Success on the Front-Lines?: Defining "Success" in Feminist Anti-Violence Work


Lisa Boucher, Trent University

What counts as “success” in feminist anti-violence work? How do those working in the sector characterize this “success”? And what kinds of supports and resources are needed to ensure individual and organizational success in the future? With goals to meaningfully address gender-based violence and to support victims/survivors of this violence, many feminist anti-violence organizations offer services in their communities while also working towards more long-term visions of social, political and cultural change. Fulfilling multifaceted and complex roles, organizations - and individual feminist anti-violence service providers working in those organizations - navigate challenges at the micro, meso and macro levels. They engage in demanding gendered labour which requires specialized skills and knowledge, but which is also routinely undervalued, under-resourced, and overlooked. Despite constraints and challenges in their daily work and in their social and political environments, feminist anti-violence service providers persist and continue to provide vital services and advocacy. Informed by social movement theory and a feminist political economy lens, this paper offers reflections on the continuation of feminist anti-violence work in Canada. Drawing on a qualitative study with two feminist sexual assault centers, I explore how feminist anti-violence service providers conceptualize “success” in their work. Additionally, this paper identifies factors which contribute to, or impede and undermine, organizational success and social justice goals. The study discussed here included in-depth interviews, a content analysis of organizational documents and the use of photovoice to examine how individuals and organizations make sense of and articulate challenges and successes on the front-lines of struggles to respond to gender-based violence. While feminist anti-violence workers spoke of a range of factors which facilitated both individual and organizational success, they also identified structural barriers to success, as well as the resources needed to ensure their work is sustainable in the face funding challenges and growing and complex community need. Due to the timing of the project, the photovoice and interview data include an emphasis on experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic. The content analysis of the organizational documents offers insights into both shifts and continuity in the ways successes and challenges are framed and understood over a 10-year time period. Ultimately, this paper focuses on front-line and organizational experiences, and highlights creative resistance to - and persistence in spite of – the many challenges facing feminist anti-violence work.

This paper will be presented at the following session: