Examining domestic violence

by gibletparrot (student)

Domestic violence

The definition for domestic violence comes from the women’s aid federation;

“Physical, psychological, sexual or financial violence that takes place within an intimate or family-type relationship and forms a pattern of coercive and controlling behaviour. It may involve partners, ex-partners, household members or other relatives.”

The view of domestic violence is that it is just the behaviour of a few sick disturbed individuals, and it is caused by psychological factors rather than social factors, but a lot of sociologists are against this view;

Sociologists say that domestic violence is far too widespread and common to have been cause by just a few sick individuals. A crime survey in 2007 showed that domestic violence accounted for a sixth of all violent crime. Black’s survey of 16,000 people estimates that there is around six and a half million domestic assaults a year, round about half resulting in physical injury. According to reports and surveys domestic violence doesn’t occur randomly that they have social patterns, the most common pattern is that the majority of domestic abuse comes from men onto women. Kathryn Coleman researched that women were more likely than men to experience ‘intimate violence’ in their lifetime including all four types of violence; Partner abuse, family abuse, sexual assault and stalking.

Mirrlees-black found that:

99% of all incidents against women are committed by men.
Most victims are women.
Nearly one in four women have been assaulted by a partner at some point in their life and one in eight repeatedly so.

This is a preview of the whole essay

Mirrlees-black found that:

99% of all incidents against women are committed by men.
Most victims are women.
Nearly one in four women have been assaulted by a partner at some point in their life and one in eight repeatedly so.

Some sociologists say that the police or agencies may be unwilling or reluctant to record anything that is involved in the family because they make assumptions about family life; they say the family is seen as a private sphere and anything that happens inside that sphere should not be interfered by any outised parties like agencies or the police. They also say that they see the family as a good thing for society so they neglect the ‘darker side’ of family. They also see a woman as a free agent so if she is experiencing abuse then she is free to leave however a lot of the time the woman is financially dependent on the man so is trapped in the relationship anyway .

Another view on the topic of domestic abuse is that of the radical feminist view, they look at the findings of dobash and dobash as an example of patriarchy. Kate Millet and Shulamith firestone say that all societys across the planet have been founded on patriarchy. They see men and women are the main division in society and that men exploit women and see them as the enemy. The radical feminists say that men dominate relationships through the threat or use of domestic violence, for these sorts of feminists they say that widespread common domestic violence and that it will exist so men can maintain their dominance over the female population they also say that male dominance is the cause of the police not doing as much as they could in cases of domestic violence. Radical feminists give the main reasons that domestic violence is sociological rather than psychological to maintain their power.

Faith Robertson Elliot opposes the radical feminist explanation, saying that not all men benefit from domestic abuse and almost all of them that do not commit it are against it, radical feminists fail to explain why Females abuse either their partners or even their children Mirrlees black found that one in seven men had been abused in their life and one in twenty repeatedly so.

Sociologists have noticed other groups at risk of domestic violence these are worked out by patterns; Children and young people, those in the lower social classes, people who live in rented accommodation, people on low incomes or in financial trouble or people with high drug or alcohol usage. If someone fits across two or more of the social groups their risk increases.

Richard Wilkinson shows an explanation for this, he sees domestic violence as the result of stress on family members caused by social inequality; inequality basically means that some families have different resources than others such as income and position of they live, so people who live in crowed accommodation are more likely to have higher levels of stress this dramatically reduces their chances of having a healthy and normal stable relationship. The findings of Wilkinson and black shows that not everyone is at an equal chance of experiencing domestic abuse. The more power and wealth you have the less likely you are to experience domestic abuse according to their surveys, however Wilkinson offers no opinion on why more women than men are the victims.