Violence Against Women

In a feminist grounded theory study of rural survivors, the authors discovered reclaiming self as the four-stage, social psychological process for women leaving and not returning to abusive conjugal relationships. Not going back, the third stage, is a process of sustaining the separation over time by claiming and maintaining territory and relentless justifying. Much of the current research has focused on the intra- and interpersonal processes of surviving in the relationship, preparing to leave, and managing the initial crises of leaving. This article contributes to existing literature by explaining the complex social processes involved in not going back and may provide guidance for professional and lay helper interventions during this critical period.

Societal responses to child maltreatment and to woman battering have developed in separate and sometimes conflicting ways. It is only in recent years that greater attention has been devoted to the possible overlap between child maltreatment and woman battering in the same families. Thirty-five studies conducted over the past 2½ decades that mentioned an overlap between child maltreatment and adult domestic violence in the same families were identified. These studies are reviewed and their strengths and weaknesses identified. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications these findings have for practice, policy, and research.

Past research has demonstrated a relationship between childhood abuse and subsequent self-injurious behavior. However, this research typically has taken place in mental health settings, focused on childhood sexual or physical abuse, and has explored a limited number of self-injury variables (most commonly suicide attempts). Among 147 women in a primary care setting, the authors explored the relationship between five forms of childhood abuse or trauma and three types of bodily self-injury. In univariate analyses, all forms of abuse except physical neglect were related to an increased likelihood of bodily self-harm. In a logistic regression analysis, sexual abuse, physical abuse, and witnessing violence were uniquely related to an increased likelihood of bodily self-injury. The results suggest that the direct experience or observation of body violation may developmentally precede subsequent bodily self-injury in some individuals.

The authors argue that cultural and personal systems of honor that depend on the behavior of others are an integral part of the killing of women by their families or intimates. Comparing patterns of conduct in both traditional cultures and English-speaking countries, this study focuses on the basic elements of such honor rationales—control, feelings of shame, and levels of community involvement—to establish that such rationales are a worldwide phenomenon. An appreciation of such honor systems adds an additional theoretical dimension both for understanding the incidence of male intimate violence in English-speaking countries and for cross-cultural comparisons. Furthermore, it contributes to the current need for a theoretical framework that accounts for cultural and contextual patterns of male intimate violence.

It is only in recent years that sexual victimization has been identified as a salient problem on college and university campuses. Researchers have used a variety of different methodologies and data sources to describe the extent and the nature of sexual victimization of college women. These studies, however, are most commonly flawed by an incomplete conceptualization of sexual victimization (e.g., omitting sexual harassment and stalking), and by the inability to distinguish between different ranges of more and less serious sexual victimizations. This article presents a comprehensive measure of sexual victimization that includes incident reports to gather detailed accounts of sexual victimizations.