Introduction: Violence against women is a major human rights, social welfare, and public policy concern. Although international documents have significantly shaped the understanding of this issue, limited attention has been paid to their discursive construction and welfare implications. This study analyzes the discourse of major international documents on violence against women and examines their welfare implications within the Islamic–Iranian framework.
Methods: This qualitative study employed Norman Fairclough's Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Three landmark United Nations documents—the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979), the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women (1993), and the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995)—were purposively selected and analyzed.
Findings: Four major discursive categories were identified: making violence against women visible, constructing responsibility and representing social actors, constructing gender norms and cultural mechanisms, and constructing social intervention strategies. Together, these categories construct violence against women as a multidimensional legal, institutional, cultural, and welfare issue and provide the basis for conceptualizing Normative Violence.
Discussion: The findings indicate that preventing violence against women requires integrated welfare policies emphasizing prevention, cultural transformation, participatory governance, and evidence-informed policymaking. Normative Violence offers a complementary analytical framework for understanding the relationship between rights, culture, and social welfare