The “Freedom Work” of Feminist Domestic Violence Advocates

ABSTRACT

Since the 1970s, there have been dramatic shifts in domestic violence advocacy in Australia. Domestic violence activism emerged from the women’s liberation movement with a clear feminist and emancipatory agenda, but this work has now shifted into the mainstream. This has seen the previous focus of domestic violence advocacy, which included women’s freedom and liberation, narrow to an emphasis more on women’s safety and risk management. While this “safety work” is a needed priority, there must also be an examination of what is lost when domestic violence practice does not allow space for “freedom work”. This article explores freedom work with 10 feminist domestic violence advocates in Australia. They detail four principles of their freedom work with victim—survivors, which includes that feminism is central to their survivor-led practice; that safety work can expand freedom when done from a feminist perspective; that advocates’ knowledge needs to meet victim—survivors where they are; and that while freedom is central to their practice, they acknowledge that this freedom is aspirational.

IMPLICATIONS

• A focus on risk management and safety in domestic violence work can narrow women’s freedom and choices.

• Feminist domestic violence advocates who ground their work in emancipatory politics expand their focus beyond women’s safety to honour women’s freedom.

• This “freedom work” is mainly aspirational but seeks opportunities to expand women’s space for action and freedom alongside broader political activism.

KEYWORDS:

• Feminism
• Domestic Violence
• Freedom
• Safety
• Risk Management
• Aspirational Freedom
• Women’s Liberation Movement
• Liberatory Politics
• Emancipation
• Women
• Children
• Victim–Survivors
• Survivor-Led Practice
• Post-Feminism
• Refuges
• De-gendering
• Self-Empowerment
• Self-Determination
• Radical Social Workers
• Radical Feminists
• Victoria
• Australia

In Australia, the work against domestic violence (DV) emerged from the 1970s’ women’s liberation movement (Ramsay, 2007; Theobald et al., 2017). For example, in Victoria, Australia, archival and oral history projects of the women’s liberation movement indicate that it was largely led by lesbian feminists, with refuges quickly established for women and children escaping abuse from their husbands and fathers (Theobald et al., 2017). There were mostly overt radical feminist objectives within the refuge movement, focusing on patriarchy and women’s oppression (Murray, 1999; Theobald et al., 2017; Wilson, 1996). A central premise of the movement was that “society needs to be changed so that refuges are unnecessary” (Theobald et al., 2017, p. 126). Women's and children's safety was inexorably linked to their broader freedom. However, over the past two decades, funding cuts and government funding agreements with DV services have often explicitly aimed at separating feminist activism from direct service work (Theobald et al., 2017). This separation has meant that most DV services in Australia are now only funded to do what Kelly terms “safety work” (Kelly in Vera-Grey, 2018, p. xi): that is, the labour of keeping women and children safe from male violence.

Despite evidence that feminist survivor-led practice produces better outcomes for victim—survivors (Goodman & Epstein, 2008), there has been a decentring of feminism from DV services. This emphasis on safety in DV work has occurred alongside the rise of what Beck terms a “risk society” (Beck, 1992). Over the past 40 years, risk has become a central focus of governments, organisations, and individuals, including within social work practice (Healy, 2014). Shifts in social work practice also have moved from social change and reform to a depoliticised individualised empowerment model (Schubert & Gray, 2015). In Australia, there has been a noted de-gendering of policies and the language of DV since the Howard Government took power in 1996, with Howard declaring we had entered a “post-feminist” era of DV practice (Webster, 2007, p. 61). This was reflected in funding cuts to feminist services and the disintegration of government agencies with a specific focus on women’s interests.

A focus on safety and risk in DV work (while necessary to identify, monitor, and reduce the risk of further violence towards women and children) can divert energy and vision away from what Woodlock (2018) has termed “freedom work”, which is vital. Freedom work is the labour required to create the conditions that enable women and children to be free from male violence, encapsulating the broader feminist project of women’s liberation (Woodlock, 2018). In this article, we draw on in-depth interviews with 10 Australian feminist DV advocates about their survivor-led practices, their safety work with victim—survivors, and how they balance this with their understanding of freedom. Through these interviews, we further develop the concept of “freedom work”, an essential component of survivor-led practice that is integral to the safety of individual victim—survivors and the broader prevention of men’s violence against women.

Domestic Violence and Women’s Freedom

Violence against women and children was not initially central to Australia's women’s liberation movement. For example, in the early 1970s, feminists in Victoria, Australia, established a drop-in centre with telephone contact to facilitate communication between women’s groups (Theobald et al., 2017). However, this telephone contact also allowed women more broadly to contact the centre, and it quickly became apparent that many women were in crisis. Due to activism by feminists, men’s violence against women is now seen as a violation of women's human rights by the United Nations. In 1993, the United Nations connected violence against women to women's freedom by stating, “ … violence against women constitutes a violation of the rights and fundamental freedoms of women and impairs or nullifies their enjoyment of those rights and freedoms” (UN General Assembly, 1993).

In 2015, Kelly identified the diminishing focus on freedom within the DV space and the rising attention to women’s safety (Kelly, 2015). A surface examination of DV services in Victoria reveals this shift, with service name changes in the past decade for several key services. This includes the “Women's Domestic Violence Crisis Service” to “Safe Steps Family Violence Response Centre”, and the “Domestic Violence and Incest Resource Centre”, which became the “Domestic Violence Resource Centre Victoria” in 2008 and recently merged with “Domestic Violence Victoria” to become a joint organisation now called “Safe and Equal”. In this process, the explicitly feminist vocabulary that linked “crisis” to all forms of physical and sexual violence in the patriarchal family has been replaced by carefully branded titles. The landmark Victorian Royal Commission into Family Violence in 2015 mentioned in its final report and recommendations “safety” 173 times and “risk” 258 times, but “freedom” was only mentioned three times, with no mentions of “feminism” or “feminists” (Neave, 2016). While recognition of the violence committed by men against women and children clearly has moved into the mainstream, with $3.5 billion of funding for services in the state of Victoria alone since the Royal Commission (Premier of Victoria, 2022), there needs to be an examination of what may be lost in this process.

This shift to safety has been strategic (to secure funding, among other reasons) but reflects a theoretical vacuum and political vagueness in understanding what is meant when the term “freedom” is used. “Safety from” abuse can be measured and fits within the auditing and risk management imperatives initiated in the move to managerialism within DV services (Piedalue et al., 2020). However, “freedom to” is a much more substantive concept and one that has its roots in philosophical understandings of what it means not only to be free and equal citizens but also what it means to be human. “Freedom to” suggests the space and resources for action that are determined, first and foremost, by social and economic structures whose policy significance has diminished over time with the professionalisation of the response to DV (Salter, 2016).

While the centuries of philosophical debates about freedom are beyond the scope of this article, the understanding of freedom as linked to violence against women is worthy of exploration. The recognition that men’s violence created not only the broader conditions of women’s oppression but also restricted the freedom of their daily actions and movements was a fundamental concern of suffragettes in the 1800s and was picked up by second-wave feminists in the 1970s (Jeffreys, 1997). While suffragettes focused on the vote as a precondition to women’s full citizenship and freedom, second-wave feminists began to unpack what freedom meant for women and even if it was possible under conditions of domination. Freedom of speech was a central concern of the political left in the 1960s and 70s. However, radical feminists such as Andrea Dworkin questioned what freedom of speech means to women who do not even have freedom of movement. Dworkin (1993, p. 16) said when speaking at a Take Back the Night rally: “We must recognize that freedom of movement is a precondition for freedom of anything else”.

In recent work on the impacts of DV on women’s citizenship, freedom of movement is recognised as one of the key ways men’s use of coercive control limits women’s free and equal participation in society (Franzway et al., 2019). Drawing on Sen's (1999) and Nussbaum’s (2000) capabilities approach to freedom, Franzway et al. (2019) asserted that men’s violence against women in the home curtails their freedom of movement and, consequently, their participation in civic society. This focus on movement as integral to women's physical, social, and mental freedoms is articulated in Kelly’s concept of “space for action”, which is an understanding of how men’s violence constrains women’s agency and literal space. Increasing this “space for action” is seen as one of the pathways to freedom for victim—survivors (Sharp-Jeffs et al., 2017).

This notion that men’s violence constrains women’s freedoms is continued by Einspahr (2010), who conceptualises freedom as a form of non-domination. Freedom for women is not simply the right to be left alone but is instead a society where women are not systematically dominated and are active and equal participants. Freedom as non-domination provides a way of understanding freedom as distinct from agency but draws attention to the social, economic, and political conditions that limit women’s freedoms. Pyles (2008) contends that an essential component of social work practice should be working towards women's freedom, advocating for policies that address what limits women’s freedoms, and what can develop their capacities. Part of this work has been prioritising survivor-led practices within DV advocacy.

Survivor-Led Domestic Violence Advocacy

While social workers were not initially a significant group of those working in DV advocacy, radical social workers in the 1970s brought the politics of Marxism, socialism, and feminism to their practice (Healy, 2014). They joined with feminists in work to provide safety to victim—survivors of DV as well as advocate for social change. One of the fundamental tenets of feminist DV advocacy has been a commitment to survivor-led practices, which is acknowledged in the Australian Association of Social Workers’ (AASW) Code of Ethics via an emphasis on client self-determination (AASW, 2020). Recent findings on survivor-led practices (Cattaneo et al., 2020) have shown numerous positive outcomes for victim—survivors, such as increased physical and emotional health, safety and stability, and satisfaction with the help they have received. There is also a decrease in posttraumatic stress disorder and depression.

Method

To further explore how DV advocates balance their safety work with their freedom work, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 Australian DV professionals about their feminist practice (Ethics approval number HE19-214). The primary aims of the research were to examine how DV advocates use survivor-led and feminist approaches and how their understanding of freedom and safety shape their work with victim—survivors. The research questions guiding this process were how do feminist domestic violence advocates utilise survivor-led practices and how do practitioners balance women's and children’s safety with their freedom? Interviews were chosen as a method as they have been particularly central to feminist research, allowing an in-depth exploration of women’s experiences that have historically been marginalised (Reinharz, 1992).

Recruitment

The research was advertised using Twitter and via DV organisations’ newsletters. The advertisement asked if they were or had been a DV practitioner and if they used feminist or survivor-led approaches in their work. Participants were able to define what feminist and survivor-led meant to them. The interviews focused on risk and safety, their feminist approaches to DV practice, and how they conceptualised freedom for victim—survivors of DV.

Sample

Most participants trained as social workers (n = 8), with two having a legal background (one a practising lawyer). The average age was 32, and all were women. The length of time working in the DV sector ranged from one year to over 30, with an average of eight years. The majority worked in Victoria (n = 8), with two from New South Wales. Half of the participants identified as Australian (n = 5), with one from China, one from Sri Lanka, one from New Zealand, one white British, and one Australian-Vietnamese. Their positions included case management, specialist family violence practitioners, women’s DV court advocates, community legal centre practitioners, case workers, and policy workers. Of note is that seven of the participants identified as victim—survivors of DV. Throughout this article, pseudonyms are used for participants.

Analysis

The interviews, around one hour in length, were conducted by author one and were recorded and transcribed. Transcripts were then thematically coded, first descriptively, then interpretively, using NVivo (King et al., 2019). The coding was undertaken by author one, and the themes developed were discussed with authors two and three to validate the findings.

Findings

Four broad themes form the principles of freedom work described by the participants. These are that feminism is central to survivor-led practice; safety work can expand freedom; advocates’ knowledge needs to meet survivors where they are; and that freedom is aspirational.

Feminism is Central to Survivor-Led Practice

The 10 participants identified as feminists, most grounding their practice in emancipatory politics. When asked about how feminism impacted their work, their responses mainly focused on how they understood their relationship with victim—survivors. Amy said:

The most important thing in feminist practice is to really respect women’s choices and that they are listened to and heard. When we talk to them, we also view their experiences in a social and structural way, how their experience is shaped through gender inequality.

Leanne defined the broader political landscape in which DV occurs. She stated:

Feminist practice is fundamentally an understanding of family violence as patriarchal violence. And feminist practice for me also looks like understanding that violence intersectionally. So, where people using family violence absolutely are using gendered violence, the tactics used will also be racialised, they’ll also be ableist, [and] they’ll also capitalise on those other existing systems of oppression.

All the women interviewed mentioned how perpetrators of DV will leverage multiple forms of oppression in their abuse tactics. While there was an overt political aspect to the participants’ understanding of feminist practice, it also was reflected in their interactions with victim—survivors. Their approach meant that often there was a deliberate effort to hold the woman's experiences as central and model a respectful communication style. Their feminist practice was also a feminist ethic of care. Eliza explained:

Feminist practice, to me, is really like deconstructing any sort of power within a relationship. And in my work, it’s mostly about giving women the choice and empowering them to make the right choices for them at any given time. Especially when they have not had that for such a long time because of the significant control and manipulation within their relationship.

However, all the participants noted that while they saw their work as part of their feminist politics, their workplaces did not share this perspective. They spoke of having to be “covert” (Kathryn) in their practice and that it was a “struggle” (Jessie) to be feminist DV advocates. Brianna said that she often hid her feminist practice by labelling it as something more acceptable. She said: “I always think about what I am using to cover my feminist tracks, so it is usually something like ‘trauma informed’”.

Safety Work Can Expand Women’s Freedom

The advocates detailed the significant amount of safety work they did with victim—survivors, particularly regarding risk assessment and safety planning. However, within this safety work, practitioners aimed to not further constrict women’s freedom but instead to open up their space for action. In this way, “safety” in the work of a feminist DV advocate was conceptualised as a form of freedom. When asked about the safety work she did with victim—survivors, Brianna detailed the safety planning, the advocacy, and the holistic way she understood safety. She said: “You cannot just do a risk assessment and a safety plan if the housing is unstable or there is no income. Safety relies on many systems; it is not just about her actions”. Similarly, Kathryn discussed how she looks at safety as practical tasks such as “organising lock changes, emergency housing, new phones, doing the technology-abuse checks” but also in a broader way, such as their safety within themselves. Kathryn explained:

One of the most terrifying tactics of abuse that I saw, and very insidious, was all the emotional denigration: the gaslighting, calling women crazy, humiliating them with words and insults, and destroying their sense of worth. I always saw that as a real safety issue for women because you need to feel safe in your body, yourself, and your sense of who you are. So, I always saw that part of my safety work was allying with women. Tell them they are not alone, that I’m in their corner, that they make sense to me; what they are doing is a normal response to really awful emotional abuse and violence.

Building on a holistic and substantive concept of safety that included, but was not limited to, immediate practical safety, Megan felt that, as a feminist advocate, safety was “a woman having a belief that her life could be hers”. In this sense, safety work for feminist DV practitioners was a complex interaction between the practical physical safety they could organise, a woman’s sense of internal safety and validation, and the broader systems within which the woman and the practitioner were embedded.

All practitioners noted that risk assessment was a core aspect of their work. However, they felt that risk assessments needed to be designed in a survivor-led way. They often had to adapt and alter the required assessments to keep their feminist values at the centre of their practice. Megan spoke of her journey as a practitioner and how, when she first started, she followed the stipulated risk assessment process, but now she has become more survivor-led in her approach. She said:

When I started, I’d just go along with what I was taught to do. But I started to learn that if you just worked with the risk that was identified through this blunt tool, you sometimes got women who would just walk away and not come back to you. You could see it did not work for them; they would say, “that would not work for me”. Then I started to look in my assessment for the strengths before I was actually looking for the risks. For example, I’d look at how connected she was to her community and how connected she was to her family. Because these are all essential things that are going to protect her.

Sally felt that risk assessment was previously much more survivor-led but that recent developments had made this more of a victim-blaming exercise. She said:

I feel like, when early-stage feminists did their work, it was much easier to be survivor-led; a risk assessment was a conversation between the woman and the worker. But now, risk assessments are seen as this predictive tool and often use language that can be very victim-blaming. Or places the onus on the woman, like it is her responsibility to keep herself safe, it is her responsibility to keep her children safe. Instead of saying, “Let us do a risk assessment plan for this perpetrator and how dangerous he is!”

While safety and risk are essential to address when working with victim—survivors, it was clear that the practitioners saw that assessments were too prescriptive and were not centred on the survivors’ experiences. Instead, they shifted their approach to one that looked at not only risk but also opportunities for freedom and ways to expand women’s space for action, not narrow it.

Advocates’ Expertise Needs to Meet Survivors Where They Are

Survivor-led practice included meeting the victim—survivor where they are and bringing their expertise and practice knowledge to the survivor. Advocates’ contribution as professionals included leveraging their privilege and knowledge of the DV sector (including housing, police, and social security) to assist victim—survivors. Brianna discussed how she views her work with victim—survivors as a partnership:

I’m a case manager, but I describe it as more of a partnership, and I acknowledge that there are things I can do as a worker and information I can access that she would not have access to. But this is her life, and she is doing the work as well, and it just so happens that when I call the police and ask for information, they’ll give it to me, whereas they will not necessarily give it to her. It is kind of a facilitator role of the work, more so than I’m doing the work.

Eliza also recognised her work as a partnership but was cognisant of the knowledge gaps some victim—survivors may have due to the control exerted over them. It was then a delicate balance between positively using the practitioner's knowledge to guide the victim—survivor and walking beside her as she made her own choices. Eliza explained:

… when they leave a relationship, they can feel really lost. And because so much of their freedom has been taken away, the independence is almost overwhelming. In that context, you have much influence over the woman’s decision making. So, it is just about not pushing but guiding them and transitioning from maybe having someone fully control their life to actually making the right choices and holding their hand in that process.

Kathryn felt that one of her essential tasks as a feminist practitioner was to use her position and her education to assist victim—survivors with the language to name what was happening to them. She said:

To give them the power in that way, the power of language and being able to name specific tactics and how it would fit with [a] particular … intervention order condition or something like that. That is very helpful for women to hear because it gives them a strategic use of language to articulate what is going on. That is a kind of feminist practice in terms of giving power to someone to name their experience in a political sense.

While it is often unarticulated, practitioners noted their own practice wisdom when working with victim—survivors, and they often must trust their feelings of fear and foreboding. Jenny explained:

It’s not just a feeling; it’s based on that working knowledge … It is so weird, you speak to someone, and they say, “things are okay; things are fine”. And then the next person you speak to says the same thing. And you know. Something very insidious is happening here, something horrible. And you immediately kick into this mode that’s like, “I’m not your saviour in any space—you’re your own person; you have all of that strength”. But you’re using your instinct to also measure the risk and impart your knowledge.

While there is rightly a central focus on the victim—survivor as the expert in their own lives and that lived experience is a crucial aspect of survivor-led practice, it is also essential that the knowledge and expertise of practitioners are valued. Within their survivor-led practice, participants (some with more than 30 years of experience) detailed how their experience working with numerous women had provided them with specialised knowledge of women’s risks and safety. This specialised knowledge must be recognised as integral to understanding DV and survivor-led practice.

Freedom is Aspirational

While all the participants discussed freedom as something they have in their minds when working with victim—survivors, they felt that true freedom for women was largely aspirational or an as-yet-unrealised possibility. It is important to acknowledge that when practitioners discussed what brought them to DV work, the majority mentioned that they also had been subjected to forms of DV in their lives, either growing up with an abusive father or grandfather or having had an abusive intimate partner. Therefore, when talking about victim—survivors, their thoughts on freedom were informed by their societal positions as women and as victim—survivors themselves. Eliza articulated this duality when discussing her thoughts about freedom. She said:

I do think about women’s freedom a lot. I think about it in a really large-scale context in terms—like, we are still fighting. Every day is a fight. And I also reflect a lot within my personal life as well when I’m doing work. There is sort of a bit of internal struggle sometimes when I’m doing my work because I feel like sometimes, I have some of those struggles, too. Then I am telling women what freedom is, and this is what it looks like, and this is what they should aim for when maybe I cannot necessarily do that myself.

Eliza’s “internal struggle” illuminates the complexity of feminist work with victim—survivors. So much of this work is dedicated to assisting individual women with their safety and freedom, but as women themselves, practitioners must reflect on how many of these freedoms they have experienced. Brianna discussed this complexity, recognising that freedom for her is aspirational amid exploring what freedom might mean for practitioners in Australia who are living on colonised land. Brianna explained:

I guess the way I locate this work is maybe like from a macro perspective. I start with we live in a white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal society, and like Centrelink, our funding is very neoliberal, and how that’s going to impact what we can do. For me, women’s freedom is usually aspirational and probably unattainable in my lifetime. I try to focus on what people might call “little wins”, those small victories we might have. And I like to visualise those acts of resistance that women have done in the face of violence, and my own resistance against the systems. But really, while we all want to strive for that freedom on colonised land what does that mean for our clients?

An understanding of freedom as expressed in “little wins” was illustrated by a story that Kathryn recounted, which profoundly impacted her feminist practice. Early in her practice, she worked with a woman who had a partner controlling every aspect of her and her daughter's life. However, as Kathryn was conducting her risk assessment with the woman, she mentioned having 45 minutes of freedom every fortnight. The woman explained to Kathryn what this was:

She told me this beautiful story about how she would once a fortnight create this fake medical appointment to pick up her daughter from school and that was their cover story, but what they’d do is go to a food court and just eat whatever they wanted. They’d have 45 minutes of freedom together outside of his control at the food court.

Kathryn talked about the enormous impact this had on her personally and professionally:

I’ve always been attuned to those experiences since then, trying to work out ways in which women can stay attached to their sense of dignity and worth and self-respect and connections. That was a space for her to connect with her daughter and be free in that way, having a freer relationship outside of his control in those 45 minutes. I’ve never looked at a food court the same way. “Yay, there’s freedom now!” It is that micro-resistance and micro-freedom, almost. But it is still so meaningful, and I want to honour it as a feminist practitioner and have that sit alongside the bigger freedom issue as well.

Freedom for women was an aspirational aspect of the practitioner's work, yet woven throughout their discussions of freedom were ways to understand freedom as being found in the spaces of both their own and the victim—survivor’s resistance. The “little wins” and small moments of freedom recounted by Kathryn can be understood not only as an expression of women’s agency and creativity and the maintenance of autonomy even in conditions of totalitarian control but also as the momentary surfacing of suppressed possibilities for a different way of living. Moments of “micro-resistance” and “micro-freedom” by women were evidence that “bigger freedom” is possible even if it has yet to be realised.

Discussion

Practitioners described their survivor-led work with DV victim—survivors as part of their feminism. They understood that what they were doing was situated within a political framework and that multiple systems of oppression impacted victim—survivors. This feminism was expressed through their ethics of care with victim—survivors, where women’s experiences are central and their choices and voice are vital. This approach is not only focused on helping women and children escape the perpetrator but on mirroring respect and empowering them in the very nature of their conversations. They acknowledged that many of the organisations and institutions they worked within were not sympathetic or accepting of their feminist politics, and they had to be covert in how feminism impacted and guided their practice. While Baines et al. (2020, p. 14) argued that these “everyday acts of rebellion against uncaring may sustain much needed social bonds until larger social transformation comes about”, the freedom work of the DV advocates show us that social transformation also happens in these moments.

The participants understood freedom work as simultaneously practical and physical (securing a woman’s immediate safety from the perpetrator), psychological (empowering her to name and trust her own thoughts, feelings, and experiences, and to overcome the invalidation and imposition of the thoughts of the perpetrator), and systemic (employing their professional knowledge and expertise to support women to navigate and negotiate with the various systems and bureaucracies). They framed freedom work as a joint endeavour between themselves and the women, with each member of the partnership bringing their distinctive strengths, skills, and expertise to the work of expanding women’s space for action. However, they acknowledged that this partnership was shaped by, firstly, their own biographies as women and often victim—survivors of male violence, and, secondly, by larger structures and histories of gendered inequalities, colonisation, and other forms of oppression. From their own lived experience, they understood how structures and histories could be constraining.

In such a context, practitioners recognised that the substantive or “big” freedom that was their ultimate goal and hope for women was often aspirational, or potential, rather than actual. While they could work with women to secure practical and psychological freedom and draw on their knowledge of systems and services to benefit them, they had more expansive ambitions for the women than they could realise through professional practice alone. These ambitions included a world in which women were safe from violence and free to make their own choices, a world that is not yet a reality. While feminism has rightly had a focus on women’s oppression, there has concurrently always been an emphasis on women’s resistance and non-compliance (Dworkin, 1993). In such a context, being attuned to the “little wins” in which their clients found and secured moments of freedom for themselves and their children provided glimpses of an alternative society and a more hopeful future. The fact that a mundane setting such as a food court could provide a woman and her child with a sense of freedom beyond the perpetrator's violence and the inequalities that empowered him was an essential touchstone for one practitioner.

Integrated safety—freedom work was congruent with practitioners’ commitments to collaborative, survivor-led practice at the intersection between the lived experiences of the victim—survivor as well as the expertise of the practitioner. While drawing on the respective strengths of both victim—survivors and the advocates, there are times when safety work takes precedence over freedom work. Research findings show that victim—survivors are mainly accurate in their estimation of the risk of violence, there is evidence that they may underestimate homicide risk (Campbell et al., 2008). Murray and colleagues (2015, p. 387) suggest that victim—survivors’ exposure to chronic violence can produce a “desensitisation” or normalisation of violence that can unsight some survivors to the dangerousness of their situation. Therefore, a survivor-led practice needs to be a careful interaction between the lived experience of the victim—survivor, the knowledge and perceptions of the DV practitioner, and information gathered from other organisations, such as criminal records. The emphasise on survivor-led practice in the most recent “Australian National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children 2022–2032” is an encouraging example of integrating research, advocate expertise, and lived experience (Commonwealth of Australia, 2022).

Limitations

While this research has provided insight into the freedom work of feminist DV advocates in Australia, there are limitations to the findings. The main limitation of this work is that participants were self-selecting based on their interest in, and use of, feminist approaches to DV practice. While almost half of the participants were from culturally and linguistically diverse populations, no First Nations women participated. This means that a particularly critical vision of freedom within an Australian colonised context is missing from this research.

Conclusion

The role of feminism in creating a horizon of possibility and a vision of a better society was a recurrent theme throughout this study and called attention to the place of emancipatory politics in grounding freedom-focused and survivor-led professional practice. Their commitment to liberatory politics prompted workers to expand their focus beyond women’s safety to address women’s freedom. Without this dual focus, the bureaucratic prerogatives of risk assessment and management in DV practice can narrow the space for women’s choices and self-determination to secure their physical safety. A sole focus on “safety work” can leave women feeling constrained and unable to move and act freely, potentially supplanting or extending the perpetrator’s efforts to control and restrict her. An integrated practice of safety and freedom work recognises that women have the right and need to live a full life while acknowledging the risk posed to their safety and wellbeing by the perpetrator.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to the passionate and insightful advocates who took the time to share their expertise with us in this research.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).