Gaining a deeper insight into why women use physical violence towards a partner.

Abstract

Intimate partner violence (IPV) has significant social, economic and health consequences for the victims, their families and society as a whole. There is a need to understand the complex reasons for why IPV occurs in order to be able to intervene and prevent IPV from occurring. The purpose of the current study was to gain a better understanding of the characteristics and motives of women who engage in IPV, specifically physical violence. Qualitative semistructured interviews were used to identify: a) the characteristics and background information of women who have used physical violence towards a partner; b) their motives; c) and whether motives differ from what is reported in the literature for males who have perpetrated IPV. This research found many woman had backgrounds consisting of adverse experiences, parents who used substances, poor family relationships, poor mental health, and came from households characterised by family violence. Romantic relationships were characterised by dysfunctional communication, substance use by their partners and physical violence towards property. Defensive violence, wanting to stop their partners behaviour, retaliation, asserting dominance, and wanting to escape were all motivations reported by women in this study. Coercive control tactics are heavily reported in the literature for male perpetrators of IPV, however were not found in the current study. This research also provided a conceptual replication of the Event Process Model of Family Violence proposed by Stairmand et al. (2020). This research tested Stairmand’s et al. (2020) model using a different population to the original study. Stairmand’s et al. (2020) model assisted in outlining the complicated factors that contributed to engaging in IPV for women. However, the current study could not support the feed-back loop of counterescalation proposed by Stairmand et al. (2020) which potentially is more fitting for chronic or severe IPV. Overall, this research will be influential in the direction of future IPV research using larger samples sizes. Additionally, this research may be used to inform treatment on risk and protective factors for engaging in IPV by intervention and prevention providers.