Women's Movement In The 1970s

Before the 1970s, judges and police offices still saw wife beating as a trivial offense, police officers would tell the husbands to calm down and wives to stop annoying them, and cases rarely came to court. Popular culture depicted wife beating as a joke, and psychiatrists saw it as a pathology of underclass. In the 1970’s feminist documented the widespread incidence of wife beatings and asserted that it was not just the working-class husbands who assaulted their wives but all classes of men. (Clark) During most of these times women were sees as property of the husband as well as the children.

Civil rights and anti-war movements in the 1950s and 1960s challenged the country and laid the foundation for the feminist movement. As women gained more ground in the 1970’s, spousal abuse became a public issue. The battered women’s movement was put in to the public arena because of three social movements that were already under way: women’s liberation, women’s health, and anti-rape …show more content…
Currently, there are approximately 1,900 local domestic violence programs and State domestic violence coalitions in every State, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. In addition, there is significant policy reform, funding for violence against women research, and increased public awareness of a once hidden part of daily life for countless women and their children. (House, n.d.)
The question most ask who exactly is affected by Domestic Violence. With 1in 4 women victimized by domestic violence in her lifetime, each of us knows someone who has been affected, where we know it or note, the survivor may be a family member, a coworker, someone who worships with you, a friend or an acquaintance. (Violence, n.d.) Domestic violence occurs in every culture, country and age group. It affects people from all social economic educational,