Content warning: this blog post contains description of domestic abuse and sexual violence. Please read with care – information on where to find support is listed at the end of this blog.
He’d drive me to and from work and people would say “oh that’s great, he takes you places and all that “but I knew why he was doing it, it was so he knew where I was.
Scotland’s response to male violence against their wives, partners or girlfriends has come a long way since the 1970s when ‘wives’ were ‘battered’, failed to protect their children and police didn’t get involved in ‘domestics’. Forty years since the publication of Violence against Wives – A Case against the Patriarchy, new legislation – The Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018 – criminalised coercive control, and reflects Scotland’s long journey towards a deeper understanding of this complex and enduring problem.
Whatever it is called, men’s violence against women has been a reality in Scotland for centuries. My oral history research into domestic abuse in post-war Scotland shed some light on how we got from ‘battered wives’ in the 1970s to ‘coercive control’ in the 21st century. I interviewed a number of women born between the 1940s and the 1960 from the towns, cities and villages of Scotland and professionals and policy makers working in the police, courts, social work and government from the 1970s to the 1990s.
Changing times
The women I spoke to were dating, getting married or moving in with their boyfriends when Scotland was experiencing fairly dramatic and contrasting social and economic change. From the 1960s to the 1980s, the country’s traditional heavy industries declined, male unemployment rose and more women entered the workforce. In the 1960s and 1970s, progressive legislation was advancing women’s reproductive rights and equality in relation to abortion, pay, maternity leave and sex discrimination. Marriage was still the norm, despite the so-called ‘sexual revolution’ of the 1960s which had begun to challenge the conventional mores of young people’s sexual relationships.
In 1979, Margaret Thatcher became Britain’s first female Prime Minister when the new Conservative government was elected. However, Mrs. Thatcher did not express allegiance to feminism or support for women’s equality; the Conservative’s neoliberal politics were profoundly patriarchal and based on her party’s traditional family-centred values of individualism and traditional gender roles. These policies stalled the progressive trend of legislation and the promotion of women’s social and workplace rights which had begun in the late 1960s. Freedom and citizens’ rights were reframed as consumption; as Thatcher said,
…who is society? There is no such thing! …There are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first.
Family life, work and violence
By the 1970s and 1980s, the women in my study had become teachers, nurses, accountants, health professionals, civil servants and administrators. Settling into family life, having children and women returning to work meant family incomes and standards of living gradually rose as home and car ownership, family holidays and home improvements were made possible through joint loans and mortgages. However, these same women continued to experience domestic abuse – physical, emotional, sexual and financial – whilst juggling demanding jobs, childcare, housework, parenting, family debt and the need to ‘keep up appearances’.
A new financial balance of power challenged the patriarchal family conventions which the women and their husbands had absorbed since childhood. Historically, men’s higher status in the family came from their role as the main breadwinner and violence and abuse was a common practice for enforcing the traditional family pecking order.
By the 1980s and 1990s, with women’s earnings now essential to the family budget and to maintaining their living standards, the function and the way the men used violence began to change. Easier access to credit led to home ownership and mortgages; higher spending, and mounting family debt created ever more complex family finances which further entrapped the women. Women lived their lives with the constant threat of severe physical and sexual violence and described wearing a ‘mask’ at work and in public.
Men devised new ways to extend their control as women’s working and social lives took them outwith the home on a daily basis. Cars and telephones made surveillance easier: husbands telephoned women’s workplaces to check they had arrived, drove them to and from their work and social events and were able to check itemised telephone bills.
My friends would say, ‘”D’ye know it’s so nice, he phones to see if she’s made it to her work.” I says, “Naw he wisnae phoning to see if I’d made it to work he was checking up on me”.
He used to phone the college to make sure I was there.
Men decided if women could attend social events alone; refused to look after their own children; scrutinised their partner’s clothes and insulted their appearance.
I had to show him everything I bought. If it wisnae good enough, I had to return it. If I was going out I was asked, “What are you wearing?”. If he felt the party we were at was going on and too many people were paying attention to me I was sent home wi’ the kids.
Women’s movements were monitored and curfews curtailed nights out with punishments meted out if they were late.
It’s one o’clock in the morning, a friend dropped me off after a night out with my pals and he’s standing waving at the window and I got in and I got a doin’… my whole night ruined.
Women were subjected to jealous outbursts and some were raped for speaking to other men in their husband’s presence, or because they were suspected of flirting.
I was quite attractive and I got a lot of attention and of course I would be blamed for that attention you know what I mean, you don’t have to do anything you know.
It is possible to see from these narratives how being a ‘battered wife’ in the confines of the home evolved into being subjected to ‘coercive control’ – a constant, invisible presence in every area of the women’s public and private lives.
While advances in women’s equality, better jobs and higher wages broadened women’s horizons, the violence and abuse did not end. The patriarchal legacy was alive and well and domestic abuse survived into the late twentieth century by adapting successfully to changing times.
From private violence to public prevention
The gradual emergence of a critique of domestic abuse and the need for supportive public services for women led by the Scottish Women’s Liberation, Women’s Aid and Rape Crisis movements and the work of the Dobashes began to enter the public consciousness by the late 1980s and early 1990s. However, these developments barely registered with the women I interviewed. In the absence of a widespread public debate, the women struggled to explain the abuse they were experiencing, remained fearful of disclosing the abuse to outsiders, immersed as they were in longstanding conventions of family privacy and fear of the consequences. However, while patriarchal norms were proving tenacious but adaptable to contemporary social and economic change, so too were the women.
With no help from the police or other services, with society still largely hostile to their situation and fearful of reprisals from their abusive partners/husbands, the women finally freed themselves and their children by devising carefully planned, long-term exit plans, helped only by a small circle of trusted family and friends and which they financed themselves.
The first public Zero Tolerance campaign, which launched in Edinburgh in 1992, showed Scottish women that their private hell was becoming public business.
I remember seeing big Z-Z-Zs… how empowering that would have felt to me in 1986 to have seen that, that would have just made such a difference.
The women I interviewed lived in a time of transition when public discourses and awareness of domestic abuse was in its infancy. It began to emerge as a public issue when conventions of family privacy, non-disclosure and non-interference in family business were still dominating the practices and policies of public services as well as women’s own consciousness. My research showed that the importance of having a vigorous public critique and structural explanations of domestic abuse for women living with violence and abuse cannot be underestimated. Without it, women endure in isolation. Public challenges to domestic abuse explain, reassure, offer hope and the prospect of justice.
This is the fourth in a series of essays published in spring/summer 2021 to accompany a webinar series hosted by Scottish Women’s Aid during April and May 2021. Forthcoming titles in the series:
- Police, criminal justice and social work responses to domestic abuse in post-war Scotland.
- Getting free – the impact of domestic abuse and leaving an abusive relationship in the 1960s-1990s
Dr Anni Donaldson
Twitter: @AnniDonaldson
Website: www.glasgowanni.com
If you feel scared of your partner or ex-partner, or if you are worried about someone you know, get in touch with Scotland’s 24-hour Domestic Abuse and Forced Marriage Helpline on 0800 027 1234 for support and information. You can also email and web chat from www.sdafmh.org.uk. There are translation and interpreting services available.
