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“Essential reading for gender violence prevention. Freitag integrates multifaceted causes and effects of a culture of gender violence with poignance and practicality, offering wisdom and hope for a less violent tomorrow.”
About the Book
Despite 50 years of activism, legal changes, and crisis service provision, there is no evidence to suggest any widespread decrease in rates of gender violence in the U.S. or around the world. Public awareness of gender violence is arguably at its highest, but its impact, causes, and complexities are largely misunderstood by most of the general public.
Understanding Gender Violence: A Comprehensive Approach opens with an examination of recent efforts to end gender violence. It introduces the common power dynamics and root causes shared by all forms of gender violence, offers important definitions, and explores prevalence across various cultural differences. The text discusses individual and collective impact and explains how cultural ideas about gender lead to violence and its widespread acceptance. Finally, Freitag discusses additional contributors to gender violence and debunks common misperceptions. Throughout the text, case studies drawn from pop culture and the author’s own work connect key ideas to real-world scenarios. This book’s paradigm-shifting perspective will change how crisis advocates, activists, researchers, educators, and students respond to and work to end any type of gender violence in any context.
Available February 2025 (Rowman & Littlefield)
Key Features of the Book
Examines gender violence experienced by people of all genders and sexual orientations to capture the full diversity of its impact and address exclusion of some populations from prevention and response effort
Establishes violence against people identifying across the LGBTQIA+ spectrum as a major type of gender violence to highlight is similar root causes and establish its importance within the broader scope of the problem of gender violence
Emphasizes how power and privilege play a key role in why gender violence occurs to illuminate why rates are highest against people of color, Indigenous individuals, people identifying across the LGBTIQA+ spectrum, and other historically marginalized populations and improve how they are treated in its aftermath
Explores and debunks misperceptions and stereotypes associated with stranger danger, false accusations, and victim credibility to interrupt ongoing cycles of gender violence and mistreatment of people who have experienced it
“This book delivers what it promises, i.e. a comprehensive approach to the subject of gender-based violence. It will greatly benefit anyone interested in this topic: faculty and students, individuals who provide victim-response and support, facilitators and activists engaged in prevention, individuals responsible for policy-making, and finally, anyone who cares about and wants to learn about the issue. The author’s comments and the context provided at the beginning and end of each chapter are insightful and helpful in framing the issues discussed. Complex problems require that we understand their complexity, and Jenn Freitag does a fantastic job of doing just this.”