Third Wave Feminist Analysis

The final decade of the 20th century yielded many changes as a result of the third-wave feminist movement. In 1993, the United Nations enacted the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women which called religious and cultural customs an excuse for gender-based violence (Goldscheid, 2008). In the early ‘90s, the Surgeon General referred to domestic violence as a threat to the health of Americans and in a similar move, the American Medical Association created a campaign targeted at ending domestic violence (Eisler, 1992). Taking its first formal stance on the issue, the outcry of the people lead the United States to pass the Violence Against Women Act in 1994. The third wave of feminism is most commonly associated with the push

Furthermore, many felt that the money intended to fund the act would have been better spent elsewhere (Schroeder, 1996). However, a cost benefit analysis published in 2002 argues otherwise. While the cost of the bill is explicitly stated, the costs that victims of gender-based crime would endure without the bill must be estimated so it’s important to understand how this analysis was done before looking at the results. These cost estimations were done using the gross-cost approach meaning they are based on aggregate costs rather than individual costs (Clark, Biddle, & Martin, 2002). The researchers pulled cost data from various other studies therefore they converted all monetary values into 1998 dollars. According to their analysis, a fatal crime would cost $4,474,501 per woman, rape and sexual assault would cost $103,560 per woman. and nonfatal assault would result in $32,780 worth of damages per woman (Clark, Biddle, & Martin, 2002). They then multiplied the estimated costs for these gender based crimes among others by the number of expected victims of that crime based on each crime’s probability. In total, the Violence Against Women Act would save $14.8 billion in costs to probable victims while only costing $1.6 billion itself therefore proving that the act is efficient (Clark, Biddle, & Martin,

Immigrant women were not protected by VAWA until the reauthorization in 2000 that included the Battered Immigrant Women’s Protection Act. Noncitizen immigrant victims have the right to self-petition, cancellation of removal and battered spouse/child waiver (Busch-Armendariz, 2012). Self-petition allows immigrants who married American citizens to apply for permanent residence if they were victims of domestic violence. Cancelation of removal protects immigrants that are victims of gender-based violence from being deported. The battered waiver is for immigrants with a green card, and it waives the conditional permanent residency requirement for victims of gender-based violence. Also included in the reauthorization of 2000 were protections for elderly and disabled women and grants for transitional housing for victims of gender-based violence (Laney, 2010). Most recently, VAWA was to be reauthorized in 2012 however it included protection for the LGBT community, of which House Republicans were not supportive. The Senate voted to pass the reauthorization and in response, the House passed a bill that would negate all the new protections that would be authorized by the Senate’s vote. This conflict forced the bill to expire as it had not passed through both houses in time, leaving all Americans, regardless