Sundari Anitha
Biographic Data
| ID | 308462 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sundari Anitha |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sundari |
| FAMILY NAME | Anitha |
| SIGNATURE | ANITHA S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Lincoln |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6918-3680 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 39 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 244 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 37 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
A matter of trust? Policing violence against women and girls
There is limited research on how police engage with racially minoritised victims and survivors of violence against women and girls (VAWG), particularly VAWG that occurs at the intersection of race and gender. This article begins to address that gap examining police handling of these cases, as well as police constructions of the barriers they face and what works. Drawing on a mixed-methods approach – including focus groups with 52 police officers …
Conceptualising Coercion in Child/Forced Marriage Through an Intersectional lens
This article examines the nature and the forms of coercion in the forced marriage of minors in the United States. We explore: (i) direct emotional or physical force exercised by parents which is commonly underpinned by dominant constructions of gender and sexuality, a well-rehearsed theme in existing scholarship; (ii) the hitherto unexamined role of intersecting socio-economic disadvantages in vitiating consent; and (iii) how state policies/pract…
Exploring victim-survivors’ lived experiences of coercion and coercive contexts in forced marriage
Polish women's experiences of domestic violence
Health and Occupational Hazards Among Women Rag Pickers in Chennai Dump Yards
This study looks at the health and work-related problems faced by women ragpickers in Chennai’s two largest dumping grounds, Kodungaiyur and Pallikaranai. The research used a cross-sectional survey approach. Out of an estimated 525 women, 351 were randomly selected and interviewed with a structured questionnaire. The findings show that more than half of these women suffer from serious health problems linked to their work, mainly breathing trouble…
Im/mobility as a form of gender-based violence
Transnational marriage abandonment (TMA) of women is a growing form of violence reported across India and South Asia. The spouse, most commonly a husband, lives and works in a foreign country and exploits the advantages derived from his citizenship or visa status to exercise coercion and control over the immigrating wife. TMA takes different forms, including when a woman is left behind with the in-laws while waiting for the husband to provide vis…
Intersecting Margins
This article explores the living and working conditions of women ragpickers in Chennai’s biggest dumpyards, Kodungaiyur and Pallikaranai. Based on a survey of 351 women, the study finds that most live in constant economic insecurity, with what they earn each month almost fully spent on daily needs. There is little scope for savings, and many rely on loans to manage everyday expenses. Educational levels are very low, as 71.5% of the women cannot r…
Upskirting
Upskirting’ – the non-consensual taking and/or dissemination of intimate images taken surreptitiously up a skirt – is a relatively new addition to the repertoire of men’s violence against women and girls. Recently, it has received considerable media and public attention in many countries and some academic scrutiny. This systematic review explicates how scholars construct upskirting as a matter for academic inquiry and a social problem that requir…
Gender violence or tradition
The news media play an important role in influencing public perceptions and raising awareness of an issue. This research analyzes media framing of child/forced marriage through an examination of six US national newspapers over a ten-year period. It probes how narratives are constructed based on issue perception, blame attribution, and protagonist perceptions. It finds that print media has afforded increasing coverage to minimum marriage age legis…
The politics of naming and construction
The problematisation of a social phenomenon is a political process that both constructs the problem and, in doing so, suggests possible remedies and occludes others.Based on the first-ever comprehensive analysis of 129 UK university policies to address Gender-based violence (GBV), we examine how the 'problem' of GBV is conceptualised in institutional policies.We explore three interconnected themes: the nature of the 'problem' that is constituted,…
Domestic violence during the pandemic
This article analyses 26 interviews with frontline female practitioners from domestic violence and abuse (DVA) services for racially minoritised women in England and Wales, exploring how these practitioners – who are from the same racially minoritised communities as the women they support – responded to the challenges of the COVID-19 crisis. These specific practitioner perspectives offer valuable insights into the specific ways in which the pande…
The nature of domestic violence experienced by Black and minoritised women and specialist service provision during the Covid-19 pandemic
Our article seeks to understand the contours of what has been termed a ‘dual pandemic’ in the UK: twin crises of increasing domestic violence and abuse (DVA) alongside the spread of COVID-19, both of which have disproportionately affected Black and minoritised communities. Our article draws upon the perspectives of 26 practitioners who provide specialist DVA services for Black and minoritised women and girls in England and Wales. Based on intervi…
The prehospital care experiences and perceptions of ambulance staff and Eastern European patients
EU enlargement after 2004 was a major factor in increasing Eastern European migration to the UK. This population requires access to high quality public services generally, and ambulance services more specifically. To understand how Eastern European migrants use ambulance care, this study explored the perceptions and experiences of ambulance staff and the Eastern European patients themselves. We undertook qualitative semi-structured interviews acr…
Citizenisation in the aftermath of domestic violence
Domestic violence impedes women’s exercise of full participatory citizenship. This article explicates the role of family, community and social networks in the aftermath of an abusive relationship as both an indicator of intimate citizenship as an achieved status and as a facilitator of the process of citizenisation in the private and public spheres. Based on life history interviews with 26 South Asian women in the UK, the findings reveal the myri…
Hierarchies of Masculinity and Lad Culture on Campus
Research on lad culture and gender-based violence (GBV) in student communities has examined hypermasculine gender performances, with little attention paid to hierarchies of masculinity. We explore lad culture by analysing qualitative, in-depth interviews with students. Our findings challenge simplistic constructions of 'good guys' as allies/protectors in opposition to hypermasculinised, deviant 'bad guys'. We demonstrate how such binary construct…
Understanding forced marriage protection orders in the UK
This article examines the use of Forced Marriage Protection Orders (FMPOs) in England and Wales to determine which framing narratives affect the outcomes of FMPO cases. Forced marriage is marriage without the consent of one or both parties and is legally recognised as a form of domestic violence in the UK that primarily affects women and girls; FMPOs are civil injunctions designed to prevent forced marriage and protect its victims. Although appro…
Feminist responses to sexual harassment in academia
This paper takes as its starting point the compilation and circulation online of a list naming alleged sexual harassers in Indian academia in order to examine broader questions about the nature of online activism to address gender-based violence. Set against the historical silencing of women who speak about violence as well as institutional mechanisms to address this issue through due process, we examine the meaning, impact and limitations of thi…
A Balancing Act
This article extends our understanding of how university students make sense of, and respond to, sexual violence in the night-time economy (NTE). Based on semi-structured interviews with 26 students in a city in England, we examine students' constructions of their experiences of sexual violence within the NTE, exploring their negotiations with, and resistance to, this violence. Building upon theories of postfeminism, we interrogate the possibilit…
Conceptualising the Agency of Migrant Women Workers
This article examines migrant women tourism workers' understandings of, and diverse responses to, exploitative working conditions by taking account of the constraints posed by oppressive contexts and ideologies. It analyses how their location at the intersection of multiple axes of disadvantage and discrimination on account of gender, ethno-nationality, immigration status and migration history as well as their low-status employment and educationa…
Abandoned Women
Abandonment of women in transnational marriages can be understood in the context of specific social milieus of community and kinship relations and legal jurisdictions associated with specific cultures of law. As a sociological-legal category that dismantles the myth of ‘flexible citizenship’ in transnational migration, abandonment must be seen in an experiential matrix constituted by the graded/differentiated diaspora, legal frameworks, and insti…
Understanding Economic Abuse Through an Intersectional Lens
Financial abuse refers to men's control over money, assets, and women's education or paid work. As a corrective to existing undertheorization of men's (and their family's) abuse of and control over women's unpaid (domestic) labor, this article proposes a new conceptualization of economic abuse. Drawing upon life-history interviews with 41 South Asian women from the United Kingdom and India, this article explores control and abuse in relation to f…
Gender Based Violence in University Communities
This book provides the first in-depth overview of research and practice in gender based violence in universities. It sets out the international context of ideologies, politics and institutional structures that underlie responses to gender based violence in Britain and further afield in Europe, in the US, and in Australia, and considers the implications of implementing related policy and practice.
Gender Based Violence in University Communities
Introduction
Families, Relationships and Societies
Conceptualising the Agency of Migrant Women Workers
This article examines migrant women tourism workers' understandings of, and diverse responses to, exploitative working conditions by taking account of the constraints posed by oppressive contexts and ideologies. It analyses how their location at the intersection of multiple axes of disadvantage and discrimination on account of gender, ethno-nationality, immigration status and migration history as well as their low-status employment and educationa…
Coercion, Consent and the Forced Marriage Debate in the UK
Understanding Economic Abuse Through an Intersectional Lens
Financial abuse refers to men's control over money, assets, and women's education or paid work. As a corrective to existing undertheorization of men's (and their family's) abuse of and control over women's unpaid (domestic) labor, this article proposes a new conceptualization of economic abuse. Drawing upon life-history interviews with 41 South Asian women from the United Kingdom and India, this article explores control and abuse in relation to f…
Legislating Gender Inequalities
Research on domestic violence documents the particular vulnerability of immigrant women due to reasons including social isolation, language barriers, lack of awareness about services, and racism on the part of services. Based on qualitative interviews with 30 South Asian women with insecure immigration status residing in Yorkshire and Northwest England, this article explores how inequalities created by culture, gender, class, and race intersect w…
Gender, Migration, and Exclusionary Citizenship Regimes
Based on life history narratives of 57 women in India and interviews with 21 practitioners, we document the neglect, abuse, and instrumental deprivation of women's rights through the process of transnational abandonment. While gendered local sociocultural milieus and economic norms contribute to these harms, they are crucially enabled and sustained by transnational formal-legal frameworks. Widening the explanatory lens for understanding domestic …
Changing nature and emerging patterns of domestic violence in global contexts
Neither safety nor justice
Based on research findings, this article examines the extent to which Labour government's policy towards immigrant women experiencing domestic violence responds to their needs. The research itself was conducted in 2007 and included qualitative interviews with 30 South Asian women with no recourse to public funds due to their status as recent marriage migrants, who were living in the North West and Yorkshire regions of England. The working of a ke…
Striking similarities
The focus of this article is two significant episodes in British labour politics. The first is the Grunwick strike between 1976 and 1978; the second a dispute at Gate Gourmet that began in 2005. In both disputes, women of South Asian origin were the key actors and their legacy has been constructed through striking imagery as one in which against the odds exotic or passive Others became unexpected heroines of industrial struggle. These representat…
Striking lives
This article draws on the narratives of the two groups of South Asian women (SAW) in the UK who took part in industrial disputes some 30 years apart, in order to examine the ways in which they have negotiated their way through their classed, racialized and gendered inclusion in the labour market. The comparison of the Grunwick and the Gate Gourmet disputes and the employment histories of the actors involved in these disputes enables us to explore…
No Recourse, No Support
This paper examines the extent to which government policy and practice meet the needs of women with insecure immigration status who are experiencing domestic violence. The research on which this paper is based was conducted between January and June 2007 and included qualitative interviews with thirty South Asian women who were barred from receiving public funds (known as ‘no recourse to public funds’ (NRPF)) due to their status as recent marriage…
The illusion of protection? An analysis of forced marriage legislation and policy in the UK
This article examines the background, provisions and implications of the 2007 Forced Marriage Civil Bill, with specific regard to the UK government’s present efforts to \naddress the problem of forced marriage. It maps the tensions inherent in the creation of civil and criminal legislation to tackle forced marriage in the UK. The debates on the origins, design and workings of the 2007 Forced Marriage Civil Protection Act are considered, as are it…
A Balancing Act
This article extends our understanding of how university students make sense of, and respond to, sexual violence in the night-time economy (NTE). Based on semi-structured interviews with 26 students in a city in England, we examine students' constructions of their experiences of sexual violence within the NTE, exploring their negotiations with, and resistance to, this violence. Building upon theories of postfeminism, we interrogate the possibilit…
A Moral Panic? The Problematization of Forced Marriage in British Newspapers
This article examines the British media's construction of forced marriage (FM) as an urgent social problem in a context where other forms of violence against women are not similarly problematized. A detailed analysis of four British newspapers over a 10-year period demonstrates that media reporting of FM constitutes a moral panic in that it is constructed as a cultural problem that threatens Britain's social order rather than as a specific form o…
Gender violence or tradition
The news media play an important role in influencing public perceptions and raising awareness of an issue. This research analyzes media framing of child/forced marriage through an examination of six US national newspapers over a ten-year period. It probes how narratives are constructed based on issue perception, blame attribution, and protagonist perceptions. It finds that print media has afforded increasing coverage to minimum marriage age legis…
Hierarchies of Masculinity and Lad Culture on Campus
Research on lad culture and gender-based violence (GBV) in student communities has examined hypermasculine gender performances, with little attention paid to hierarchies of masculinity. We explore lad culture by analysing qualitative, in-depth interviews with students. Our findings challenge simplistic constructions of 'good guys' as allies/protectors in opposition to hypermasculinised, deviant 'bad guys'. We demonstrate how such binary construct…
Striking Narratives
This article explores the ways in which dominant narratives and images constructed the industrial dispute that took place between 1976 and 1978 at the Grunwick Film Processing Laboratories in Britain's capital city, London. Since 1978, this strike has achieved almost mythic status in British labour history, as the moment when the trade unions supported the demands of minority women workers. The authors argue that the dominant narratives and image…
Abandoned Women
Abandonment of women in transnational marriages can be understood in the context of specific social milieus of community and kinship relations and legal jurisdictions associated with specific cultures of law. As a sociological-legal category that dismantles the myth of ‘flexible citizenship’ in transnational migration, abandonment must be seen in an experiential matrix constituted by the graded/differentiated diaspora, legal frameworks, and insti…
The politics of naming and construction
The problematisation of a social phenomenon is a political process that both constructs the problem and, in doing so, suggests possible remedies and occludes others.Based on the first-ever comprehensive analysis of 129 UK university policies to address Gender-based violence (GBV), we examine how the 'problem' of GBV is conceptualised in institutional policies.We explore three interconnected themes: the nature of the 'problem' that is constituted,…
Making Politics Visible
This paper examines the problematisation of sex-selective abortion (SSA) in UK parliamentary debates on Fiona Bruce's Abortion (Sex-Selection) Bill 2014-15 and on the subsequent proposed amendment to the Serious Crime Bill 2014-15. On the basis of close textual analysis, we argue that a discursive framing of SSA as a form of cultural oppression of minority women in need of protection underpinned Bruce's Bill; in contrast, by highlighting issues m…
Neither safety nor justice
Based on research findings, this article examines the extent to which Labour government's policy towards immigrant women experiencing domestic violence responds to their needs. The research itself was conducted in 2007 and included qualitative interviews with 30 South Asian women with no recourse to public funds due to their status as recent marriage migrants, who were living in the North West and Yorkshire regions of England. The working of a ke…
Coercion, Consent and the Forced Marriage Debate in the UK
The illusion of protection? An analysis of forced marriage legislation and policy in the UK
This article examines the background, provisions and implications of the 2007 Forced Marriage Civil Bill, with specific regard to the UK government’s present efforts to \naddress the problem of forced marriage. It maps the tensions inherent in the creation of civil and criminal legislation to tackle forced marriage in the UK. The debates on the origins, design and workings of the 2007 Forced Marriage Civil Protection Act are considered, as are it…
No Recourse, No Support
This paper examines the extent to which government policy and practice meet the needs of women with insecure immigration status who are experiencing domestic violence. The research on which this paper is based was conducted between January and June 2007 and included qualitative interviews with thirty South Asian women who were barred from receiving public funds (known as ‘no recourse to public funds’ (NRPF)) due to their status as recent marriage…
Legislating Gender Inequalities
Research on domestic violence documents the particular vulnerability of immigrant women due to reasons including social isolation, language barriers, lack of awareness about services, and racism on the part of services. Based on qualitative interviews with 30 South Asian women with insecure immigration status residing in Yorkshire and Northwest England, this article explores how inequalities created by culture, gender, class, and race intersect w…
Striking similarities
The focus of this article is two significant episodes in British labour politics. The first is the Grunwick strike between 1976 and 1978; the second a dispute at Gate Gourmet that began in 2005. In both disputes, women of South Asian origin were the key actors and their legacy has been constructed through striking imagery as one in which against the odds exotic or passive Others became unexpected heroines of industrial struggle. These representat…
Striking lives
This article draws on the narratives of the two groups of South Asian women (SAW) in the UK who took part in industrial disputes some 30 years apart, in order to examine the ways in which they have negotiated their way through their classed, racialized and gendered inclusion in the labour market. The comparison of the Grunwick and the Gate Gourmet disputes and the employment histories of the actors involved in these disputes enables us to explore…
Striking Women-Striking Out
Between 2007-9, as part of the AHRC- funded research project, we sought to document and analyse the struggles of South Asian women workers in London, challenging dominant stereotypes about South Asian women‘s docility and dependence. This research involved life history interviews with migrant women workers of South Asian origin who took part in the two disputes. Following on from that project, we have translated the research findings into materia…
Striking Narratives
This article explores the ways in which dominant narratives and images constructed the industrial dispute that took place between 1976 and 1978 at the Grunwick Film Processing Laboratories in Britain's capital city, London. Since 1978, this strike has achieved almost mythic status in British labour history, as the moment when the trade unions supported the demands of minority women workers. The authors argue that the dominant narratives and image…
A Moral Panic? The Problematization of Forced Marriage in British Newspapers
This article examines the British media's construction of forced marriage (FM) as an urgent social problem in a context where other forms of violence against women are not similarly problematized. A detailed analysis of four British newspapers over a 10-year period demonstrates that media reporting of FM constitutes a moral panic in that it is constructed as a cultural problem that threatens Britain's social order rather than as a specific form o…
Coercion, Consent and the Forced Marriage Debate in the UK
An examination of case law on forced marriage reveals that in addition to physical force, the role of emotional pressure is now taken into consideration. However, in both legal and policy discourse, the difference between arranged and forced marriage continues to be framed in binary terms and hinges on the concept of consent: the context in which consent is constructed largely remains unexplored. By examining the socio-cultural construction of pe…
Gender, Migration, and Exclusionary Citizenship Regimes
Based on life history narratives of 57 women in India and interviews with 21 practitioners, we document the neglect, abuse, and instrumental deprivation of women's rights through the process of transnational abandonment. While gendered local sociocultural milieus and economic norms contribute to these harms, they are crucially enabled and sustained by transnational formal-legal frameworks. Widening the explanatory lens for understanding domestic …
Gender Based Violence in University Communities
This book provides the first in-depth overview of research and practice in gender based violence in universities. It sets out the international context of ideologies, politics and institutional structures that underlie responses to gender based violence in Britain and further afield in Europe, in the US, and in Australia, and considers the implications of implementing related policy and practice.
Gender Based Violence in University Communities
Introduction
Changing nature and emerging patterns of domestic violence in global contexts
Making Politics Visible
This paper examines the problematisation of sex-selective abortion (SSA) in UK parliamentary debates on Fiona Bruce's Abortion (Sex-Selection) Bill 2014-15 and on the subsequent proposed amendment to the Serious Crime Bill 2014-15. On the basis of close textual analysis, we argue that a discursive framing of SSA as a form of cultural oppression of minority women in need of protection underpinned Bruce's Bill; in contrast, by highlighting issues m…
Abandoned Women
Abandonment of women in transnational marriages can be understood in the context of specific social milieus of community and kinship relations and legal jurisdictions associated with specific cultures of law. As a sociological-legal category that dismantles the myth of ‘flexible citizenship’ in transnational migration, abandonment must be seen in an experiential matrix constituted by the graded/differentiated diaspora, legal frameworks, and insti…
Understanding Economic Abuse Through an Intersectional Lens
Financial abuse refers to men's control over money, assets, and women's education or paid work. As a corrective to existing undertheorization of men's (and their family's) abuse of and control over women's unpaid (domestic) labor, this article proposes a new conceptualization of economic abuse. Drawing upon life-history interviews with 41 South Asian women from the United Kingdom and India, this article explores control and abuse in relation to f…
Feminist responses to sexual harassment in academia
This paper takes as its starting point the compilation and circulation online of a list naming alleged sexual harassers in Indian academia in order to examine broader questions about the nature of online activism to address gender-based violence. Set against the historical silencing of women who speak about violence as well as institutional mechanisms to address this issue through due process, we examine the meaning, impact and limitations of thi…
A Balancing Act
This article extends our understanding of how university students make sense of, and respond to, sexual violence in the night-time economy (NTE). Based on semi-structured interviews with 26 students in a city in England, we examine students' constructions of their experiences of sexual violence within the NTE, exploring their negotiations with, and resistance to, this violence. Building upon theories of postfeminism, we interrogate the possibilit…
Conceptualising the Agency of Migrant Women Workers
This article examines migrant women tourism workers' understandings of, and diverse responses to, exploitative working conditions by taking account of the constraints posed by oppressive contexts and ideologies. It analyses how their location at the intersection of multiple axes of disadvantage and discrimination on account of gender, ethno-nationality, immigration status and migration history as well as their low-status employment and educationa…
Understanding forced marriage protection orders in the UK
This article examines the use of Forced Marriage Protection Orders (FMPOs) in England and Wales to determine which framing narratives affect the outcomes of FMPO cases. Forced marriage is marriage without the consent of one or both parties and is legally recognised as a form of domestic violence in the UK that primarily affects women and girls; FMPOs are civil injunctions designed to prevent forced marriage and protect its victims. Although appro…
Domestic violence during the pandemic
This article analyses 26 interviews with frontline female practitioners from domestic violence and abuse (DVA) services for racially minoritised women in England and Wales, exploring how these practitioners – who are from the same racially minoritised communities as the women they support – responded to the challenges of the COVID-19 crisis. These specific practitioner perspectives offer valuable insights into the specific ways in which the pande…
The nature of domestic violence experienced by Black and minoritised women and specialist service provision during the Covid-19 pandemic
Our article seeks to understand the contours of what has been termed a ‘dual pandemic’ in the UK: twin crises of increasing domestic violence and abuse (DVA) alongside the spread of COVID-19, both of which have disproportionately affected Black and minoritised communities. Our article draws upon the perspectives of 26 practitioners who provide specialist DVA services for Black and minoritised women and girls in England and Wales. Based on intervi…
Sociology (32 works) · Political science (26 works) · Gender Studies (23 works) · Gender Studies (17 works) · Law (16 works) · Criminology (14 works) · Intimate Partner and Family Violence (13 works) · Law (11 works) · Medicine (11 works) · Sex work and related issues (11 works)