Understanding Gender Violence: A Comprehensive Approach

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 exploration of recent efforts to end gender violence. It introduces the common dynamics shared by all forms of gender violence and offers definitions of each type. Freitag then explores the prevalence of gender violence across various cultural intersections and establishes the impact of this issue from the individual to the global level. The text then explains how cultural ideas about gender lead to gender violence and its widespread acceptance. It reveals how factors like difficult life experiences and underdeveloped social and emotional skills contribute to the problem. Finally, Freitag debunks common misperceptions and offers starting points for responding to the realities of gender violence. Throughout the text, case studies drawn from pop culture and the author’s own work connect key ideas to real world scenarios. A comprehensive framework offers seasoned professionals a way to reframe and address gender violence with more efficiency, collaboration, and success than ever before. 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.

Jennifer Freitag, PhD, is senior lecturer of communication at University of Dayton. For fifteen years, she has been involved in anti-oppression and gender violence prevention and response work. She is the creator of ＂I Want My Jacket Back,＂ an interactive lecture that uses stand-up musical comedy to facilitate dialogue about gender violence.

Freitag has extensive experience working in and with nonprofit agencies, city and county sexual assault response teams, PreK-12 school districts, college campuses, law enforcement and criminal justice agencies, and community groups. Jenn has directed prevention programs and been invited to speak, perform, and facilitate workshops at a variety of college campuses, academic conferences, and statewide conferences for agencies devoted to gender violence prevention and response.

She has published in Violence Against Women, Women and Language, and the Texas Speech Communication Journal. She is also the founding editor of Pedagogy & Theatre of the OppressedJournal, a peer-reviewed publication that bridges the work of educators, activists, and academics, which she continues to support as an associate editor and reviewer.