Andrea Barrick, social work and gerontology, recently had her manuscript “Committee hearings, witness affiliations, and the passage of the violence against women act” published in the Journal of Policy Practice and Research,doi: 10.1007/s42972-021-00024-3. 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 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.
