Focus of "Innovations in Understanding Violence against Women"
2004 International Research & Action Conference
Sponsored by the Wellesley Centers for Women (WCW), this three-day meeting was designed to expand on existing research on violence against women. Its purpose is to build research collaborations that place women at the center of inquiry and advance the use of gender-relevant methods. The conference was designed for researchers, activists, advocates, and practitioners from the academic, NGO, CBO, and government domains who incorporate research in their work toward ending violence against women.
The event was held in Wellesley, Massachusetts, in the Northeastern United States at the Center for Executive Education at Babson College.
Focus of the conference
The major focus of this conference was to advance the understanding of violence against women by sharing, demonstrating, and promoting innovative concepts and research methodologies from around the world. Our goal is to build global collaborations to help prevent and ameliorate violence against women.
For the purpose of this conference, research is defined as work done at the grassroots level to collect information regarding the nature of violence in the community (e.g. by way of women’s narratives), documentation of women’s experiences with violence (e.g. NGO assessment of type and prevalence of violence), and qualitative and quantitative methods used by academic researchers. Violence against women is defined broadly to include interpersonal and family violence, gender-based community violence (e.g. trafficking women), and state sponsored violence (e.g. political or racial violence).
The conference included the presentation and discussion of quality research findings and successful approaches to the adaptation of academic based research methods in ways that make this research more contextually relevant, particularly to the understanding of violence against women in the majority world.