In the last months of his administration, Joe Biden has put political stocks in place. Thursday, the Violence Against Women Act celebrates its 30th anniversary at the White House.
The president will host an estimated 1,000 survivors, advocates, former employees, and allies to celebrate the law on the South Lawn of the White House, touting the landmark legislation he championed as a US senator. Administration officials added that, to coincide with the anniversary of the law, the Biden administration is rolling out new programs to fight gender-based violence.
In an opinion piece published Thursday, the president praised the “tremendous progress” the legislation had enabled over the last 30 years, emphasizing how it reduced the stigma surrounding domestic abuse.
“Back then, most of society looked the other way, or worse, refused to hear the cries for help from the victims. As Biden said in the Thursday opinion piece, “It was wrong.” “I’ve always believed that combating violence against women requires a fundamental transformation of our culture, one that reveals this silent epidemic.”
The move coincides with Biden’s transition into a new phase of his administration after he pulled out of his second-term campaign for office. The president is scrambling for ways to fortify key items of his legacy both on the domestic and international stages, even as the candidates dominate the headlines in the campaign.
Among the myriad of legislation Biden has ushered through in his half-century in politics, few carried the personal weight of the Violence Against Women Act, co-authored and first introduced by him in 1990. In large part, because the bill granted sexual assault and domestic abuse victims unprecedented protections and support, the president has long cited it as his most consequential legislation.
Working with Biden on the legislation in the early 1990s, former senator Barbara Boxer said, “He made it happen, and he took it out of the shadows.” It was a well-kept secret back then in the name of violence against women, mostly within marriages and intimate relationships. A woman would come in with a bruise around her face. Her husband didn’t do it- she would never say. And seldom did anyone think much about it.
In an interview with CNN, Boxer recalled, “Joe was livid about that.” “There is no such thing as, quote, domestic violence,” he said. It is just violence. And we must do something about that.
Biden outlining further initiatives to combat domestic abuse
On Thursday, the president will again elevate the issue when he holds an event in conjunction with the anniversary of the law’s signing on Friday. Victims are expected to share their own stories to illustrate why the protections provided under VAWA are crucial to survivors of abuse.
Along with the new Biden administration efforts announced Thursday, the Justice Department announced $690 million in grant funding to help support survivors of gender-based violence. The Department of Housing and Urban Development launched its Office on Gender-Based Violence, which aims to address housing issues impacting survivors.
In addition, the Justice Department is providing funding to the National Resource Center on Cybercrimes Against Individuals, the White House said, for instance, to terminate “cyberstalking, the non-consensual distribution of intimate images, and other forms of technology-facilitated abuse.” The administration also announced the tech companies’ voluntary commitments to ban the creation of image-based sexual assault, including AI-generated content.
“The question being discussed now goes thus: How do we evolve? How will we respond to the impending danger? Said Lisa Monaco, Biden’s deputy attorney general and a former member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “We’re really building upon that history and legacy that the president left behind by igniting this debate, advancing this legislation, and advancing this change.”
Changing the discourse on domestic violence
In an effort to give survivors protection and shift the discourse on domestic violence, Biden first proposed the Violence Against Women Act in 1990.
During a Senate hearing in 1990, Biden stated, “The bill has three broad, but simple, goals: to make streets safer for women; to make homes safer for women; and to protect women’s civil rights.”
As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden presided over some of the first landmark hearings on domestic abuse, featuring female witnesses testifying to their own horrific experiences at the hands of violent behaviour. Staffers with the judiciary committee called battered women’s shelters and police departments to gather statistics and hear stories of allegations of violence against women. They also read letters from women who their husbands have abused to bring the matter in the limelight.
Monaco, a junior employee then, stated, “It was really about trying to change attitudes and raise awareness to change the conversation about this problem.” “It was about genuinely bringing attention to an issue, an injustice, and demonstrating what the law wasn’t covering and why it was necessary.”
Boxer worked with Biden on the bill in the House and Senate. In an interview with CNN, she recalled when Biden joined a group of female members to debate the measure—but the women took ownership.
Boxer stated, “What Joe Biden demonstrated during those years was his respect for women and his desire to advance us.” “He felt so strongly in his heart that he didn’t want to step on us and that the women should come out. He desired collaboration with us.
Later, after President Bill Clinton signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act into law in 1994, Biden worked to incorporate VAWA. The sprawling crime bill put 100,000 more police officers on the streets and banned assault weapons. Yet, it also imposed stricter sentencing guidelines and provided states with incentives to adopt mandatory minimum statutes—provisions many now argue contributed to the era of mass incarceration.
However, the VAWA provisions amended the protection and services available to individuals subjected to sexual assault, domestic abuse, and stalking. Since it launched in 1996, the National Domestic Violence Hotline has received more than 7 million calls. The bill financed programs serving survivors and boosted funding for women’s shelters and rape crisis centres, along with other programs connected to such issues.
halves the incidents of “abuse of power.”
With each reauthorization of the bill, Biden and other supporters of the law have fought to add more support services for communities of colour and immigrants and to extend the measure to cover better those who have experienced dating violence and people of any sexual orientation or gender identity.
The law, which needs to be reauthorized every five years, has hit some snags on Capitol Hill. It expired under former President Donald Trump in 2019.
“His main goal was to ensure that the law was reauthorized with the support of both parties,” stated Jennifer Klein, the head of the White House’s Gender Policy Council. “And that we carried out what had been done three times previously, which was to ensure that the law was expanded, strengthened, and addressed any issues that had come up.”
The law was renewed in 2022 and included further safeguards for LGBTQ+ survivors as well as people living in remote and Indigenous communities. Additionally, additional safeguards were put in place to deal with abuse and harassment online. As part of the renewal, attempts to address the infamous “boyfriend loophole” were abandoned; instead, they were included into a bipartisan gun safety law that was approved later that year.
The president has long said his family’s values are at the root of his commitment to preventing violence against women.
My father would say the cardinal sin of a man raising his hand to a woman or child was the abuse of power, it was the gravest sin anyone could commit. This law has always been about the abuse of power, Biden said in 2022.
