Understanding Domestic Violence As a Gender-based Human Rights Violation: National and International Contexts

Examining the prevalent issue of domestic violence, this book breaks down the reasons behind the ineffectiveness of existing human rights instruments and the gaps in current legal systems failing those in need. Through a variety of key case studies, it reveals significant gaps in the legal conceptualisation of domestic violence between human rights standards on the one hand and the national legal systems examined―those of Ireland and Lithuania―on the other.

The book reveals that, contrary to gender-based universal human rights approaches and despite recent legislative reforms, the legal concept of domestic violence is gender-blind. It fails to capture gender-based empirical realities on the ground, rendering national legal systems devoid of an empirically informed theoretical basis for addressing the problem. Despite the differences in the contextual backgrounds of the two case study countries, the legislation on domestic violence is underpinned by patriarchal beliefs in both.

This book employs a gender-based examination of the issue that will be of key interest to scholars, legal practitioners, civil society actors, and students of feminist legal theory, gender equality, gender in international law, gender and human rights and conceptual democracy.

Jurgita Bukauskaitė, PhD (Irish Research Council Scholar), is a lecturer and researcher in the Irish Centre for Human Rights and the School of Law at the University of Galway. Jurgita’s research interests and expertise focus on gender equality, the concept of gender in international law, gender and democracy, gender-based violence (with particular emphasis on violence against women, including domestic violence) as a human rights violation and applied research on gender-based violence. Her academic experience has been merged with a lengthy practical engagement in domestic violence advocacy non-governmental organisation at the governance level.