangements, while theoretically possible, may be negated by strict rules, such as the following: If you have left your child-children in the care of another person [at the shelter], and have not called or returned within three hours from the time you are expected back, we will assume you have abandoned your child. We will call Children’s Protective Services to alert them.

The Bible provides the shelter’s guidelines, not feminist or social service intervention principles. Hence the “sacredness of the home and family,” as one staff person pointed out, is paramount. Here the work is a form of ministry and of healing, a place to protect and help women and children. In this sense, the sanctuary approach treats the shelter as a form of mediation between the woman and society, replacing the absent partnerfather, rather than providing the tools for the woman’s emancipation from former dependencies and life-threatening routines. Rules and constraints confirm the substance of the woman’s life as one in which her destiny is determined by others. Custodial Model A fourth type of shelter for battered women has recently emerged. It lumps homeless, alcoholic, and battered women into one category: hopeless. In this custodial mode, there is no pretense at offering services or establishing the woman’s independent identity. The traffic of women and children draws from the lowest socioeconomic groups; the most destitute, forlorn, and rejected, who may “float” from shelter to shelter without receiving either internally structured programs or connections to the larger community. Individual pathology is featured here. The woman is defined as hopeless, but still human and thus deserving of a bed and protection from street criminals and from sexual assault (a major problem among street women). Women and children become defined as transients, periodic visitors from despicable backgrounds, who have a history of drug and alcohol abuse or have lived with violent men who have such histories. The dominant principle of intervention, serving the revolving-door clientele, is more closely related to homelessness than battering. Thus, the distinctive ideology promoted by women-centered shelters is lost under pressure to serve the urban street-people and alcoholics, regardless of gender. Essentially, the custodial approach rejects the concept of division of care, arguing instead for a universal institution. This would incorporate the homeless, battered women and children, neglected children, alcoholics, and the chronically mentally ill. In many respects, the custodial approach is a throwback to the initial institutionalization of surplus populations in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that ignored distinctive needs among diverse populations.

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Largely staffed by volunteers or low-paid staff, the entire enterprise lacks a clearly defined structure or philosophy. A former assistant director of one operation referred to the facility before her tenure as “chaotic in the extreme,” and a dead end for women seeking alternatives. She said that “the revolving door was pervasive; we were serving the same population over and over.” Ironically, perhaps, funding of inner-city women’s shelters may be somewhat easier to procure than for less visible refugees. The public seems to respond with generosity to abandoned women and children. While the shelter’s organizers realize that its location in a high-crime area endangers the residents, they apparently accept the consequences. Because the politics are oriented around homelessness, advocacy remains unfocused-all street people and needy persons are included. At the same time, there appears to be little attention directed at any fundamental change of economic and social structures. The typical goals are to open up more shelters, to get families off the streets, and to try to feed as many as possible from available soup kitchens, food banks, and other sources. In one instance, when advocates for women and children urged the necessity of jobs, child care, and in-house programs for needy women, the community-sponsored umbrella organization rejected the idea completely. Battered women in this context have highly circumscribed choices: return to the abusive partner or live on the streets.

LIMITATIONS

OF SHELTERS

There are a number of ironies built into the shelter as a helping system. One is that special emergency services are available only after everything else has failed. With the exception of support groups open to the public, preventive community services to battered women are generally unavailable, unknown, or nonexistent. Another irony is that battered women tend to share, even if temporarily, rooms and lives with other battered women, forming a sisterhood of victims. Perhaps these alliances strengthen the woman’s resolve to break the cloak of isolation. Alternatively, the “inmate culture” may support the victim role and contribute to secondary adjustments. The fact that most battered women do not sever their relationship with abusive partners until after multiple attempts at legal intervention, exploring many other avenues of assistance, and even previously leaving abusive partners on numerous occasions, suggests that the shelter is the battered woman’s last resort. A final irony is that despite rhetoric to the contrary (e.g., sisterhood, place of last resort, compassion, networking, and so forth), most shelters exclude a fairly substantial number of women: those with drug or alcohol problems; those needing a place to “crash” for a night or two (passing through); those going from one shelter to another; those with deep emotional problems requiring professional help; those needing a place for more than a month (unless, as in a few houses, the woman is pregnant); those not yet ready to explore and take a “next step;” those needing a great deal of independence; those not able, interested, or willing to relate to others, help out with house chores, or share meals; those needing a place to just “be” all day. Women can be asked to leave, then, for violating house rules, not fitting the criteria, not “keeping up” with expectations, failing to cooperate, being too needy, or being too independent.

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What, then, are realistic house priorities? These vary by shelter type. For instance, among the feminist and social-service resources shelter studies, staff members were most insistent on the woman being willing or able to “work on herself,” including seeking a job or training, and reaching out to the local community resources. Custodial settings are most concerned about meeting emergency housing needs at the lowest possible cost, whereas family welfare settings focus on the woman’s family roles, especially mothering. Among feminist and social-service shelters, the ideal resident is one who is coming out of the battering crisis (or indicates a willingness to move out), and who needs space, time, and resources to determine her next step. The feminist shelter would be more likely to support women who can live in an independent single-parent household, be self-supporting (job or welfare), emotionally independent, and confident, and who strenuously rejects violent associates and friends. But as Ferraro observes, women who reject staff demands are labelled failures and held responsible for the problems they experienced as battered women.45 The family welfare model may be particularly weak in this regard. But all shelters represent, at some level, an updated version of a total institution. Thus unless shelters pay special attention to fostering clients’ independence and recognizing the slow process of building confidence in light of the woman’s low self-esteem, alienation, and sense of failure, no ideological program will be workable. If woman-battering is embedded in a larger gestalt of family troubles, as some scholars argue, 46 the vision of shelters transforming victimized women into independent, assertive adults who reject violent relationships may be doomed to frustration. Many of these women are victims of childhood sexual and physical abuse, date rape, and prolonged abuse by adolescent boyfriends as well as their current partners (many of whom are alcoholic, and lack job and social skills). A few days or weeks of shelter experience cannot be expected to transform such a blighted moral history.

lNSTlTUTlONALlZATlON AND BEYOND Mary Douglas presents a fascinating discussion of institutionalized public memory that has direct relevance to understanding the transformation and decline of women-centered shelters.47 She argues that four principles determine whether a social fact will be remembered. The first principle is the power of “interlocked formulae of ratification”does the fact interrelate with basic social codes, equations in common use, and rules of thumb, as in “a few accepted procedures control a society’s knowledge of its own past.“48 The second principle is that the successful facts get their longevity from their service in promoting private claims. Is the fact connected with major exchange processes and reciprocal arrangements? The third quality of a surviving fact is that it can serve individual strategies to create a public good. The final principle of a successful social fact is that it matches well with the dominant political feeling. According to Douglas, failure to incorporate these principles may imply that a social structure will be “forgotten,” eclipsed by competition and more fashionable ideas. Feminist-movement women’s shelters, like the forgotten ancestors and ignored scientific discoveries that Douglas uses as examples, may fail the test of structural endurance on all four counts. First, women-centered shelters lack the “power of interlocked formulae,” since codes in common use relate to “family,” implying a male-headed household.

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Historically, the violent family has been accepted by the elite and law enforcement agencies as a necessary, if unfortunate, byproduct of patriarchy, even at the cost of women’s lives, as indicated by the systematic inattention to this problem by the criminal justice system. The woman who separates from her violent partner exists in a profound state of fear, guilt, and shame. The rule of thumb is protection, not autonomy; the elaboration of house rules, not self-governance; and the redefinition of imposed maternity, not a critical assessment of childrearing under conditions of violence and social, economic, and emotional deprivation. It is equally difficult to make the claim that feminist-inspired shelters successfully promote an extensive network of private claims. As a temporary housing for a crisis population without money, connections, or emotional resources, shelters do not fully satisfy any constituency. Clients appear to accept shelters only reluctantly, when all other avenues have been exhausted. Staff members are powerless to alter the basic injustices that create the battering problem in the first place; and with the growing number of homeless, abused and crisis clients, funding groups are in a quandary as to which group is most worthy of being funded. Nor is there an accepted procedure for determining deservedness, either in terms of the program or the client. Survivability may be most likely to go with the familiar; in this instance, women who opt for the family model by attempting to return to the partner, or accept the role of welfare client. The endurance of shelters as transformed, legitimate channels for delivery of services to crisis clients will largely depend on their adaptation to existing agency agendas, and their silencing of ideological and structural differences. Shelters for battered women are not new on the social scene. Instead, contemporary shelters and transition houses represent a much-revised reemergence of the total institution. In this instance, they serve as temporary intervention in an acute phase of the institutionalization of care for destitute women and children. Despite their severe limitations in accomplishing the multiple goals that the ideology emphasizes, shelters serve a critical role in urban society. Because they operate as a crucial link in the community’s resource referral network (or more likely, underground network), shelters publicize and promote domestic safety norms for women and children. Crisis telephone intervention and self-help support groups that are often available to the public also connect women who may or may not choose to leave their partner and enter the shelter. Such help may be a primary source of personal support for women who seek solutions to domestic violence. The shortcomings of shelters are readily apparent, and may undermine the best intentions of their staff and supporters. Sociologically, shelters should be viewed as liminal, in that they operate on the margins of the social order, lack a unified ideology, serve a stigmatized population, and are increasingly becoming extensions of the welfare state in their more recent incarnations as impersonal bureaucratic or custodial settings. Despite the putative significance of shelters in preventing and controlling violence, social scientists have not adequately addressed crucial policy questions. What is the impact of shelters on reducing or eliminating new violence? How do shelters compare with other helping strategies (e.g., restraining orders, partner counseling, criminal prosecution, divorce)? What are the implications for women’s autonomy in the normalizing of shelters as merely service provision centers devoid of ideological commitment? Other

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questions are: What is the cost effectiveness of shelters compared with other intervention modes? Do shelters really accomplish what advocates claim they do? Until more specific findings of their alleged positive impact can be validated, the shelter as change agent will remain clouded by uncertainties.

NOTES 1. Linda MacLeod, Battered But Not Beaux Preventing Wife Battering in Canada (Ottowa: Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women, 1987), pp. 49-68; and Nanette J. Davis, Alison J. Hatch, Catherine Mallan, and Kathleen Thompson, “Violence Against Women in the Home: A Continued Mandate of Control.” Violence, Aggression, and Terrorism An International Journal l( 1987): 263-265. U.S. Department of Justice, Attorney General’s Report (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1984), p. 5. U.S. Department of Justice, National Crime Survey Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1982), p. 16. Linda MacLeod, Wife Battering in Canada: The Vicious Circle (Ottowa: Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women, 1980), p. 2; U.S. Department of Justice, Crime in the United States (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1982), p. 14: and Michael Howard, “Husband-Wife Homicide: Essay from a Family Law Perspective.” Law ana’ Contemporary Problems (Winter, 1986): 67. 5. Mildred D. Pagelow, Woman Battering: Victims and Their Experiences (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1981); Kathleen J. Ferraro, “Physical and Emotional Battering: Aspects of Managing Hurt.” California Sociologist 2 (198 1): 134-149; R. Emerson Dobash and Russell P. Dobash, “Wife Beating: The Victims Speak,” Victimofogy 3-4 (1977): 604-622; and Dobash and Dobash, Violence Against Wives: The Case of Patriarchy (New York: Free Press, 1979), pp. 43-67; and Maria Roy, ed. Battered Womenz A Psychosociological Study of Domestic Violence (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1977). 6. Murray A. Strauss and Richard J. Gelles, “Is Family Violence Increasing? A Comparison of 1975 and 1985 National Survey Rates.” Paper presented to the American Society of Criminology, San Diego, CA, November 1985, pp. l-6. 7. Richard A. Berk, Phyllis S. Newton, Suzanne F. Berk, “What a Difference a Day Makes: An Empirical Study of the Impacts of Shelters for Battered Women.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 48( 1986): 787. 8. Erin Pizzey, Scream Quietly or the Neighbors Will Hear (Short Hills, England: Ridely Enslow, 1974), p. 65. 9. National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. (Washington, DC, 1984): p. 3. 10. Berk et al., p. 788. 11. Ferraro, 1981; and Kathleen J. Ferraro and John J. Johnson, “How Women Experience Battering: the Process of Victimization.” Social Problems 30( 1983): 330. 12. Sue E. Eisenberg and Patricia L. Micklow, “The Assaulted Wife: ‘Catch 22’ Revisited.” Women’s Rights Law Reporter 3(1977): 163. 13. D.K. Snyder and N.S. Scheer, “Predicting Disposition Following Brief Residence at a Shelter for Battered Women.” American Journal of Community Psychology 9( 198 1): 560. 14. Pagelow, p. 89; and Walker, p. 15 1. 15. Berk et al., p. 789. 16. Berk et al., p, 760. 17. Lee H. Bowker, Beating Wife-Beating (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1983), p. 113.

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18. Lawrence W. Sherman and Richard A. Berk, “The Specific Deterrent Effects of Arrest for Domestic Violence.” American Sociological Review, 49(1988): 261-272; and Richard A. Berk and Phyllis S. Newton, “Does Arrest Really Deter Wife Battery? An Effort to Replicate the Findings of The Minneapolis Spouse Abuse Experiment.” American Sociological Review 50(1985):

253-262.

19. Berk et al., p. 789. 20. J.L. Palmer and I.W. Sawhill, eds. 7’heReagan Record (Cambridge, MA.: Ballinger, 1984), p. 15. 21. David A. Rothman, i%e Discovery of the Asylum (Boston: Little, Brown, 197 1); and Nanette J. Davis and Bo Anderson, Social Control of Deviance: The Production of Deviance in the Modern State (New York Irvington Publishers, 1983), p. 32. 22. R.S. Picket, House of Refuge: Origins of Juvenile Justice Reform in New York 1815-1857 (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1969). 23. There were 75 in-depth interviews: thirty-five with shelter staff and forty with clients. Next came protracted observation of shelters by three field workers (averaging three to six months of weekly or more frequent contact); the author’s membership on a women’s shelter board; and interviews with crisis-line staff (1 O), and local politicians (4). 24. R.S. Picket, House of Refuge, p. 266. 25. Gordon, etc. 26. “Ex Parte Crouse,” (Wharton, PA, 9, 1983); Petition of Alexander. 27. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct (Chicago: Aldine, 1985). 28. A.G. Westman, “Trends in Care of Delinquent Girls.” Child and Family Welfare 6( 1930): 33-36.

29. Nanette J. Davis and Karlene Faith, “Women and the State: Changing Models of Social Control,” in Trancarceration and the MO&m State of Penalty, edited by John Lowman et al. (London: Gower Books, 1987); Ruth Rose, The Lost Sisterhood Prostitution in America, 1900-19 18 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University, 1982), p. 14; and Pat Carlen, Women’s Imprisonment: A Study in Social Control (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983), p. 73. 30. Davis and Anderson, Ch. 6. 31. Davis et al., p. 266. 32. Ibid, p. 267. 33. Rothman, p. 65. 34. Davis and Anderson, p. 135. 35. Ibid, p. 183. 36. Pizzey, p. 79. 37. Susan Schechter, Women and Male Violence (Boston: South End Press, 1982), pp. 55-56. 38. Christopher Lasch, Haven in a Heartless World (New York: Basic Books, 1978), pp. l-15. 39. Ferraro and Johnson, p. 33 1. 40. J. Pahl, “Refuges for Battered Women,” Feminist Review 19(1985):25. 41. Ferraro and Johnson, p. 337. 42. Canadian Task Force on Violence Against Women, 1985 Report.” Vis A Vis (1986), pp. 13-25. 43. Carol Gray, R.E.A.L. Women: The Traditionalists Take on the Feminists.” Chetelaine 3(1985):147. 44. P. Marchak, ‘The New Economic Reality: Substance and Rhetoric,” in The New Reality: The Politics of Restraint in British Columbia edited by W. Mahnusson et al. (Vancouver, B.C.: New Star Books, 1984):~~. 22-40. 45. Ferraro, p. 147.

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46. D.R. Loseke and Suzanne F. Berk, “The Work of Shelters: Battered Women and Initial Calls for Help.” Victimology 77( 1982):35-48. 47. Mary Douglas, “Institutionlized Public Memory,” in 7’he Social Fabric, edited by James F. Short, Jr. (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1986), pp. 63-76. 48. Ibid, p. 64.