I Sverige har forskningen kring mäns partnervåld mot kvinnor främst utgått från kvinnans roll som våldsutsatt istället för mäns roll som våldsutövande. Syftet med detta arbete är att undersöka hur den svenska facklitteraturen diskuterar mäns partnervåld mot kvinnor. Vår frågeställning har varit följande: Vilka generella konstruktioner av mäns partnervåld mot kvinnor framkommer i facklitteraturen med beaktande av temana makt och kontroll, kvinnans självbild, omgivningens attityder och normer samt orsaksförklaringar till partnervåldet? Arbetet utgörs av en kunskapsöversikt över sju stycken primärdokument som har analyserats med hjälp av socialkonstruktionistisk teoribildning. Resultaten visar att det finns en risk med att majoriteten av författarna i våra primärdokument diskuterar kvinnor som en särskilt utsatt grupp för mäns våld.  Författarna konstruerar en bild av kvinnan som offer för mannens partnervåld och mannen som förövaren. Genom dessa beskrivningar vidmakthåller författarna en offerbild av kvinnan som riskerar att förstärka hennes redan underordnade och sårbara position. / In Sweden, research on male partner violence against women has primarily been focused on the battered women rather then the abusive men. The aim of this work is to investigate how the Swedish literature discusses men's partner violence against women. Our research question has been: What general constructions of male partner violence against women is evident in the literature with regard to the themes of power and control, a woman's self-image, the surrounding attitudes and norms and causal explanations for partner violence? The work consists of a review of seven primary documents that have been analysed with the help of social constructionist theory. The results show that there is a risk that the majority of the authors in our primary documents discuss women as a particularly vulnerable group of male violence. The authors construct an image of women as victims of male partner violence and the man as the abuser. Through these descriptions, the authors perpetuate a victim image of the woman who is likely to strengthen her already inferior and vulnerable position.

Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio University, November, 2007. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (MA(Practical Theology))--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 114-116).

Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)--University of Waikato, 2008. / Title from PDF cover (viewed March 9, 2009) Includes bibliographical references (p. 82-84)

Thesis (Ph.D.) - Carleton University, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 236-259). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (D.Phil (Psychology))--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Includes abstract in English and Afrikaans. Includes bibliographical references.

M.A. / Spousal abuse has been a practiced for decades across many cultures. According to the Domestic Violence Act, 1998 of S.A. spousal abuse consists of physical, sexual, emotional verbal psychological and economic abuse as well as various forms of intimidation by a spouse. Abuse against women and children seems to be entrenched in gender power equalities and hierarchical gender relations prevalent in society. The advent of feminism, that deals with issues of inequality between the genders, in the nineteenth century highlighted the problem of spousal abuse and challenged cultural and patriarchal notions of women. In South Africa spousal abuse is alarmingly prevalent and deeply ingrained within our society and is often viewed as a normative rather than a deviant practice. The legacy of political repression, a declining economy and diminishing job opportunities, insufficient educational opportunities and racial and ethnic divisions, has for decades generated deep rooted divisions in our society. Women in particular are the historically the victims of political and economic exclusion and have suffered the ravages of patriarchy, sexism and discriminatory practices that have kept them outside of social, political and economic power structures. In this process, abuse against women has been subtly sanctioned by society. This reflects the extent to which exploitation and abuse, in varying forms, have come to pervade the very foundations of our society and have become a socially sanctioned instrument for resolving conflict and promoting change. Because of the continued cultural sanctioning of spousal abuse it is often underreported, making statistics on the subject extremely difficult to obtain. The present study explored the women’s endogenous factors that contributed to the maintenance of their abusive spousal relationship. In essence these factors refer to the thoughts, feelings and beliefs which are significant in the experience of being in an abusive relationship. The study further looked at how these endogenous factors entrap women in abusive relationships. In order to contextualise the experience of being in an abusive spousal relationship the literature review (which makes up the first four chapters 2 of this study) concentrated on several different areas. The first chapter addresses the aims and motivations of the present study. The second chapter deals with established theories and thoughts about the existence of spousal abuse in relationships. Theoretical explanations highlighting some of the endogenous maintaining factors in an abusive spousal relationship are presented. These include psychodynamic theories, systems theory, feminism, eco-systemic approach, social constructionism and postmodernism. The third chapter deals with women’s responses to spousal abuse. The fourth chapter deals with the interaction between women’s socialisation and their response to spousal abuse. It would seem that abused woman find themselves in varying contradictory interactional contexts. Their spouse represents the person who loves them the most, yet he hurts them the most too. Their calls for support by informing others are seen as dishonouring their families yet when they decide to keep the abuse quiet they are condemned. These paradoxes confront abused women when they are in need of help, support and understanding. These cultural and societal norms are confusing and inconsistent, together with various emotions, serve to paralyse the abused women and limit their choices.

The purpose of this preliminary and exploratory research project was to identify possible links between insecure male attachment patterns and wife assault. Attachment theory suggests that the quality of early interpersonal relationships has a profound effect on the psychological, emotional and social development of the individual. Insecure attachment has been found to be associated with a number of relationship problems and these interpersonal problems have also been identified with men who assault their wives. Based on this similarity, the insecure attachment paradigm may offer a useful theoretical orientation for understanding the conflict behaviours of men who assault their wives. The sample of fifty adult men who had assaulted their female partners was drawn from two therapy groups. In this preliminary and exploratory study, a number of measures were used to assess each man's mental representation of childhood attachment and his adult intimate attachment patterns, intimate conflict tactics and interpersonal jealousy and anger problems. The associations between insecure preoccupied, dismissing, and fearful attachment pattern ratings and male conflict tactic and relationship problems were then analyzed. The findings indicated that men who assault their wives had a high proportion of insecure adult intimate attachment patterns. These assaultive men were also found to be predominantly insecure in both their mental representations of childhood attachment and adult intimate attachment pattern ratings, with the greatest continuity occurring with the insecure preoccupied and fearful pattern ratings. Three patterns of relationship problems corresponding to the three insecure adult intimate attachment pattern rating were found. Preoccupied attachment pattern ratings were positively correlated with interpersonal jealousy scores and the reported use of the reasoning, verbal/symbolic abuse, physical abuse and severe physical abuse conflict tactics. Dismissing attachment pattern ratings were positively correlated with interpersonal anger scores and negatively correlated with the reasoning, verbal, physical and severe physical abuse conflict tactics. Fearful attachment pattern ratings were similar to the dismissing pattern in the positive correlation with interpersonal anger scores. The importance of considering insecure adult intimate attachment pattern ratings when providing group therapy to men who assault their wives was considered. Men with high insecure dismissing adult intimate attachment pattern ratings seem to require a distinctly different therapeutic approach than those with high insecure preoccupied adult intimate attachment pattern ratings and ideas in this regard are discussed. / Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies / Graduate

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / The main goal of this study was to develop assessment and intervention guidelines that will provide practitioners with a framework to develop and implement batterer intervention programmes. The development of batterer intervention programmes must be informed by risk-based assessment and the study has identified this as a priority. This priority was informed by the popular notions that batterer intervention by itself, is futile and that intervention efforts were misdirected and useless. The author was of the opinion that if specific risk markers were identified, the batterer intervention efforts could be a tool to influence the values, beliefs and dangerous behaviours of abusive men. This study attempted to formally identify those risk factors that should be considered with batterers so that appropriate guidelines for assessment and intervention could result. / South Africa

The domestic violence movement has had remarkable success illuminating the scope, prevalence and consequences of battering, but has been more limited in its ability to successfully intervene and prevent abuse of women by their intimate male partners. Surprisingly, there has been little research directed at understanding why intervention strategies with perpetrators are only minimally effective. Studies have focused on assessing the degree to which and for whom individual components such as arrest, prosecution and psycho-educational programs for abusive men are successful, but few explorations have attempted to describe limitations and challenges to the domestic violence intervention 'system as a whole'. Employing a systems approach, a process-oriented evaluation of the domestic violence intervention system in Portland, Oregon was conducted. Ten focus groups were facilitated with key stakeholders in the coordinated community response. Participants included police and probation officers, victim advocates, victim/survivors, batterer intervention program providers, and batterer intervention program participants. The focus group discussions were analyzed using constructivist grounded theory and emergent themes were identified. Based on stakeholder testimony, it appears as though seven interacting features may limit the effectiveness of domestic violence intervention strategies with abusive men: 1) attempting to simultaneously punish and rehabilitate perpetrators, 2) dominance of a "one size fits all" approach, 3) insufficient accountability within the system for abusive men, 4) rampant victim blaming, 5) barriers to effective collaboration, 6) confusion created by complex domestic violence dynamics, and 7) reactivity instead of activism and prevention. These and other findings are discussed in light of their capacity to illuminate fundamental tensions associated with relying so heavily on the criminal justice system to intervene in domestic violence (e.g., the contradictions that surface when attempting to protect and empower victims, the difficulty of balancing consistency with an individually tailored response when sanctioning perpetrators). Despite these and other challenges, complete dismissal of the criminal justice system's role in holding abusive men accountable seems unwise. Instead, it will be important for movement activists, practitioners, and researchers to critically reflect upon its limitations and work to redress and refine its use, while simultaneously developing new strategies that engage a wider range of community resources.