Action against marital violence in Taiwan -Analysis on feminist social work perspective

• Main Authors: Lin, Pei-chin, 林佩瑾
• Other Authors: Lin Wan-I
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 1997
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/76376446377529758507

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 社會學系研究所 === 85 === In the past, wife battering in Taiwan has been regarded as a normal pheno menon that men have the privilege of controlling over women. Even though nowad ays, it''s still taken for an accidental and private affair. It displays our mi sunderstanding and displacement of the core of marital violence. Therefore, my dissertation shows the utility of a feminist theoretical framework for analys is of action against marital violence in Taiwan. It contains two main parts: o ne is the structure of action development- bothand outside forces, the other i s making explorations into feminist ideology of actors. To attain the purpose of my research, my approach to this feminist questi on is qualitative. In other words, I use historical method which depends on in -depth interview and analysis of secondary data. According to my central find ing, it becomes clear that just as the problem of marital violence cannotbe er adicated as long as men have power in the family and in the society andmaintai n patriarchal patterns of male/female relations. The issue of maritalviolence is seldom discussed in public. Thanks to such marginalization, itlowers the st renghth of action and one''s desire to participate in. This is whyit lacks of m ajor actors to take action. In view of its unsteadiness, the coalition is fragile. The automaticdivis ion without formal concordance brings forth that battered women servicenetwork is broken and its power is weak. Moreover, action against marital violence in heritsthe elite character of middle class from women movement.It also forms pu blic opinions by means of the media. Although women groupshave not been depoli ticized any more, the cooperation between government andprivate coalition is n ot clear and concert. At last part, I focus on theideology of practicians and social workers who take the place of battered women to be the major role of ac tion. Itry to check if they are one part of the problem in the service process . Generally speaking, practicians and socialworkers in Taiwan are not used to exposing them selves to feminist theories and practices. They know less about feminism or just learn about it by informalways. So they prefer to accept sele ctively two important concepts of feminist social work: empowering women and a rousing women whic has become main principle and belief in working with batter ed women. Maybe they face some difficulties in practice,but they still tend t o foster the mole of feminist social work. For all that there are a lot of difficulties in the process of developme nt of action against marital violence in Taiwan, for instance, it is short of resources and its members are divided, whole action gets former achieve to gre et a key period. If actors were more open and active to make their efforts toe xplain marital violence in a feminist perspective and take a feminist strategy ,it would turn passive to active, marginalized to centralized, and take future action against patriarchal violence. Finally,I make feminist suggestions to b roaden action against marital violence and expec that other researchers will s tudy and discuss the reason whyhy battered women in Taiwan haven''t been the c oreof the actors. As far as a national movement i s concerned, we have to adop t experiences from other areas in Taiwan besides Taipei in order to offer a mo re perfect suggestion.