Title: How safe are women’s shelters? An explorative study about how security in women’s shelters is experienced by staff and volunteers. 

Intimate partner violence is a public health problem. To protect women exposed to violence, women’s shelters can be necessary. There are multiple factors that may threaten security at the shelters for women with children, one of them is visitation with the abusive father. There is a lack of prior studies from the perspective from staff and volunteers. Therefore, this study takes on the perspective of staff and volunteers through a survey. The survey touches on three themes, together they provide an overview of the safety aspect. The three themes are security, protected identity, and visitations. The sample is drawn from a population limited to one county in Sweden. The aim of the study is to explore how security at the women’s shelters is perceived by staff and volunteers. 

The result of the survey showed a clear pattern where social media, and the internet was the main reason they experienced threatened security. Further, the result showed that many staff and volunteers had experienced that protected identities were being revealed. Social media and contact with authorities were two contributing factors. Finally, the result showed that all respondents had a negative attitude towards visitations between children and their fathers. The result is discussed in relation to concepts of digitalization and medialization.

Keywords: Women’s shelters, security, abused women, visitations, protected identity, medialization, social media and the internet.

Supervisor: Torbjörn Kalin

Examinator: Staffan Bengtsson