Hear Our Collective Voices! Mother Survivors and Activist Movement to End Violence Against Women with Children

Authors

  • Pat Breton York University
  • Eva Kratochvil
  • Paula Lang

Abstract

This article examines the experiences of women with children fleeing violence and survivor-activists in Ontario. Mothers are speaking out about systemic barriers and diminishing state support for women and their children fleeing violence within state systems responsible for protecting them. Lack of safe, affordable housing and universal child care supports and policing and child welfare interventions that fail to support women and their children’s safety are most harshly realized by Indigenous, racialized, and low-income women with children seeking violence-free lives (Cull; Mann; Greaves et al.; Sinclair). Our aim is to shed light on state systems failing women with children fleeing violence; state policies retrenching race, gender, and class inequalities; and alternative accountability models for survivor-activists organizing to address systemic oppression. We argue that survivor activism in Ontario is crucial both within and outside the state to drive fundamental change and state accountability for violence against women at community and provincial levels.

Author Biographies

Pat Breton, York University

Pat Breton is a PhD candidate in gender, feminist, and women’s studies at York University, Toronto, Ontario. Her research areas are violence against women, public policy of unwaged caring labour, mother and child welfare, and neoliberalism. Her work has been published in the Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community, and the 2014 edited work, Mothering in the Age of Neoliberalism.

Eva Kratochvil

Eva Kratochvil is a shelter worker and Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal recipient. She participated in Mapping the Blueprint for a National Action Plan on Violence Against Women (2014). Eva was among invited delegates who attended the Global Campaign for Violence Prevention Meeting (World Health Organization) in Geneva, Switzerland, in 2015 and in Ottawa, Canada, in 2017.

Paula Lang

Paula Lang, RSW, MSW, is a social worker and sessional professor in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. She is an activist and co-founder of Freedom Sisters Sault Ste. Marie. As a single mother of two daughters, she is passionate about ending violence against women in her northern community.

Downloads

How to Cite

Breton, P., Kratochvil, E., & Lang, P. (2017). Hear Our Collective Voices! Mother Survivors and Activist Movement to End Violence Against Women with Children. Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement, 8(1-2). Retrieved from https://jarm3.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/jarm/article/view/40453