M.A. / Wife abuse as a social construct had no reality until 1970 and as a result violence against women remained invisible and seemingly non-existent. When wife abuse was named, a new reality was created and for the first time women's experiences were acknowledged and validated. The process of naming, largely as a result of the efforts of many active feminists, generated an alternative reality providing the space for many new narratives to emerge. Research has shown that wife abuse is not a rare phenomenon. Conservative estimates suggest that at least one in four women in South Africa have experienced wife abuse at some point in their lives. This research. using a social constructionist perspective which adheres to feminist principles, will explore the multiple realities of wife abuse. It will thus continue the dialogue regarding wife abuse, generating new narratives and alternative meanings that will hopefully contribute toward a greater understanding of it. Chapter one discusses the prevalence of wife abuse within South Africa as well as the resultant effects. Chapter two attempts to document the long and insidious history of wife abuse that was legitimised within the law until the rise of feminism. The importance of feminism is discussed as part of the context. Chapter three discusses the "tools" to be used in this dissertation and explores the way in which wife abuse has emerged as a social construct. Chapter four reflects that the way in which wife abuse is meaningful to the participants is to a large extent shaped by the collective representations thereof, which are then considered. Chapter five discusses the social, psychological and legal response that has emerged because wife abuse was named. Chapter six charts the way in which wife abuse is understood and explicated through a feminist lens. Chapter seven is dedicated to the research methodology adopted in this dissertation. The tenets of a social constructionist post-modern framework an; explained, facilitating the ensuing discussion pertaining to the research design. Chapter eight illuminates the themes that evolved in discussion with participants reflecting that the way in which wife abuse is seen, perceived, experienced and understood is largely shaped by the various roles of the participants. Chapter nine looks specifically at how each participant constructs wife abuse. Chapter ten considers the way in which wife abuse is seen through the lens of a survivor and the way in which she perceives the role of alternative systems. Finally consideration is given to the absence of the "batterer''. Chapter eleven marks the last part of the dissertation in which the research process and themes are reflected upon and conclusions are drawn. finally chapter twelve critiques the research and makes recommendations for the future Concluding thoughts are verbalised regarding the journey that was taken and the journey that lies ahead.

Abuse of women by male partners is a significant social problem in New Zealand. Ten participating women, whose experiences span more than fifty years, provided interviews focused on their recovery from partner abuse but including the broader context of their lives. Grounded Theory methodology with a feminist perspective was applied in conjunction with Grounded Theory methods. The study identifies GROWING THROUGH ADVERSITY as the basic psychosocial process of recovery from an abusive relationship. GROWING THROUGH ADVERSITY has three inter-related core categories: FINDING A PATH BEYOND ABUSE concerns experiencing abuse and finding safety; GETTING A LIFE is about interactions with the social world; and BECOMING MYSELF involves personal growth and development. In the first of five phases, FALLING FOR LOVE, women commit to the relationship with unexamined, traditional beliefs in gender ideals. When the partner becomes abusive stereotyped meanings of relationship require compliance as the price of 'love', or result in shame and self-blame. In phase two, TAKING CONTROL, coping strategies of resistance and compliance fail. Seeking help for themselves, or the relationship, results in finding other perspectives and new contexts of meaning, prompting participants to overcome personal, social, and safety constraints to separation. Phase three includes the distress and difficulty of SECURING A BASE. In the fourth phase, MAKING SENSE OF IT, participants seek both explanation and meaning for their experience. By the fifth phase, BEING MYSELF, participants have constructed new meaning systems and integrated into wider social contexts. They have become women who live by their own values, without partner abuse. Analysis of participants' experience highlights the changing purpose of help-seeking, The paradox of shame and self blame, and processes of meaning-making and coping are clarified. Victim-blaming is identified as a social sanction that supports abuse. Personal growth processes are conceptualised by integrating several developmental theorists.

The ways in which men negotiate contradictory discourses to accommodate their domestic violence into their sense of self forms the focus of this thesis. The sixty-six men interviewed for this thesis had attended a twelve-week group in an attempt to stop their violence. Forty-two of their women partners also agreed to be interviewed. Overall two hundred and fifty-nine interviews were conducted with these men and their women partners. The men were found to draw on various competing discourses in their constructions of themselves. One of the sources was the print media. A content analysis of newspaper articles over a period of twenty years revealed that popular representations of domestic violence have increased over time and have privileged physical forms of violence. Representations of the perpetrator of domestic violence featured hegemonic forms of masculinity, emphasising the physicality of men's bodies. Although the men interviewed here had agreed to attend a professional course for violent perpetrators, they were selective in which professional discourses they used to explain their own violence. The thesis outlines legal, medical and human services discourses, focusing on selected interventions, and identifies weaknesses such as the use of prescriptive definitions of domestic violence and the reliance on women to report on their own and their partner's feelings and behaviours. Finally, women's and men's own representations of their experiences revealed that the domestic relationship is a complex entity - where contradictory scripts for masculinity and femininity are acted out. Feminist and masculinity theories of power and subjectivity are coupled with Foucauldian thought to provide a theoretical framework capable of untangling the contradictory issues expressed in these discursive spaces. A key contradiction occurs between an aspect of the male gender role discourse in which men are expected to 'look out for number one', which requires enacting high levels of self-control and control-over others. This is juxtaposed with the desire for men to exercise non-violent forms of control and an ethic of care for others as well as themselves. Even though women are often identified as the caregivers in the family, a significant finding of this thesis was that violent men work relentlessly to construct themselves as the ethical partner. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--School of Social Sciences, 2004.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 303-326). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center.

Violence against women is not only recognized as a pervasive and insidious social problem affecting all societies, but is being increasingly characterized as the most widespread form of human rights violation. South Africa is at this moment, experiencing violent crime at an unprecedented rate. Today, violence has become deeply entrenched in South African society. As such it is not surprising to witness the widespread abuse against women. The researcher begins by examining relevant literature in the area of the experiences of women in intimate abusive relationships. This study makes use of a phenomenological method to explicate the meanings of 6 participants of the Aryan Benevolent Home, a safe house, who have experienced abuse in an intimate relationship. The central aim of the study was to investigate the experiences of abuse women by their intimate male partners. The research was approached from a feminist perspective, using a qualitative methodology. The participants were diverse in terms of age and background and drawn from women seeking help at the Aryan Benevolent Home. Information was obtained by means of a semi-structured interview, which was tape recorded and transcribed for analysis. Anonymity and confidentiality were assured to all participants before the study. The study concludes with the limitations and implications of the findings and recommendations are further discussed. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2007.

This dissertation examined how psychological variables associated with selfcontrol related to abusiveness in situations of intimate conflict. The variables of interest were efficacy, need for power and responsibility. These variables were examined relative to other predictors of abuse such as the Abusive Personality (Dutton, 1994b), a construct of personality features that predispose some men to intensely aversive emotional arousal in their intimate relationship, leading to abusiveness. The research is relevant to the experience of those men with the characteristics of Abusive Personality, as well as those who may not have those predispositional features. The first step of the project was the development of the Power, Conflict Efficacy and Responsibility Questionnaire (PCERQ), with its four sub-scales: (1) Conflict Ineffectiveness (CI; lack of conflict efficacy), (2) N-Power (NP; need for power), (3) Standards of Non-Abusiveness (SNA; one part of responsibility), and (4) Exonerative Rationalizations (ER; cognitions complicit with inconsistent self-control - a second part of responsibility). These sub-scales were developed on the basis of data collected from samples of undergraduate males in dating relationships (n = 147), men in treatment groups for wife assault (n = 50), and a community sample of men (n = 27). Results from regression equations predicting self-reported abuse with the PCERQ sub-scales, along with other theoretically-relevant measures, found that CI was a prominent and consistent predictor of both verbal and physical abuse. The interaction of the NP and ER sub-scales significantly predicted physical abuse, as did the interaction of the CI sub-scale with the Abusive Personality (the most abusive participants had the highest scores on both Abusive Personality and Conflict Ineffectiveness). These results show the importance of considering both situational conflict experiences, along with personality and life history variables, when examining wife assault.

Abuse of women by male partners is a significant social problem in New Zealand. Ten participating women, whose experiences span more than fifty years, provided interviews focused on their recovery from partner abuse but including the broader context of their lives. Grounded Theory methodology with a feminist perspective was applied in conjunction with Grounded Theory methods. The study identifies GROWING THROUGH ADVERSITY as the basic psychosocial process of recovery from an abusive relationship. GROWING THROUGH ADVERSITY has three inter-related core categories: FINDING A PATH BEYOND ABUSE concerns experiencing abuse and finding safety; GETTING A LIFE is about interactions with the social world; and BECOMING MYSELF involves personal growth and development. In the first of five phases, FALLING FOR LOVE, women commit to the relationship with unexamined, traditional beliefs in gender ideals. When the partner becomes abusive stereotyped meanings of relationship require compliance as the price of 'love', or result in shame and self-blame. In phase two, TAKING CONTROL, coping strategies of resistance and compliance fail. Seeking help for themselves, or the relationship, results in finding other perspectives and new contexts of meaning, prompting participants to overcome personal, social, and safety constraints to separation. Phase three includes the distress and difficulty of SECURING A BASE. In the fourth phase, MAKING SENSE OF IT, participants seek both explanation and meaning for their experience. By the fifth phase, BEING MYSELF, participants have constructed new meaning systems and integrated into wider social contexts. They have become women who live by their own values, without partner abuse. Analysis of participants' experience highlights the changing purpose of help-seeking, The paradox of shame and self blame, and processes of meaning-making and coping are clarified. Victim-blaming is identified as a social sanction that supports abuse. Personal growth processes are conceptualised by integrating several developmental theorists.

Thesis (B.A. (Hons))--University of Adelaide, 1988. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves i-iii).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Washington State University, August 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 83-96).

Thesis (M.S.W.)--University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 100-103).