Normalizing policies of inaction--the case of health care in Australia for women affected by domestic violence

Abstract

Domestic violence impacts on all aspects of affected women's lives and results in poor general, reproductive, and psychological health (World Health Organisation, 2010). Despite mounting evidence that current health care responses to women affected by domestic violence are problematic, policies have nevertheless been rolled out without addressing issues identified. Funding cuts, fragmentation of services, and failure to establish good practice has resulted in a discourse where women's needs are pushed to the outside and they are marginalized, lost in the language and discourse of policy, normalizing a discourse of incompletion at policy and bureaucracy levels.