Trauma-informed and violence-informed, feminist and social justice practices: Discourses in conflict 

The emerging discourse of trauma and trauma-informed practice is a trend that has been gaining momentum among healthcare, mental health, substance use, and anti-violence agencies. While we recognize that a trauma-informed lens offers some important contributions, we are very concerned about its application with women who have experienced abuse from a male partner. It is problematic because it appears to be eclipsing the global conversation about ending gender inequality with the more conservative goal of ‘treating women’s trauma’. We will explore and explain these concerns over the next few pages. 

A. Distinguishing Men’s Violence Against Women from Trauma and Mental Health

Feminists and others concerned with the global epidemic of men’s violence against women and girls have long fought to name and give voice to women’s lived experiences of abuse. Feminist researchers and practitioners recognize that male violence is a social phenomenon which can only be accurately understood through a socio-political, gendered, and intersectional lens. It is well understood that the way to end male violence against women is by dismantling patriarchy and misogyny through social change and structural reformation, while providing meaningful support and advocacy for individual women. Compounding structures of racism, heterosexism, ageism and other multiplying oppressions are also essential to name and dismantle if we want to achieve safety and equity for all women and girls. 

As feminist sociologist Dorothy Smith (1990) warned us three decades ago, trauma and PTSD must remain a contested concept along with other mental health diagnoses. Replacing the language and experience of woman abuse with mental health and ‘trauma’ labels diverts our gaze away from the goals of women’s safety and gender equality. Other critical feminist scholars also echo cautions. While a focus on social support, socially contextualized, culturally inclusive and strengths-based understandings of the impact of men’s violence were attached to the original trauma discourse, these realities are now marginalized by mainstream professional and individualized approaches and interventions (Burstow, 2003; 2005; Gilfus, 1999; Humprheys  & Joseph, 2004). Using the DSM as the key lens to interpret the impacts of abuse as trauma or PTSD has resulted in women’s experiences of abuse being appropriated by mental health practices and recast as women’s mental health problems. More commonly now, “the woman’s ‘mental illness’ becomes the treatment focus reified from the abuse context” (Humphreys & Thiara, 2003, p.217). 

“I don’t call it mental health. I call it symptoms of abuse because to me that is what it is.” 

woman abuse survivor

If this is true, why then would we look to mental health and trauma models to address and eliminate men’s use of power and control against women and girls? The discourse of trauma initially seemed to offer an alternative to the widespread practices of labeling women’s responses to men’s violence with various forms of personality disorders, borderline personality or bipolar disorders, which often inaccurately constructs the impacts of men’s abuse in terms of ‘feminine’ psychopathology. From this standpoint, a trauma lens seemed to offer a credible way to help mainstream mental health and other professionals to name the impacts of male violence. In reality, mental health and trauma approaches have steadfastly focused on diagnosing problems and offering treatment to [the victim] to resolve the symptoms of trauma. Because the conventions and scope of practice within mental health and trauma models ignores gender and other forms of privilege and power, the focus on ‘fixing’ what is wrong with women rather than facing the problem of the sanctioned use of power and control by men against women remains the central focus for intervening.

Trauma discourse, when applied to the impacts of men’s violence toward their partner, individualizes women’s experience and pathologizes their responses to a systemic phenomenon (Sweet, 2018; Wilkerson, 2019). By using the authority of their profession to mis-represent women’s experiences of abuse as ‘trauma’, ‘PTSD’, ‘anxiety’, ‘borderline personality disorder and/or ‘depression’, mental health practices can also inadvertently echo or compound power dynamics by overriding women’s realities of abuse and imposing irrelevant or unsafe treatment modalities. 

Rather than viewing women as having ‘normal, human responses’ to ongoing danger, oppression and entrapment, mental health paradigms, including trauma approaches, tend to overlook the social and structural context, and are generally divorced from gender and other forms of oppression and inequalities. From this narrowed view, the impacts of abuse on women can be reduced to mental health problems to be treated. Such approaches also fail to name the cause – male violence – and lack the feminist, equity, and anti-oppression frameworks necessary to recognize women’s strengths, resistance and insights, focusing instead on women’s flaws, defects and responsibilities. It also positions helping professionals as experts who are there to lead women to wellness, instead of positioning women as experts on their own lives and safety.

More specifically, the trauma-informed narrative shifts the focus of the problem to the woman and her diagnosis of trauma and trauma-related symptoms, and the accountability of the perpetrator disappears from view, along with concerns for women’s safety and support. The impacts of the abuse that she reports become medicalized and pathologized by professionals who have the authority to mis-label their experiences (Burstow, 2003; Humphreys & Joseph, 2004). These mental health labels can (and do) embolden an abusive man by supporting his narrative that ‘she has the problem’, that ‘she is mentally ill’, and that ‘she is not a credible narrator of her own circumstances’. In this regard, the mental health system becomes complicit in the oppression of women.

As interventions to support women and address the impacts of woman abuse are increasingly being subsumed under the trauma banner, the crucial work of systemic and individual advocacy is being reframed as “trauma counselling” or “trauma-informed care”. Replacing systemic change and advocacy work with ‘trauma recovery’ strategies and exercises suggests to us that women are being asked to engage in a treatment process to heal rather than having access to support and advocacy to understand and navigate their circumstances. Supporting women with experiences of abuse should be firmly rooted in the feminist goals of affirming women’s experiences, creating genuine opportunities for women and their children to find safety, and dismantling structures that ignore or condone male violence and men’s rights. This perspective recognizes that women have been deeply impacted by male violence, which may be ongoing, and that they neither choose nor control their circumstances. 

Another risk of subsuming violence against women under the trauma discourse is that the consequences of men’s violence is lumped in with accidents, natural disasters, combat, surgeries, child abuse and deaths. These are very different and unrelated events. Women’s experiences of male violence and other experiences of gender abuses differ significantly in nature and consequences from the list above, and should not be folded into the generic complex trauma discourse. This is, as we have noted, because this discourse ignores the ongoing presence of the perpetrator, where a woman cannot put her experiences behind her and move forward. 

In addition, the broader goals of systemic reform aimed at eliminating gender-based violence against women are absent in the trauma-informed model. We do not discount that individuals have experienced trauma as an outcome of male violence, but it is by no means the only or often most significant impact. Long-term health concerns, lack of safety and security, poverty, insecure or unsafe housing, lack of access to justice and ongoing experiences of oppression, sexism, racism, hetereosexism, to name a few, are systemic impacts of abuse that cannot be addressed through trauma treatments.

Harms of help

Trauma-specific and trauma-informed services can increase women’s vulnerability. Women already carry the heavy burden of navigating the complex and challenging web of services that privilege men. The way that trauma approaches tend to gloss over the legal, economic, political, social and cultural impacts of violence against women means that women impacted by male violence are even less likely to receive appropriate support and protection. When interventions are blind to the myriad ways that women are affected by the ongoing threat or reality of their partners’ abuse, helping professionals are more likely to label these impacts of abuse as problematic (e.g. non-compliant, angry, unmotivated, triggered, or dysregulated) rather than seeing women’s strengths, courage, wisdom and resistance. As this approach has gained momentum as a central narrative, it is now used as a significant distraction to keep the focus away from abusive men’s accountability.

Women’s safety may also be compromised by inappropriate interventions if the impacts of abuse are minimized or mis-interpreted as symptoms of trauma. Many service providers recognized that missing the underlying experiences of abuse “…puts women in harm by mislabeling the impacts of abuse as substance abuse, trauma, depression, anxiety etc..” (service provider). In fact, our research on services for women with experiences of abuse, substance use and/or mental health concerns (Building Bridges, BC Women’s Hospital & Health Centre, 2014) demonstrates that more often women feel that they have been harmed rather than helped when they sought support. There are many reasons for this, but women’s accounts demonstrate how services can echo the dynamics of abuse by using control and authority in their interactions with women needing support and safety.

As other researchers have observed, when services are inattentive to the dynamics and impacts of abuse, they can replicate these dynamics and events of women’s primary experiences of abuse (Markoff et al., 2005; Elliot et al., 2005; Warshaw, 1997). By seizing the authority to name her experience as trauma, they inadvertently repeat the power dynamics of the abuse by silencing her voice. Re-harming women also occurs when service providers are unable to recognize and validate the abuse in women’s lives, thus making services emotionally unsafe, disempowering and often devastating (Markoff et al., 2005; Elliot et al., 2005; Warshaw, 1997). Two significant ways in which this harm can occur is when men’s violence against women is folded into the trauma discourse and when the impacts of abuse and system failures are treated as a symptom of trauma or mental health.

In contrast, meaningful, violence-informed support can offer a woman advocacy, accurate information and access to long-term support, housing, support for children and economic stability while she grapples with the complexities and risks associated with escaping the entrapment and oppression of her abusive partner. Having a deep and comprehensive understanding of the impacts of abuse will also help to reframe trauma symptoms and ‘what is wrong with women’ into the impacts of abuse and what has happened to women. This will lead to supportive services, systems, policies and funding that are in-line with women’s realities. 

As one mental health worker described the difference between a violence and trauma-informed approach “a violence-informed approach looks at what has been done to someone, rather than a trauma-informed approach which looks at how someone hasn’t coped well with what they have experienced.”

B. ‘Pills and Professionals’

This growing trend to treat men’s violence and the impacts of abuse with ‘pills and professionals’ is alarming. Women who have experienced abuse have often been handed multiple physical and mental health diagnoses and the concomitant prescription medications from healthcare providers. Because the diagnoses come from experts, it makes it all the more convincing for women that they have the ‘problem’ and that experts have the right interventions to ‘fix’ them. Coupled with the significant brainwashing tactics used by abusers that have convinced women that they are the problem, this creates the perfect storm for women’s voices to give way to professionals who have been given the status and authority to interpret ‘the problem’ and impose descriptions in similar fashion to their partner’s psychological abuse and gaslighting (denying reality). This dynamic is reflected in the following commentary from a woman about her search for the right kind of help:

Why do you think I am here? I need help. But the doctor just kept asking me what I needed. I told him ‘I just wanted to get better. I don’t know how to do it on my own. I need to be led in the right direction.’ He just wrote me a prescription after a short visit. Pills weren’t the answer. I don’t need medication. He gave me medication and sent me on my way. 

When women’s voices are given centrality, they describe how the abuse has impacted their mental well being as well as their social and economic circumstances. They can readily detail the extensive impacts of living under severe threat and intermittent and unpredictable escalations of control and oppression: fear, stress, lack of concentration, exhaustion, poverty, homelessness, and substance use, to name a few. One woman detailed a conversation with her doctor. When she told him she was going through a really sad and hard time, he said,

’There’s a name for that. It’s depression.’ Finally he convinced me I should go on an antidepressant. Like that was going to stop me from being beat up.

Because abusive men subject women to ongoing psychological abuse, they can be left with lifetime effects. Yet we tend to overlook the long-term nature of healing from abuse.

A lot of it was just verbal, but I wished he’d have hit me instead of saying what he said. The words were just as bad; they hurt more, and they did more damage for the long term. 

We do agree that women can experience serious post-violence effects, which include health and mental health concerns as well as social consequences such as poverty, lack of access to justice, etc. We recognize that these impacts can persist long after their partners are out of the picture although many women share custody of children and cannot escape her abuser’s use of the children as a way for him to continue the abuse. But rather than viewing these impacts as symptoms to be treated with medications, or problems that require professionals to teach strategies to ‘emotionally self-regulate’, women tell us that they want to be viewed as women having normal human responses to abuse, and that mental health diagnoses and medications were not helpful responses.

Oh, ‘we’ll help you, we’ll help you’. What are you going to do, give me a teddy bear? Basically, that’s what it was. Doctors give me medications I’ve never had before. So I’m walking around like Gumby so I can suppress what’s happened and make doctors feel like they’ve helped. 

C. Decontextualizing violence against women: Practice implications 

While we recognize some important overlaps between violence against women and trauma approaches, we outline some key limitations and potential harms of conflating woman abuse with trauma. As we have stated, we are particularly concerned that violence against women is being decontextualized and depoliticized within women’s organizations. Widely-held beliefs, created by dominant social discourses about women, men and male and gender-based violence, contribute to the development of harmful policies and practices. These practice errors occur when trauma treatment modalities decouple women’s ‘symptoms’ from the dynamics and impacts of abuse. These are risky errors that can send women the message that they, rather than their partner/context, are problematic.

Here are some examples of dominant beliefs that shape unconscious bias and lead to harmful practices.

Harmful Approach	Helpful Approach
Women’s response to men’s abusive tactics is emotional [dis] regulation	Women are responding normally to the emotional rollercoaster created by an abusive partner
Women’s lack of readiness for change is because of their lack of motivation	Abusive men take away all women’s autonomy, independence and choices
Women are scattered and meditation or yoga techniques help women get grounded	Women have unstable, temporary housing, are unable to adequately feed their children and themselves, and are being harassed by their partners through the court system
Women with experiences of abuse have developed ‘unhealthy’ coping strategies and need individual counselling	Women need to be with other women who share her experience to help shift the focus from individual problems to a broader social discourse about abuse, systemic harms, gender, etc.
Women make poor choices and need assistance to make better choices	Abusive partners take all good choices off the table within the relationship, and our social responses often echo this, leaving women with limited or no safe options.
Professional opinions, diagnoses and medications are used to fix what is ‘wrong with women’	Basic tools like the Cycle of Abuse and the Power and Control wheel are powerful tools for women to accurately name and understand their experiences of abuse from a partner.
We need to contain women’s experiences and stories because they cannot handle them	Helping professionals need to be capable of creating a safe space (or container) for women to tell their story. Women narrating their own story is empowering
Belief that women are not coping well with what has happened to them	Women are having normal human responses to what has happened to them
Trauma is gender neutral	Women’s experiences of male violence is gendered and socially constructed
People need psycho-educational groups where the professional manages the group dynamics to avoid people’s stories ‘triggering’ others.	Women heal in community. Groups shatter the stereotypes, and women feel affirmed and listened to
Women cannot handle being in groups.’Their nervous systems are too dysregulated to hear each other’s stories.	Abuse is isolating and women need to hear that they are not alone, not to blame and not crazy. Women need to know that they are never too much and we can hear and affirm their lived experiences.

Trauma approaches often lack the critical feminist, intersectional and systemic analyses to distinguish the extensive impacts of men’s abuse from trauma or other mental health symptoms. Women are taught to use trauma-informed techniques such as yoga or meditation, grounding, boundary setting, assertiveness, visualization, affect regulation, building self-esteem and journaling to develop better ‘coping’ strategies. When women are offered these strategies, but they don’t have safe, secure, long-term housing, we have only offered them, at best, a short-term reprisal from the realities of finding long-term economic stability, safety and healing.

You need to not have the stresses of money, food shelter, children, – those things – when you’re trying to get better. And he needs to be out of the picture. You can’t focus on yourself when you don’t know whether you will have housing. And if you don’t have housing, you won’t keep your children. It’s all connected. 

While some trauma techniques offer respite, and can therefore appear to be effective, many women do report that they do not translate into practical changes, increased safety or changes in their abusive partner’s behaviours. Setting boundaries and assertiveness deny the power and control of the perpetrator; ‘working on self-esteem’ suggests that self-esteem is the problem rather than the impact; ‘affect regulation’ ignores the fluctuating circumstances and emotional responses created by men who control the Cycle of Abuse and fails to acknowledge that women are trying to respond for their safety; and visualization and journaling take women’s focus away from the pressing priority of protecting themselves and their children.

I don’t write stuff down, ever. But that is all counselors know. Journaling doesn’t work for everybody. They push that on you, the same with meditation and yoga. You know, ‘sit in your chair, be one with the earth. Put your feet on the ground. Breath in through your nose, out through your mouth. Take it in, let it go.’ Like this is going to pay my bills and keep me safe.

Gail

If the dominant beliefs that shape trauma approaches remain unacknowledged and unexamined by practitioners, women will appear to be ‘failing’ at their treatment. When women don’t ‘progress’ or heal, they find themselves blamed (e.g. not motivated) or judged (e.g. non-compliant, addict, etc.) for not healing. Or women return back to their abuser because the housing they were able to secure was unsafe and/or unaffordable, and this is labelled a ‘poor choice’. Women’s ‘symptoms’ of depression are more likely related to exhaustion, futility and confusion, which is the purpose of men’s use of coercive control and anxiety is more appropriately labeled fear. And in the absence of safety, women’s use of substances will continue as her way of remaining numb to the deeply painful realities of ongoing abuse.

In reality, the trauma-informed treatment approach is failing women. Women’s ability to find safety, economic security and meaningful support and advocacy can be impeded when providers focus on the single impact of trauma, and can actually compound the harms of the abuse. This often leads to greater isolation, a sense of failure on the part of the woman and more suffering and entrapment for women. Having a deep and comprehensive understanding of the impacts of abuse will help practitioners reframe ‘trauma symptoms’ into the impacts of abuse and avoid these errors. This can lead to empowering and liberating interventions that are in-line with women’s needs and realities.

D. Illustrating how trauma treatment approaches ignore the realities of woman abuse

To illustrate how the application of the wrong approach can compound the harms of the abuse for women, below we explore an organizational approach that provides trauma treatment as well as applies Motivational Interviewing and the Stages of Change approaches. The Trauma Guidelines that they have developed claim to “revolutionise possibilities for recovery for the large numbers of people with unresolved (italics added) “complex trauma” – child abuse in all its forms, neglect, family and community violence and other adverse childhood events.” (https://www.blueknot.org.au/resources/Publications/Practice-Guidelines downloaded September 22, 2019). While we feel sure that there are relevant practices for some populations, we would like to look at some of the ways these approaches are inappropriate for women with experiences of abuse.

Blueknot states, “this [trauma] framework expects individuals to learn about the nature of their injuries and to take responsibility in their own recovery (italics added) (Blueknot.org.au). If we translate this belief to violence against women – that women who have experienced abuse are responsible for their own recovery – we deny the extent to which women’s realities are constrained and controlled by the offender’s ongoing abuse. We then also ignore the lack of appropriate social responses that would provide women with safety and other basic needs to support their healing. 

The organization frames trauma interventions as helping women to address their “unhealthy coping strategies” by teaching women new [read ‘healthy’] ways to cope. Common examples of trauma-specific techniques are taught to women to help them ‘resolve their inner distress’, ‘improve their ability to cope’, ‘contain their feelings’ or ‘regulate their emotions’. These techniques arise from the assumption that the problem resides within the woman. This can lead to treating women as though they were the problem that needs to be ‘fixed’. We would like to restate this perspective – women are having normal human responses to the abuse and control that they have experienced. They develop safety and resistance strategies based on the very limited options their abusers ‘allow’, and women continuously demonstrate strength, courage, resistance and resourcefulness. Mental health and trauma models, designed on assumptions of internalized pathologies, offer a different, and diminished view of women’s capacities.

To further illustrate concerns about other trauma techniques, we will unpack the concept and practice of ‘containment’, a common strategy used with trauma survivors, and employed in some women’s shelters and other counselling services for women who have experienced coercive control from a partner. Containment can echo women’s experiences of being controlled and suppressed by their abusive partner. Even the word aligns with some abusive strategies, suggesting that we are controlling women and their ability to give voice to their experiences. We need to create a space for women to speak about their experiences rather than have them contained and restricted. While we continue to hear about agencies that discourage women from sharing their ‘war stories’, we encourage women to share their experiences rather than silence them. The best way for this to happen is in a support group with a facilitator who is knowledgeable about the dynamics and experiences of abuse and with other women who share their experiences and are able to clearly see the common experiences of abuse. It becomes so clear for women that they are not the problem, they are not responsible for the abuse, they do not need treatment, they are not ‘crazy’ and they are not responsible for the abuse.

I don’t want someone to dive deep into my psyche. I just want to tell you what I am going through right now so I don’t feel so crazy. I just need somebody else to hear what I am saying, and to know that someone else understands that experience. That’s what this group gave me.

Stella

Using a trauma-informed approach prior to offering women support for their experiences of abuse from a partner is like putting the cart before the horse. We most certainly acknowledge that trauma is one impact of abuse, but there are so many pressing concerns that take precedent. Offering women trauma treatment before they have had access to a more accurate way to narrate their experiences and impacts of abuse can affirm that they need ‘fixing’. Supporting women to gain information, develop a new vocabulary, tell their experience in their own way, and recognize, understand, navigate and cope with the myriad personal and social impacts of abuse from a partner must come first. The risks of mislabeling men’s abuse as trauma lead us to be extremely cautious about introducing trauma-specific or -informed approaches with women. 

If you are using any tools like guided meditation or yoga, it is so important to check in with women about whether they find these useful and to reassure them that you are aware that these techniques are limited to providing short-term relief from the distress and fear created by their abusive partner. Even then, we use them cautiously and only with women’s full consent. We disclose our purpose for offering any exercise and ensure that women fully understand and consent. It is critical that we check in with women to make sure they are useful and not creating unintended distress or distrust. Most importantly, they are not a replacement for advocacy and support.

Stages of change and motivational interviewing

A trauma-informed approach can feed the dominant narrative about women’s ‘part’ in the abuse by focusing on her level of motivation, choices and decision-making. One such example is the application of a Stages of Change Model and Motivational Interviewing (MI), based on a model developed for supporting people who are using substances. The goal of this approach is ‘to elicit behaviour change by helping ‘clients’ to explore and resolve ambivalence.’ We have seen this model being employed in women’s shelters and feel very discouraged that this tool is being applied when there are so many helpful tools that focus on women’s safety and support, dismantle dominant discourses and enable women to understand the dynamics and impacts of their partner’s abuse more accurately.

The first step in an MI model is to ‘assess where she is in her commitment to change’. While MI is committed to ensuring a climate of safety and trust, the basic assumptions that women are not motivated, ambivalent and need to change their behaviour is erroneous and possibly disrespectful. This model was never intended to be used with women experiencing abuse. The underlying assumption that women are in control of their choices is based on the privileged construct of autonomy, and simply does not apply to the dynamics of coercive control employed by abusive men.

This approach cannot create safety or trust because the basic premise puts responsibility on women that is not theirs. As we stated earlier, however, helping professionals are seen to have the authority to (mis) name ‘women’s problems’. The ‘problem’ of woman abuse is not motivation, ambivalence or lack of commitment to change. The problem is that men use violence against women, which impacts every aspect of women’s emotional and physical health, safety, wellbeing, mothering, and economic security. The solution is services, systems and people, all providing women with compassionate, appropriate, timely, support until she is economically stable and able to heal. We have never met a woman who isn’t motivated! Moreover, we’ve never met a woman whose own changes have led to the abuse stopping. Trust and safety cannot be built when what we are offering does not resonate with women’s lived experiences.

The real trap for women in this model is that when they cannot make changes or they ‘fail’ to interrupt the abuse, women and their counselors (using MI) can conclude that they are not using the tools effectively, are pre-contemplative, or are not motivated or ‘ready’ to change (often framed as women choosing to stay, accept or normalize the abuse). Using MI or stages of change with women still with an abusive partner could also send a message that there is no responsibility for the abuser to change. Moreover, MI continues to focus on individual change, and does not have a comprehensive framework from which to view the failures of systems to intervene in men’s violence. From a feminist and violence-informed perspective, this approach is clearly problematic and unsafe. 

E. Policy and funding implications of shifting to a trauma narrative

When women describe their diverse experiences of abuse, they describe the far-reaching ways in which their safety, health, economic well being, mothering and life circumstances are shaped and constrained by their partner’s abuse. They also point to the compounding impacts of systemic abuse and oppression and speak extensively about systemic gaps and barriers. 

When I couldn’t get any help, I thought, ‘Maybe I deserve to get beat up’. They wonder why you go back. Well, you don’t have money, you don’t have a home; you don’t have clothes. I know why we go back. It’s because we don’t have any good options. What I’m trying to do is break the cycle for good and forever, but I need help. 

Many women-serving agencies are adopting the language of trauma or are being asked by funders to provide services within a trauma-informed framework. This is a troubling move away from feminist and social justice frameworks. While collapsing woman abuse under the trauma banner has given the work of women-serving agencies access to funding, it runs the very real risk of silencing women’s advocacy organizations from naming systemic gaps, barriers and failures. 

What women need is for us to focus on their safety, help them navigate systems and advocate for the right services, identify their strengths and offer support and information that normalizes their experience. They do not need interventions that lean on the dominant discourse of individual responsibility or models that diagnose and treat ‘symptoms of abuse’ as mental health issues. Funders and policy makers hold the power to end funding for a service; they have effectively silenced the central work of advocating for women and challenging oppressive systemic practices by privileging ‘trauma work’. This has pushed women’s agencies away from their social justice mission and can leave women impacted by abuse with limited access to effective advocates and allies. We need our leaders to have the courage to support social change, not reify current conditions. Women need policies that actively address the legal, economic, political, social, cultural and other inequities they face when trying to escape their partner’s abuse. And they need a system that works together, from the same framework, so that women receive consistent, relevant and safe support.

There is an urgent need to increase services that provide meaningful assistance for women – advocacy and support services, housing, access to justice and adequate income. Limiting our gaze to ‘trauma’ takes the pressure off government leadership to provide direction and funding to reduce structural barriers that prevent women from having safe, secure futures. And, funding trauma services is in line with political agendas that maintain the status quo – gender and cultural inequities and gender-based violence. 

Supporting women with experiences of abuse, holding the perpetrator accountable, demanding systemic changes and advocating for filling gaps and reducing barriers within services has been the central work of anti-violence agencies historically. In today’s climate, agencies that exceed a certain percentage of their workload on advocacy and social change risk the loss of already precarious government funding. Yet without systemic change, there will be no sustainable changes for women with experiences of abuse. By funding trauma-informed approaches, the government and other funding agencies are promoting the dominant discourse that women need fixing and effectively limiting women’s organizations from engaging in social change and advocacy work.

Going forward, we need to set aside the dominant mental health and social narratives that focus on women’s roles and responsibilities for men’s violence and its impacts. We need to return to critical feminist and social justice principles that aim to dismantle dominant discourses and challenge status quo practices. We need to focus our efforts on reducing male violence, challenging structural oppressions, advocating for systemic change, and resisting dominant narratives and paradigms that are harming women. This will lead to the kind of changes that we have envisioned for decades.