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Abstract - Domestic violence occurs across all races and classes. However, women of color have a unique relationship to anti-violence programs and politics. Communities of color often advise women to keep silent about sexual and domestic violence to maintain a united front against racism. Unfortunately, racial justice organizing has generally focused on racism as it affects men and has often ignored the forms of racism and sexism that women of color face. By exploring select anti-domestic violence legislation proposed in the 2009 legislative session of the Maryland state legislature this paper examines how black women state legislators combine descriptive and substantive representation in their policy preferences of their minority women constituents.
ANTI-DOMESTIC VIOLENCE LEGISLATION
Black women may be the most cohesive demographic group within state legislatures. Survey research has indicated that African American women state legislators have distinct policy interests (Barrett 1995). Research by Edith Barrett (1995) has shown that African American women state legislators have a high degree of consensus in the types of legislation they prioritize. Since Barrett's path finding study, other scholars have also found high degrees of uniformity among black women's legislative preferences (Bratton, Haynie, and Reingold, 2006; Orey and Smooth et ah, 2006; Smooth, 2001). However, scholars have yet to investigate which factors, if any, may cause black women to diverge in their policy preferences from other legislators. As an intersectional analysis, this research pushes beyond race, class, and gender to add and critically examine generation as a salient category for analysis in a framework of intersectionality. By using select domestic legislation, I investigate the role of generational identity, legislators born in or prior to I960 and those born after I960, as a contributing factor in black women's policymaking within the Maryland General Assembly.
Domestic violence - also known as domestic abuse, spousal abuse, or intimate partner violence (ipv) - is broadly defined as a pattern of abusive behaviors by one or both partners in an intimate relationship including marriage, dating, family, friendship, or cohabitation. Since the 1990s anti-domestic violence activists have increasingly pushed for public condemnation for what had previously been considered a private matter. These activists attempted to make the personal political by challenging public perceptions of violence against women, as well as by securing legal...