Marginality and the New Geography of Domestic Violence Policy in Post-Communist Poland

The article explores the spatial distribution and institutional geography of domestic violence service provision in post-communist Poland. A new institutional geography providing services to victims of domestic violence is emerging in Poland as a result of NGO activism and new pro-woman policies implemented by the state. NGOs, often in partnership with local governments, are the most vital means of service provision in large and medium size cities, while in rural areas, public agencies predominate in the institutional geography of service provision. The assumption that NGOs will emerge to address the needs of victims of domestic violence is not realistic in rural areas. While urban Poland is developing an institutional geography to address domestic violence, state and NGO activists must focus on shrinking the rural margins of Poland’s institutional geography. Domestic Violence as Social Injustice Iris Marion Young (1990, p. 39) argues that ‘justice should refer not only to distribution, but also to the institutional conditions necessary for the development and exercise of individual capacities’. While most would agree that violence against a woman prevents her from developing and exercising her individual capacities, few people follow Young’s logic forward to consider how institutional conditions serve to make violence against women a systematic denial of social justice for women. Yet Young singles out violence as one of five particularly salient indicators of social injustice. She writes: What makes violence a phenomenon of social injustice, and not merely an individual moral wrong, is its systemic character, its existence as a social practice. . . . It is a social given that everyone knows happens and will happen again. . . . [It] approaches legitimacy, moreover, in the sense that it is tolerated. Often third parties find it unsurprising because it happens frequently and lies as a constant possibility at the horizon of the social imagination. Even when they are caught, those who perpetrate acts of group directed violence or harassment often receive light or no punishment. To that extent, society renders their acts acceptable. (Young, 1990, p. 62) Correspondence: Laura Brunell, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, AD Box 53, Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA 99204, USA. Email: [email protected] CGPC 120236—6/7/2005——157855 Gender, Place and Culture Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 293–316, September 2005 ISSN 0966-369X print/ISSN 1360-0524 online/05/030293-24 q 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd DOI: 10.1080/09663690500202533 Thus, the institutional responses to violence against women are an excellent gauge of the degree of social justice afforded women in a particular society. This article is a study of the institutional responses to domestic violence in postcommunist Poland. Amnesty International singled out the failure to effectively investigate and prosecute domestic violence cases, as well as the failure to protect victims from further violence, as one of the gravest human rights issues facing Poland today (Amnesty International, 2004, p. 1). Domestic violence is a Q1 phenomenon that affects an extraordinary number of women in Poland, with one in eight having been beaten by their partners and as many as 41 per cent of divorced women having been beaten by their former husbands (Amnesty International, 2004, p. 1). Between 1989 and the present, Poland experienced a restructuring of its economy and welfare state as well as its political system. During this time, the emergence of institutional means of addressing domestic violence allowed domestic violence to move from being an invisible social phenomenon to a public violation of women’s rights. An examination of institutional change in domestic violence reveals cases where women’s measure of social justice has increased and some where it has not changed at all. In other words, the development of an institutional geography to address domestic violence reveals the strengths and weaknesses of Poland’s post-communist state and civil society, as well as the unevenness of post-communist economic development. The Margins of Europe The literature on Eastern Europe is replete with terms such as ‘borderlands’, ‘periphery’, and ‘semi-periphery’. These terms are more than geographically descriptive; rather they define Eastern Europe as existing on the margins of the West. The East European states created by post-communism fit Hadjimichalis and Sadler’s (1995, p. 4) definition of marginality exceedingly well as they ‘are at the peripheries of dominant economic, political and cultural systems. They all carry the image and stigma of a marginality which becomes closely associated with indeed a defining characteristic of their actual identity’. Marginality, as well as the fear of remaining on the margins of Europe, has, indeed, become a defining feature of political discourse in post-communist Europe. Escaping the ‘margins’ has become a primary aim of post-communist political elites who frequently warn that if such-and-such a reform does not take place, their country will remain ‘on the margins of Europe’ (Polish News Bulletin, 2004; Scally, 2004; Baltic News Service, 2004; BBC Monitoring International Reports, 2003; MIA News Agency, 2002). Post-communist Europe’s marginality stems from the structure of its economy, especially its high rates of unemployment and its dependence on its agricultural sector. These structural differences between Eastern and Western Europe have not escaped the notice of policymakers in Western Europe. To the contrary, it is these differences that led EU negotiators to insist on phasing in agricultural subsidies to farmers in the new member countries (beginning at about 45% of the subsidy level afforded West European farmers in 2004). It has also led France and Germany, fearful of a deluge of migrant workers from the East, to implement quotas for work permits to be issued to Easterners. Likewise, the United Kingdom will require Eastern Europeans to work in the UK for 18 months before becoming eligible for social benefits. Thus, the structural differences between East and West CGPC 120236—6/7/2005——157855