families and households - domestic violence and abuse

What can domestic violence include?

psychological, emotional, sexual, physical, or financial abuse.

What is a common view of domestic violence?

that it’s the behaviour of a few, ‘sick’ or disturbed individuals. And that the causes are psychological rather than social. However, sociologists have challenged this view.

How is the common view on dv criticised by sociologists?

• it’s far too widespread to be the act of a few individuals. Eg. the Women’s Aid Federation found that DV accounts for around ¼ of all recorded violent crime.

• Another common view is that it occurs randomly - however, it tends to follow particular social patterns. The most striking is that it’s mainly male violence against women. Eg. Coleman and Osborne say that two women a week are killed by a partner or previous partner (2010)

What does the Crime survey for England and Wales find about the numbers of people reported as victims of dv?

(2013). 2 million people reported having been victims during the previous year.

What do Dobash and Dobash find?

Violent incidents could be set off by what a husband saw as a challenge to his authority, such as a wife asking why he was late home. They argue that marriage legitimates violence against women by creating the power and authority of husbands, and the dependency of wives. They argue that most victims of abuse are women.

What does the large-scale Crime survey for England and Wales estimate?

(2020) - 1.6 million women had experienced DA in the previous year, compared with 750,000 men.

What do Walby and Allen argue?

Just knowing the number of victims tells us nothing about the frequency, severity or effects of the abuse they suffer. (qual. vs quant.). Furthermore, it can also be difficult to count separate incidents, because abuse may be continuous, or may occur so often that the victim can’t reliably count them.

What do Ansara and Hindin argue?

Women suffer more severe violence and control, with more serious psychological effects.

Why might official statistics be inaccurate?

They understate the true extent of the problem for 2 main reasons:

1. victims may be unwilling to report it to the police. Yearnshire found that an average woman suffers 35 assaults before making a report. It’s the least likely violent crime to be reported. Dar argues that victims of dv are less likely than victims of other forms of crime to report it, because they believe that it’s not a matter for the police, or from fear of reprisals.

2. police and prosecutors may be reluctant to record, investigate or prosecute. According to Cheal, this is due to the fact that police and other state agencies aren’t prepared to be involved. They make 3 assumptions about family life:

   • family is a private sphere, so access to it is limitied

   • family is a good thing (functionalists), they neglect the ‘darker side’ (Zaretsky, Ansley)

   • Individuals are free-agents who can leave. However, male violence is often paired with economic power: abused women are often financially dependent on their husbands, so can’t leave.

     Lack of action means that cases successfully prosecuted are merely the tip of a much larger iceberg of abuse.

What are the explanations of DV?

• The radical fem. explanation = emphasises the role of patriarchal ideas, cultural values and institutions

• The materialist explanation = emphasises economic factors such as lack of resources.

What is the radical feminist explanation of DV?

Millett and Firestone = all societies have been founded on patriarchy. They see the key division in society as between men and women. ‘Men are the enemy’.

Radical fems provide a sociological explanation (rather than psychological) - they see the family and marriage as the key institutions in patriarchal society and are the main source of women’s oppression. For them, widespread DV is an inevitable feature of patriarchal society and serves to preserve the power men have over women (conservative force?). In their view, this helps to explain why most DV is committed by men. Lastly, in their view, male domination of state institutions helps to explain the reluctance of the police and state agencies.

Evaluation of the radical fem. explanation of DV:

• Elliot rejects the claim that all men benefit from violence against women, and points out that not all men are aggressive.

• They fail to explain female violence, including child abuse by women, violence against men, and within lesbian relationships.

• Wrongly assumes that all women are at equal risk of DV. The office of national stats (2014) shows that women from certain social groups are at higher risk, eg: younger women, low-earning, w/c, with substance issues, etc.

What is the materialist explanation of DV?

• Focuses on economic and material factors such as inequalities in income and resources.

• Offers a psychological explanation

• Wilson and Pickett see DV as the result of stress on family members caused by social inequalities. Eg, those on low incomes living in overcrowded accommodation are likely to experience more stress - affecting their ability to keep stable, caring relationships. (material dep). Their findings show that not all people are at equal risk.

Evaluation of materialist explanations of DV:

• Wilkinson and Pickett’s approach is useful in showing that not everyone is at equal risk, and how social inequality can cause stress and conflict.

• However, they don’t explain why women are more likely to be victims not men, unlike the radical fem. explanation.

How do Marxist feminists explain DV?

they also see inequality causing DV. For example, Ansley describes wives as ‘takers of shit’. She argues that DV is the product of capitalism: male workers are exploited at work and take out their frustration on their wives (parsons warm bath theory).

This helps to explain why DV tends to be male violence against women. However, it fails to explain why not all male workers commit acts of violence against their partners (Elliot), and like the radical feminist approach, it doesn’t account for cases of female violence.