Publishing in May 2021, a captivating new book by renowned activist and scholar Gill Hague follows the inspiring story of the domestic violence movement in the UK and internationally from the 1960s to today.

Gill Hague has been a campaigner for women's rights for 50 years and has been involved in international projects across the world, from India and Uganda to Iraqi Kurdistan. For her life’s work on gender violence, she has received both an Emma Humphreys Memorial Prize and a CBE (which she accepted, but with extreme trepidation about the outdated names).

Her new book pulls back the curtain on the important part that many women’s activists, including herself, played in establishing the movement. Memories, poems and interviews with activists, practitioners and abuse survivors shed new light on a period of immense change, shaped by this generation of feminist pioneers.

You can hear from Gill all about her book 'History and Memories of the Domestic Violence Movement', at our event on 10 June on Collective Action & Movement Building. Register to attend here.

Gill Hague said, “Since the late 1960s, this has been a brave and powerful women’s history of struggle and change which is in danger of being forgotten. I hope that recording and assessing it will help to encourage younger women and today’s practitioners and activists to continue the world-wide struggle against domestic abuse and other forms of violence against women.”

From the start of the women’s liberation movement until today, this book showcases the campaigning zeal on which policies, services and awareness-raising on gendered violence in the UK and across the world were built, including for Black and minority women. 

Pragna Patel of Southall Black Sisters - a ground-breaking women’s organisation established in 1979 to meet the needs of Black (Asian and African-Caribbean) women - said, "Gill Hague’s marvellous book maps a critical period of feminist struggles in the UK, capturing their diversity, vision, passion, creativity and energy… If we are to defend the gains that have been made and build on them in future struggles for women’s liberation and wider social justice, we must know what came before us. A must-read."

This fascinating and moving history will inform and inspire new ways forward within the domestic violence movement. 

About Gill Hague

Gill Hague is Professor Emerita of Violence Against Women Studies at the University of Bristol and has been an activist, practitioner and researcher on violence against women nationally and internationally since the early 1970s. She was a founder of the Centre for Gender and Violence Research, School for Policy Studies at University of Bristol and has over 130 publications on violence against women including eight books.

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