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. 2025 Feb;31(2):570-597.
doi: 10.1177/10778012231214772. Epub 2023 Nov 19.

What Is Justice? Perspectives of Victims-Survivors of Gender-Based Violence

Marianne Hester  1 , Emma Williamson  1 , Nathan Eisenstadt  1 , Hilary Abrahams  1 , Nadia Aghtaie  1 , Lis Bates  1 , Geetanjali Gangoli  1 , Amanda Robinson  2 , Sarah-Jane Walker  1 , Elizabeth McCarthy  3 , Andrea Matolcsi  1 , Natasha Mulvihill  1
Affiliations

What Is Justice? Perspectives of Victims-Survivors of Gender-Based Violence

Marianne Hester et al. Violence Against Women. 2025 Feb.

Erratum in

Abstract

This article explores "how do victims-survivors of gender-based violence (GBV) experience and perceive justice?" based on interviews with 251 victims-survivors with experience of different types of GBV and criminal, civil, and family justice systems. Victims-survivors were found to have multiple perceptions of justice, related to different points in their journey following abuse and regarding individual, community, and societal responses. Perceptions relate to accountability; fairness in outcome and process; protection from future harm; recognition; agency; empowerment; affective justice; reparation; and social transformation. Current understandings of justice in legislative and policy approaches reproduce the "justice gap" by failing to take account of how survivors themselves understand and demand justice.

Keywords: gender-based violence; inequalities; justice systems; victim-survivor perspectives.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Overview of participants’ views of justice (N = 251).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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