The authors map how the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) made it to the legislative agenda and seek to answer the question of how gender entered the discussion of violence. We adopt a longitudinal approach to examine how the media, experts, and legislative entrepreneurs engaged in a dialogue to get domestic violence on the government agenda. The study develops and uses indicators of media attention, expert attention, presidential attention, and legislative attention to track the evolution of domestic violence policy between 1965 and 2020. Our results showed that public attention matters to those interested in getting an issue on the agenda. But more importantly, expert attention can be instrumental in keeping an issue alive. Salience is a key factor that allows expansion of conflict and redefinition of issues. These findings demonstrate that government can and does enact major policy change without a punctuating event. The controversial character of domestic violence might explain its struggles to gain access to the government and decision agendas. Initially constructed as a private family issue, and thus not suitable for government attention, it was not until it was framed as criminal violence that the public began to take notice. This construction involved the media, academics, and select members of congress, who worked to move the issue to the government agenda where crime was a perennial favorite.

The author tracks attention to domestic violence at the congressional level and seeks to answer the question of why Congress recognized violence against women as a new category suitable for protection. I adopt a longitudinal approach to examine how hearings, witness affiliations, and policy entrepreneurs played a role in the passage of Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). The study develops and uses indicators of legislative attention and presidential attention to track the evolution of domestic violence policy between 1965 and 2020. This study shows that domestic violence, crime, and health accounted for most of the frames used by witnesses and/ or committees when discussing violence against women. The gender politics coalition made up the largest group of witnesses at the committee hearings. I also demonstrate that there is not much variation between the witnesses at the judiciary and labor committee hearings. By tracking the evolution of VAWA through the committee hearings as well as identifying the coalitions, I am able to show the new policy dimensions that emerged to regulate gender violence. The way that political actors constructed domestic violence victims dictated the type of policies that were used in resolving violence against women. This interaction helped to explain the slow response to helping battered women. However, as women began to gain a voice and exercise political power, public officials took notice of this problem.

This article examines the development of policy designed to target intimate partner violence, or domestic violence, through the use of protection orders in the U.S. state courts of last resort, or the state supreme courts, from 1980 to 2019. The authors’ study shows that the American state supreme courts are decidedly supportive of female protection order litigants throughout the period studied. The model also highlights the importance of state government ideology, percentage of female justices, and state laws that ban gender hiring discrimination on state supreme court decision-making in these cases.