In the theoretical part I create an overview of different forms of violence and explain why violence against women represents one of the many forms of maintaining a patriarchal system. Feminist social work has by giving voices to women, victims of violence, made a shift from understanding violence as a personal problem of women to understanding it as a social problem. Besides working with victims of violence, social work contributes an important part to the systemic fight to end violence against women by working with perpetrators of domestic violence. This line of work is directed at gradually changing the perpetrator's behavior along with questioning their values, the latter being the reason for justifying the use of violence in their intimate relationships. After the violence has been reported, the perpetrators are first directed to Centers for social work. The Centre for nonviolent communication then offers a further program for the perpetrators. My research has been focused on observing how these institutions collaborate together as well as how social workers employed in Centers for social work manage and experience their work with the perpetrators of violence. The data gathered give an insight into the challenges faced by the social workers in Centers for social work and an insight into the methods used to activate the perpetrators into changing their violent behavior.
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