Minnesota's Shelters for Battered Women

Scholarly research suggests that wife beating can be traced to the emergence of monogamous relationships and patriarchal social systems in which women and children were regarded as the property of their husbands (Committee against Domestic Abuse, 1). Women could be burned at the stake for refusing intercourse with their husbands or for having miscarriages. The church and the state in Europe during the Middle Ages and beyond authorized men to chastise wives physically for any disobedience. The French Code of Chivalry, for example, specified that a husband of a scolding wife could "knock her to the earth, strike her in the face with his fist, and break her nose so she would always be blemished and ashamed" (Committee Against Domestic Abuse, 1).

Only gradually has domestic abuse and wife battering become a crime and it is even more recently that the government has taken steps in the United States in general and in Minnesota in particular to intervene in cases of wife battering and to provide shelters and other services to victims of this crime (Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless, 1).

In 1967, one of the first shelters for battered women was opened in Maine, but it was not until 1972 that a group known as Women's Advocates located in Minneapolis/St. Paul opened a one bedroom shelter, expanding by purchasing a house in 1974. The Women's Advocates was among the first groups in the U.S. to develop from a women's consciousness raising group, building a collective rathe

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ape domestic violence" which also provides "personalized support, advocacy, education, and resources for about 1,000 women and children every year." According to the Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless (1), there are 79 community advocacy programs offering services to battered women. These services include 24-hour-a-day crisis intervention, information, and referral; arrangements for emergency housing and transportation; legal assistance; and violence prevention efforts. Further, there are 24 culturally specific programs offered under the aegis of the Minnesota Coalition of the Homeless (1) targeting women and children who are victims of battering: "These programs provide a wide range of advocacy services for Asian, Latina, African-American, American Indian, and immigrant and refugee victims of domestic violence, although most programs will provide services for all women experiencing battering. They provide much-needed services such as interpreting and bilingual crisis lines for victims of domestic violence, culturally competent advocacy that meets the basic needs of women from various backgrounds, and assisting women in providing emergency housing or shelter services." Other services offered to victims

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