POLICY BRIEF: Rethinking Gendered Models of Family Violence

Why Gendered Theories of Family Violence Are As Contestable—If Not More So—Than Parental Alienation Theory

Like many social science presentations, gendered theories of family violence and parental alienation may be considered contested concepts. They both rely fundamentally on the subjectivity of lived experience and assessment of structural factors that cannot be directly discerned. If, as the Irish Examiner claims, the Irish Government should not rely on contestable theories, then governments cannot rely on the gendered theory of violence to guide their policies either.

This false contestability argument has significant adverse implications for formal bodies responsible for legislation and public health policies. The WHO accepting GFV as an essential public health issue affecting women but not accepting PA as a public health issue affecting men, women, and children is contradictory. It is an example of how the false claim that PA is contestable but GFV is not (or that GFV is contestable but PA should still not be accepted) drives policies that harm significant populations that GFV regards as politically incorrect.

Gendered theories’ systemic entrenchment, ideological rigidity, and dogmatic nature render them more contestable. The same rigorous scientific explanation applied to PA should also apply to GFV. A shift towards inclusive, evidence-informed policymaking is essential for equitable justice and support for all affected families.

Please refer to the full article at https://doi.org/10.25907/00940

Key points: Gendered Family Violence and Parental Alienation

• Gendered theories are a political concept about reordering social and political structures to eliminate patriarchy. They rely on the ideological doctrine of patriarchy and male control, which discounts empirical evidence that disagrees with its doctrine.
  
• Large-scale studies indicate that bi-directional and female-perpetrated intimate partner violence is more prevalent than gendered theories acknowledge.
  
• Parental alienation, despite controversy, some of which is politically manufactured, has a growing interdisciplinary evidence base. It includes assessment instruments and behavioural tools for identification, clinical validation, social theories, and measures of its structural implications.
  
• Public polices rely on social determinants such as gender, race and other demographic factors, to perpetuate the doctrine of male-perpetrated violence against women and children.
  
• Public policies exclude PA because PA is independent of gender or other demographic factors. It is a relational and structural phenomenon using narratives that structure abuse across social determinants.
  
• Policy frameworks based on gendered models marginalise male victims, non-binary individuals, same-sex families and families experiencing non-gendered forms of violence.
  
• Gendered theories of violence harm the women and children they claim to protect by denying their experience. These theories insist on reframing their lived experience through their doctrine, which does not fully encompass the lived experience of parental alienation.
  
• A pluralist, evidence-based approach and the adoption of non-gendered public health initiatives would better serve all families and children, indeed all victims and reduce politicisation in family law and child welfare systems

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• Sociological Implications of Social Alienation and its Demon Spawn Parental Alienation in Families
• What Happens When Men become Alienated from their Children?
• False Allegations and Parental Alienation in Australian Family Law
• Family Violence Orders: Should You Really Apply For Them?