1. Objectifs

Intentions :
«The purpose of the study underlying the current paper was to analyse the evolution of domestic violence shelters practices in Quebec (Canada) from the 1970s up until today, and the current article focuses on the issue of men’s inclusion as workers or administrators in these resources.» (p. 376)

2. Méthode

Échantillon/Matériau :
«The data collection was conducted in three stages: an exploratory interview, a documents analysis and semi-structured individual interviews.» (p. 376) The exploratory interview was conducted with one key informant which «had extensive knowledge of the research topic as she has been working in the field of domestic violence for over 30 years.» (p. 376) The corpus for analysis consists in 53 documents produced by the two umbrella organisations of shelters in the province of Québec. Finally, «48 semi-structured individual interviews were conducted between December 2014 and June 2015. The participants were classified into three categories: pioneers, veterans and workers […]. Pioneers (n=8) were women who, between 1975 and 1985, have either opened a domestic violence shelter, contributed to the development of the first coalition of shelters, or developed intervention guidelines for domestic violence shelters’ workers. Veterans (n=7) were women who, between 1975 and 1985, have been involved as employees, volunteers, interns or activists in a domestic violence shelter but did not ‘fit’ the criteria of the pioneers, as stated above. […] Shelter workers (n=33) had between six and 28 years of experience at the time of the interview and were either doing direct work in a shelter or employed in one of the two umbrella organisations.» (p. 377)

Type de traitement des données :
Analyse de contenu

3. Résumé

«First, a set of participants refuse to include men as workers inside the shelter and in any initiative outside the shelter, including as administrators. Their main argument is that inevitably, men exert power and reproduce domination in their relationship with women and that they disrupt women’s spaces. Pioneers and veterans also believed that since men hold power and use it to dominate and abuse, they had to ensure that no men would infiltrate their space in order for it to remain safe. For them, the notion of ‘men’ was associated with ‘power’ and ‘oppression’. […] Therefore, according to these participants, shelters can only remain safe spaces if they are kept women-only spaces. […] Second, another group of participants believe that including men could be rather beneficial and offered a different stance to justify their perspectives. Some of them thought that men can be included as allies outside the shelters, such as on the board of directors and as co-facilitators in awareness-raising programmes in schools. Though not explicitly stated, their rationale underlies concerns for safety, equality, solidarity and social justice. For instance, including a male police officer on a board of directors appeared as a logical and pragmatic response to increase the safety of women and children in a specific community.» (p. 385)