The Women's Room?

By Courtney E. Martin, Women's eNews. Posted August 23, 2005.

Transition House, New England's first battered women's shelter, has always been known for its cutting edge work helping women and children escape abusive homes.

Recently, however, the Boston-based 30-year-old organization has set a precedent that makes some feminist activists uncomfortable. The board has not only hired a man as the interim executive director, but they are doing a gender-neutral search for a permanent hire set to conclude August 30th.

About Women, a collective of psychologists and social workers who were instrumental in creating shelters (including Transition House itself) in the 1970s, see this as step in the wrong direction. They wrote the board of Transition House a letter last October protesting what they called a "flagrant violation" of the organization's founding principles to establish a space where "women could feel safe from male intrusion and could openly unburden themselves of the experiences of male violence they had undergone without fear of censure, criticism or inhibition by male presence."

"I fear it's becoming about the bottom line, not helping women," Karen Schneiderman, one of the women in the collective, said.

The Board President of Transition House, Dr. Nanette Veilleux, argued that the bottom line is, indeed, central to their search. "As money shrinks, our E.D. has to be many, many things: developer, supervisor of programming, marketer," she said. "We need to find the most qualified person for the job, so we go into these searches with a gender neutral perspective."

The battle over the next director of Transition House has got activists in the shelter system questioning whether embracing male leadership is the next logical step in the progress of the shelter movement or a violation of its mission to protect and treat women and children affected by domestic violence. They question whether the decision will change hiring practices for the other 2,000 shelters across the country. Activists also wonder whether hiring a man as a shelter director will ultimately serve the best interests of the women and children fleeing violence and abuse in their homes.

Men in Various Capacities

Men, in fact, have been working in various capacities in the "DV community," as those on the inside call it, since the early 1980s. Veilleux reports that Transition House has had many men over the years who work closely with residents, such as counselors, health care providers and cleaning-cooking staff. They had much more contact, in fact, than the new executive director will.

"I spend my time in the administrative offices, which are in a completely separate location from the actual shelter," William Stanton, the interim director of transition house, said. "In truth, my contact with the residents is limited."

Most shelter executive directors, like Stanton, report that the majority of their work is administrative as opposed to direct service. Their impact on the residents, therefore, isn't interpersonal, as much as structural, through the type of programming established, shelter policy, and the state of the facility as a result of fund-raising.

Nonetheless, says Rita Smith, executive director of the Denver-based National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, argues that the symbolic importance of a director within a given shelter is significant.

"When you do a gender-blind search, you are assuming that women in general have reached some state of equality that may not be true," she said. "They are certainly not taking into consideration that seeing women in powerful roles impacts the victims of abuse and certainly influences their daughters and sons."

Courtney E. Martin is a writer, teacher, and filmmaker living in Brooklyn. She is currently working on a book on the drive for perfection among young women (Simon and Schuster, fall 2006).

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