The purpose of the study was to understand how feminist group counseling affects female victims of domestic violence
when they try to improve their self-esteem and self-efficacy. As making visits and telephone calls to five short-term
shelters located in Gyeongsangnam-do, the study explained the research goals along with characteristics and effects of
the feminist group counseling, and asked the shelters for cooperation. Among the five shelters, two which have not
conducted any group counseling were selected as research subjects and in one shelter, an experimental group of eight
was formed while the other shelter had a comparative group of another eight. Based on the previous researches, the
study established four principles of the feminist group counseling (Something individual is political. A counselor and a
client should be treated equally. Empowerment. Take another look from an aspect of a woman). With those principles
in mind, the groups attended sessions for eight weeks as they shared their opinions on the following topics as violent
experiences, new ideas about violence, how to overcome aftereffects, expressing emotions to husbands, how to make an
analysis on husbands and themselves, how to be a healthy mother and a child, an idea of coming back to husbands
and my family five years later. For every session, the subjects were trained to open their minds to the violent
experiences as sharing interactional feedback and ways to overcome damage caused by the violence. Considering
circumstances in the shelters, the group counseling was processed in private. In order to measure effectiveness,
quantitative estimations were conducted before and after the sessions by using the self-esteem scale and the self-efficacy
scale, and the contents were analyzed via the process evaluation. The collected data went through Wilcoxon signed
rank test and regarding the differences between the experimental group and the comparative group before and after
the group counseling, the study analyzed them using Mann-Whitney U Test. According to the results, the study
learned that the feminist group counseling has a positive influence on the female victims' improving their self-esteem
and self-efficacy. The process evaluation found out that since the groups were all the victims of the domestic violence,
they felt comfortable enough to share their loss by the violence, their sense of guilt and negative ideas about
themselves. During the sessions, the subjects came to support each other with resolving problems of theirs, encouraging
each other to go for new personal changes. However, considering the principles and the goals of the feminism, the
feminist group counseling has failed to directly prove any of its effects such as changes in ideas and others.