Women on the run don’t cook : responding differently to intimate partner violence in Aotearoa New Zealand : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Psychology at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand
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Date
2023
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Massey University
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Abstract
Intimate partner violence is a wicked problem in Aotearoa with no singular cause or solution, but what we do know about this social problem is produced through the Western, neoliberal knowledge economy that disregards the intersecting power relations that leave women vulnerable to gendered violence. Research and interventions into intimate partner violence produce and reproduce a statistical figure of violence that reinforces identity categories of difference as deficit that limits the visibility of Pākehā intimate partner violence and obscures institutional indifference to the impacts of gendered social power relations. The aim of this research, therefore, was to examine what possibilities emerge when we are no longer held captive by the dominance and legitimacy of current understandings of and responses to intimate partner violence, what can be imagined when we disarticulate the knowledges that close down spaces for thinking and doing differently. Taking hold of this opportunity to do differently, a creative methodological approach was utilised where figurations that emerged through a cartographic practice were used to engage with sites of alternative knowledges to vitalise marginalised voices that then act as counter-memories to disrupt the dominant narrative and imagine lines of flight for thinking and 'being' differently in relation to one another. This research involved a close textual analysis of the feminist activist organisations The Backbone Collective and The Aunties' who centre their responses through gender and privilege the voices of those women with lived and situated knowledge of men's violence. The analysis identified that women's narratives of pain are misheard by the community and the institutional response and the inattention to gendered social power relations contributes to feelings of social entrapment that hold women vulnerable to men's violence. The analysis takes up the potential that exists when we prioritise listening to women's voices for real, and the possibilities that emerge when we allow ourselves to be moved by and act upon the affective flows generated through connection and ethical relationships. It is this connectedness that increases a sense of collective responsibility and accountability for social problems which foregrounds the development of response-able responses that privilege women and children’s safety and wellbeing.