Whereas in most Western and North European countries the discussion of wife abuse was brought to the public agenda by the feminist movement, the Finnish history of dealing with this question has been different. The feminist movement has been relatively weak in Finland, and the issue discursively constructed in gender-neutral and familycentred terms. A social service-like approach has been characteristic of the Finnish shelters. During the past decade, a view of wife abuse as a gendered phenomenon has received growing attention. The discursive shift has many connections with social and healthcare bureaucracy and professional services. This background has led to a mixture of professional and feminist influences in the discussion on violence and family relations.

This chapter analyses how violence and parenthood are discussed and worked with in Finnish family counselling agencies. It traces the different discursive resources that are drawn upon when these issues are handled and examines their common points and discrepancies. The combination of professional and feminist influences is essential in the analysis of the agency practices. The chapter is based on an ethnographic study that focused on family counselling professionals’ work with violence.

From family violence to violence against women

The first shelter in Finland was established in 1979 by the Federation of Mother and Child Homes (later the Federation of Mother and Child Homes and Shelters), an organisation providing housing and social services for single mothers with babies. From the beginning, the explicit aim of the shelters was to work with the whole family, not only women and children. In the late 1970s, a few efforts were made to open a discussion from a feminist point of view. The League of Finnish Feminists collected women's stories of their experiences of violence and one shelter was established with a feminist orientation. The feminist movement was, however, not strong enough to make its voice heard in the public discussion and these views were marginalised for more than a decade.

The issue of wife abuse was formulated as the discourse of ‘family violence’. This is based on gender-neutral rhetoric in which all types of violence within the family context are equated (Ronkainen, 1998, pp 12-13; see also Dobash and Dobash, 1992).