Funding Women’s Human Security: The Interaction of State Domestic Violence Policies and Federal Grants
Domestic violence is one of the most pervasive threats to women’s human security in the United States, yet it remains among the least visible. It cuts across age, income, race, and education, with one in four women and one in nine men experiencing severe abuse from an intimate partner. Despite the scale of the crisis, responses to domestic violence vary widely across states.
These disparities were the focus of a November 14, 2025, American Politics Speaker Series event. Wendy J. Schiller, the Alison S. Ressler Professor of Political Science at Brown University, presented research examining how federal policy interacts with state-level action on domestic violence. Hosted by the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation and the Center for American Political Studies, the event featured findings from a recent paper by Schiller; Kaitlin N. Sidorsky, associate professor of political science and public policy at Ramapo College of New Jersey; and Emma Stroupe of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Their work explores how federal funding through the Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) intersects with state domestic violence policies and whether funds encourage alignment across levels of government.
Schiller began with a brief history of federal domestic violence policy. The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), enacted in 1994 and reauthorized multiple times since, first recognized domestic violence as a public crime and a federal policy priority. It also laid the groundwork for establishing the OVW within the Department of Justice. OVW administers hundreds of millions of dollars annually to support law enforcement training, victim services, transitional housing, legal assistance, and programs serving specific demographics, including tribal nations and rural communities. From its inception, VAWA paired funding with policy requirements, such as recognizing protective orders across state lines, to encourage states to adopt policies aligned with federal law.
Dana Guterman is a copy editor and writer with the Ash Center for Democratic Government and Innovation.
The views expressed in this article are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily represent the positions of the Ash Center or its affiliates.
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