![]() ![]() The reported prevalence of physical abuse within the last year was 13.3 per cent, and that of sexual abuse within the last year was 8.5 per cent. The reported lifetime prevalence of physical abuse was 43.3 per cent, and that of sexual abuse was 32.2 per cent. ![]() In 2005, Whitehead and Fanslow (2005: 321) found in a survey of women attending an abortion service that the reported lifetime prevalence of physical or sexual abuse was 50.8 per cent. The prevalence of intimate partner violence in the population attending abortion services has been explored in several contexts. These actions included controlling access to contraceptives, sabotaging contraception usage, pregnancy coercion and controlling access to abortion services. Recently, Burry et al (2020) reported findings from an Aotearoa New Zealand survey and interviews that outlined the ways in which agency in reproductive decision making was diminished by coercive control actions by violent partners. In Aotearoa New Zealand, two studies have made links between seeking an abortion and intimate partner violence. Morriss (2018: 821) notes that such policies are framed as producing financial outcomes: ‘controlling the reproductive lives of working-class mothers in ways which curtail future claims upon the state is construed as a policy solution to the imagined (moral) problem of their “failed parenting” and “welfare dependency”’.Ĭoercive control is well understood as a feature of intimate partner violence, but less prominent in the literature is the role of control over fertility in such dynamics. In some programmes set up to support women who have children in care, accepting long-acting contraception is a requirement ( Broadhurst et al, 2015 Morriss, 2018) and contraceptive prescribing may be shaped by racist assumptions and other biases of health professionals ( Higgins et al, 2016 Grzanka and Schuch, 2020). For women caught up in child protection systems, pregnancy is often problematised as not in women’s best interests, may be seen as an impediment to their case and is a time of uncertainty and distress because ‘their hopes about the unborn baby belonging within the family were not necessarily shared by child protection professionals’ ( Critchley, 2019: 141). In the large and ever-growing literature on these social problems, it is rare that fertility and, in particular, reproductive rights are mentioned. There are many significant issues of concern for women that preoccupy social work, among others: violence against women and its impact on safe housing ( Zufferey et al, 2016) women with disabilities ( Muster, 2020) surviving disasters ( First et al, 2017) and the terrible toll on women of child protection interventions ( Morriss, 2018 Broadhurst and Mason, 2019). ![]() In their recent literature review on the contemporary dynamics of gender in Australian social work, Jones et al (2019) conclude that gender is under-researched in Australian social work and that feminist literature is largely siloed in specialist journals, such as Affilia. ![]() As far back as the 1970s, a potential for gender-related content in social work education to be minimised was recognised as a challenge for social work to address at the professional-body level ( Greubel, 2021). It is well established that social work practice and education is numerically dominated by women, and generally held that men dominate in leadership positions, though it is often difficult to provide accurate statistics ( Jones et al, 2019). ![]()
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