Planning with care: Violence prevention policy at the intersection of invisibilities

Highlights

• Ignoring violence in private space makes women invisible, which along with spatial disadvantage, marginalises them further.

• Care ethics supports a capabilities approach, and can address this invisibility though social or housing policy

• Using a care ethics framework, two planning case studies are analysed using a gendered violence prevention lens.

• Both policy streams represent a conceptual advance, however, an understanding of women's intersectional needs is limited

• Further directions for integrating care ethics in the framing, implementation and monitoring of planning policy are suggested

Abstract

Violence against women has long occupied public/private debates in planning scholarship. Ignoring violence in private space makes women invisible, which along with spatial disadvantage, can marginalise them further. Care ethics is increasingly influencing global political action through a capabilities approach, and can potentially address this invisibility through its translation to social or housing policy. In this article, we develop a care ethics framework, and apply it to two planning case studies using a gendered violence prevention lens: the Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) and the State of Victoria's Homes for Victorians housing strategy. Using a three-fold analysis based on problem framing, implementation and impact, we show that while both streams represent a conceptual advance, they lack a nuanced understanding of women's needs and ability for self-determination. The absence of consideration of intimate partner or structural violence, along with an inadequate conceptualisation of geographic access and the impact of intersectional barriers, leads to inadequate service provision and fails to address fundamental inequalities created by market-based responses. We conclude by suggesting further directions for integrating care ethics in the framing, implementation and monitoring of planning policy.

Introduction

Care ethics, derived from moral theory and feminist discourse, is increasingly influencing global political action through a capabilities approach (Nussbaum, 2011). While care ethics has been applied to individual and population health policy (Barnes, 2012; Milligan & Wiles, 2010), the approach has not translated broadly into other spatialised policy fields, such as social planning or housing (Stensöta, 2015). This may be because of a gender-biased binary of “care” being confined to the domestic sphere, while “rights” are associated with the public sphere of policy and governance (Williams, 2016, 821).

There is an opportunity to rethink the role of care ethics in integrated urban and regional policy through the adoption of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN, 2015). Parnell (2016) argues that Goal 11, focusing on the role of cities in sustainable development, combines a rights-based and capabilities-based approach, opening the door for new perspectives on governance. Given substantive criticism that a universal “public interest” in public policy is difficult to define (Fincher, 2007, 41), care ethics that places value on individual experience and interactions (van den Heuvel, Nullens, & Roothaan, 2018) could provide an alternate lens with which to rethink public policy as a central actor in developing all peoples' capabilities.

One area where planning policy response continues to be weak is in addressing violence in its varied forms (Lacey, Miller, Reeves, & Tankel, 2013). Despite programmes that address community safety in public space, planning policy responses continue to be “stuck at the front door” through an unhelpful ontological and gendered divide between public and private violence, the former associated with public policy, the latter with the domestic sphere (Whitzman, 2007, 2715; Domosh, 1998). Planning continues to be very weak when it comes to supporting an intersectional understanding of “the complex ways in which multiple and interlocking inequities [including those based on gender, race, and differing abilities] are organized and resisted in the process, content, and outcomes of policy” (Hankivsky & Jordan-Zachery, 2019, 1–2).

In Australia, policy research has been critiqued as lacking “discussion about the impact of policy structures and contexts on services for women exposed to violence” (Burnett, Ford-Gilboe, Berman, Ward-Griffin, & Wathen, 2015, 6). Frohmader and Sands (2015) note the national failure to provide an integrated housing, health, social service, and income support framework. This echoes recent work that suggests poor integration across policy sectors has negative impacts on the social determinants of health (Lowe, Whitzman, & Giles-Corti, 2018), and, more broadly, that this public/private divide can reinforce “political, social and cultural power relations over time and space … [contributing to] gendered macro-level determinants of health” (Frye, Putnam, & O'Campo, 2008, 617–19).

This article will highlight how such failures in Australian urban policy are symptomatic of a care-less response to gendered violence. We propose a care ethics lens as a basis for policy analysis, using two case studies of planning and housing policy in relation to violence: Australia's National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) service provision for women with disabilities and complex needs facing violence; and the Royal Commission into Family Violence (RCFV) in the Australian state of Victoria and subsequent Homes for Victorians housing strategy initiatives that integrate housing needs with health and social supports for women and children survivors of violence. We conclude by proposing how integrated and collaborative planning mechanisms might support a more relational and care-informed approach to violence prevention in housing and social policy. In doing so, the authors will highlight how such a lens might help policy-makers avoid essentialist and instrumental approaches in favour of more reflexive, inclusive and sustainable policy pathways.