The battered women's movement is part of the women's liberation movement of the 1970s. As the movement grew, shelters with diverse philosophies and goals faced some common tasks and problems, such as convincing skeptical communities and funding agencies that the shelters legitimately represented battered women. Publicizing the experiences of battered women as victims of male violence and social indifference was the most commonly chosen form of doing this. The initial grass roots operation and fund raising of shelters graduated to the acquisition of government funding, thus encouraging many traditional social service agencies to start their own programs for battered women. In these shelters, feminism played no stated part, creating persistent criticism by feminists of professionals. Recently, the backlash against feminism has produced a resurgence of social theories that blame battered women for the abuse they endure or assert that gender is irrelevant to the study of family violence and to the design of intervention strategies. 3 references.