Violent women: questions for feminist theory, practice and policy

Women who enact violence, by their very existence, pose a number of challenges for feminist theory, direct service practice and policy development and delivery in the human service sector. This article presents a number of issues on violent women that emerged from a series of focus groups and individual interviews with human service workers. 1 The article explores the theoretical, practice and policy issues which were identified by workers. It begins from a position of honouring the knowledge and skills of workers, while not seeking to offer definitive conclusions as to appropriate service responses to women who are violent. The article suggests that future theoretical engagements and policy responses to violent women could benefit from critical engagement with the many issues raised by workers.