Human security and women’s security reality in Northwest Russia - Environmental and Human Security in the Arctic - page 240

support, and also few alternatives to suggest, which limits their contribution
to women's security. A vulnerable economic situation and housing difficul-
ties are the most important issues for many women. A main security strategy
that the crisis centres offered was an invitation to discuss alternative ways of
living. This comprised a set of choices that the victims can make. In regard
to the economic challenges that must be surmounted in such a process, the
crisis centres thus offer little tangible help. Practising security in this field
basically involves a re-description of self and, contributing to this process, the
crisis centres offer their resources. This also involves advice and suggestions
on how to solve legal and economic problems. These challenges also demand
specific action by the victims as they are the ones who need to take action to
change the situation. The crisis centres described how they point out to the
victims the various options they have available, but choices and actions need
to be taken by the victim, who in this process produces the new self.
The process of understanding and re-describing the self is one in which
the subject is confronted with a range of immaterial constraints. Empirically
these can be seen in the form of, for example, the social pressure that intimi-
dates the victims. They fear consequences such as social judgement and loss
of status. The actions of victims are embedded within processes that give
symbolic meaning to people's practices. Interviews with victims of violence
demonstrate this, as they face already a challenge in the naming of their situ-
ation, i.e. the explicit recognition that they live in a situation of violence.
Local crisis centres experience that the naming of violence against women
is contested, which can be linked to a continuing tendency to treat men's
violence carefully, with understanding, almost with justification. This raises
the question as to what extent this careful treatment of men's violence affects
the individual victims and their way of understanding their own situation
and the context in which choices are made. Such understanding is supported
by traditional views expressed by women, emphasizing a woman's need to be
patient. The analysis has showed how such gender roles are also predominant
in public discourse (Stuvøy 2010a). Thus, their impact on the individual level
is highly probable, though difficult to predict in regard to how the impacts
will manifest themselves in visions of the self.
Action taken by a woman to actively change her life-situation to one where
violence and insecurity does not define her life-world any more is, drawing
upon the above experiences, not always associated with symbolic meanings
such as prestige and social recognition. The evidence demonstrated that due
to subjective constraints of these meanings, women's individual actions are
not necessarily interpreted as reconstructive or positive. When crisis centre
representatives encouraged women to act, to consider the choices outlined
before them, they confronted a difficult situation. In interviews, crisis centre
representatives were keen to emphasize the importance of individuals making
the decisions themselves, highlighting the 'freedom of choice' for the victims.
The material and immaterial constraints on action are forceful, however, and