The making of domestic violence (DV) against women a public issue has been the most spectacular feminist success story of our times. From being seen as an individual aberration attributable to alcoholism or psychological stress requiring therapy till a few decades ago, DV is now regarded as symbolic of women’s inequality, requiring structural remedies and legal reform. Feminist reformulation of DV as sex discrimination in the 1990s helped make states liable under international human rights law for violence committed against women by private actors within the so-called private domain of the family. This led to a wave of countries enacting laws on DV. As of 2016, 127 countries around the world had such laws – a vast majority of them enacted in the previous 20 years.