Reimaging the policing of gender violence: Lessons from women's police stations in Brasil and Argentina

Abstract

The criminalization of domestic violence during the 1970s and 1980s was lauded by feminists as a victory, as the state taking responsibility for the safety of women. The problem was that its regulation was delegated to a masculinist judicial system and its policing delegated to a militarized and masculinized police service that left victims disappointed, re-victimized or disbelieved. Our paper investigates how to re-imagine the policing of victims / survivors of gender-based violence from a women-centered perspective. Drawing on secondary and primary empirical research on women's police stations (WPS), that first emerged in Brazil in 1985 and Argentina in 1988, this paper investigates whether this model could offer an innovative remedy to the masculinized ill-equipped traditional models of policing of gender -based violence. Framed by southern theory our project reverses the notion that knowledge / policy transfer should flow from the Anglophone countries of the Global-North to the Global-South. Our project aimed to discover, firstly, how women's police stations - a unique invention of the Global-South, respond to and prevent gender-based violence and, secondly, what aspects could inform the development of new approaches to policing and prevention of gender- based violence elsewhere in the world. We conclude that this uniquely South American innovation might serve as an inspiration to Australia and elsewhere in the world struggling with the shadow pandemic of gender violence. Our paper draws on original empirical and historical research undertaken in Brazil,