Abstract

SUMMARY Feminist therapists, researchers, activists and scholars have long recognized that power differentials can have serious, sometimes fatal, consequences for women and children. Documenting the prevalence of problems such as rape, wife battering, and childhood sexual abuse, feminists began to dismantle social beliefs about gender, class and race that too often protect perpetrators of violence and blame victims for their own suffering. The authors cited (Burgess, Brownmiller, Herman, Koss, Harvey, NiCarthy, and Root) have combined scholarship with social activism to address the needs of the abused and develop social approaches to preventing violence.