This chapter is rooted in the reflexive experience of feminists in Scotland struggling for gender justice – particularly the movement to resist and end men’s violence against women (VAW). Our case study focuses on a course ‘Gender Justice and Violence: Feminist Approaches’ (GJV), the fruit of an ongoing partnership between Scottish Women’s Aid (SWA) and Queen Margaret University (QMU). Offered every year since 2007, the course engages with debates concerning public policy, professional practice and political activism – particularly in relation to gender-based violence and abuse. The module teaching sessions bring together practitioners and activists (who register as associate students at QMU) alongside full-time sociology students. This enables a challenging process of mutual learning which highlights both the tensions and the transformative potential of grounding social theory in the sometimes divergent standpoints of these overlapping groups. The course is delivered by, and open to, both women and men. The curriculum draws on the struggles of the women’s movement and of pro-feminist men, and utilises the work of engaged feminist scholars across a range of academic disciplines, including history, philosophy, criminology and gender studies, as well as sociology. Its presence demands that the practice of activists and the movements which have ...
