[3] In the 1970s Cavanagh worked as a research assistant, alongside fellow student Monica Wilson, with Rebecca and Russell Dobash on the first study in Britain of violence against women.
She was appointed guardian ad litem (in litigation) for Derbyshire, where she helped establish a voluntary hostel for women with housing needs, and became the authority's first research social worker.
She later took on a position at the University of Stirling as a part-time lecturer in social work where she played a central role in a large research project on violence, a research evaluation of the first programmes for domestic violence abusers in the United Kingdom.
In 1989 Cavanagh and Ruth Lewis were appointed research fellows on Dobashes' project 'Evaluating abuser programmes', which examined court records and interviewed men convicted of violent abuse and their female partners.
The same research team examined murder cases in Britain, work which Cavanagh then drew on for her PhD thesis.