The battered woman problem denotes the beating of women by men in the

sphere of the family, generally referring to the beating of wives by their

husbands. It is often associated with other social problems, such as drug and
alcohol abuse, and child abuse, since many of the instances of wife or child
beating are known to occur after alcohol consumption by the man. The
problem has been brought to public attention in two phases by the womens
movement. In the first phase of the womens movement, in the early
twentieth century, it was comprised by maternal feminism. Maternal
feminists, unlike radical feminists of the later decades, were those women
who called for womens rights and morality in the society in the context of
women having their more or less traditional roles within the family.
The second phase of the womens movement which contributed to the
construction of the battered woman problem took place in the mid-1960s. In
this phase of the movement, a significant array of social problems were
defined by the womens movement, including rape (in the context of the
family), wife battering, child abuse, sexual harassment, and pornography.
The battered womens movement at this phase largely benefitted from social
organizations already present, which saw themselves in line with the
movement. Most significantly perhaps, the battered womens movement
found itself in a strong base of the wider womens movement problem.
Moreover, many other organizations in the society supported the movement,
including the media, governments, philanthropic foundations, churches, etc.
This was perhaps due to the fact that the battered womens movement was
much less radical than the radical feminist movement, the radicals being
sometimes in strong opposition to the existing organizations in the society as
a whole. The reason behind this can be the family-orientedness of the
battered womens movement, which had continued from its first phase in the
earlier decades.

Hester, S., & Eglin, P. (1992). A Sociology of Crime. New York, NY, New York:
Routledge.