Abstract
Young People’s Understandings of Men’s Violence Against Women is an excellent book, detailing a qualitative research project that used exploratory surveys, vignettes, and discussion groups to ascertain young people’s, 11- and 12-year-olds in Scotland, understandings of men’s violence against women. Lombard’s primary findings are that young people use certain criteria to label violence as real or unreal, which included elements of temporality (adulthood), space (proximity), relationship, and gender (masculinity) to decide which actions met the threshold of violence. The unintended consequence of defining violence in this manner often worked to normalize and justify male violence against women. Dr. Nancy Lombard is a sociologist and is currently affiliated with the Glasgow Caledonian University in the United Kingdom. This book is the result of her dissertation research, although she has been a volunteer, researcher, and activist within the violence against women movement for 18 years.
After a rich literature review on violence and childhood that served as either a helpful primer or a refresher course, Lombard termed young people’s understanding of violence as due to a constellation of factors (p. 99), that is, certain criteria had to be met for them to term an incident “real” violence. Their most common criteria included that the violence was committed by adult men in public spaces, involving physical acts that resulted in visible injury, and ended with the involvement of authorities, which lead to official consequences. This definition allowed them to minimize violence committed by boys and girls, inside the home, or within intimate relationships. Violence that was not real to them also included video game violence, sibling violence, emotional or psychological abuse, and violence in close proximity to their lives.
The research participants’ understanding of violence was very gendered; violence by men was naturalized and normalized as an inescapable biological reality. Quite concerning was the girls’ early recognition of, and even resignation to, systematic gender inequalities in contrast to the boys’ power to name what is and is not violence and their entitlement to be violent when “provoked” by girls. Another interesting finding is that the young people see gender roles as more fluid at their age, but project into an adult future where gender roles are more rigid, based on a normative heterosexuality.
Two strengths of the text are Lombard’s rich analysis and the luxury of reporting on a qualitative project in book length. For example, Lombard describes an ethical dilemma that arose when three boys ganged up on the one girl present in a discussion group. Lombard gently intervened and in retrospect says, “… I was standing up for my 10-year-old self. Whether this is ethically sound is debatable, but I felt that the need to help the lone girl (and stop the sexist bullying) outweighed researcher neutrality” (p. 63).
One weakness of the book was not separating out the discussion and additional literature review from the findings. At times, it was jarring to transition from reading the words of the young people only to be immediately thrust back into academic voices and citations. Also, although Lombard mentions class as a factor in young people’s understanding of violence, the vital topic of race is not included and one is left to wonder how that effected young people’s perceptions.
The book is an important contribution to the field and includes implications for social work practice and those who work in the antiviolence against woman field. Although Lombard’s practice implications are not new, they bear repeating and implementing: promotion of gender equality, reduction of gender-segregated activities, expansion of the notion of what constitutes violence, validation of girls’ perceptions of violence, confrontation of male privilege, and implementation of prevention work at an early age.