The Multiple Uses of Gender. Definitions and Definitional Struggles around Domestic Violence in Switzerland

A study of the transformations in the definition of domestic violence shows how the concept of gender is put into practice, reformulated and sometimes contested by a diversity of social actors. Based on interviews with key public policy actors, this presentation highlights the multiple, and even sometimes contradictory, meanings ascribed to gender in the field of public action against domestic violence in francophone Switzerland. In our research, we set up a typology of the uses of gender based on the actors’ discourse on domestic violence, their professional and institutional positions and the types of knowledge they refer to when explaining the relationship between domestic violence and gender. This first use we identify emphasizes the gendered quantitative asymmetry that structures the phenomenon of domestic violence, without stressing the qualitative asymmetry in the relationship to violence and in the context in which it occurs. This approach is widely shared by actors who belong to the non-profit and institutional worlds; it reconciles the idea that survivors are mostly women and abusers are mainly men, and the idea that gender is a secondary factor. The second use captures gender socialization and how it shapes different relationships to violence; gender is thus mainly envisioned as a micro-social dimension which is easily articulated to psychological concepts. Finally, the last use stems from the WHO data and is rooted in a public health perspective of interpersonal violence. Gender is perceived as one of many risk factors.