Domestic Violence: Causes and Social Awareness (a Community and Family Studies Literature Review)

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Domestic violence (also known as family violence) refers to violent behaviours between those who are, or have been in an intimate relationship in a domestic setting. Domestic violence can include verbal, physical, psychological, social abuse through systematic isolation, financial, sexual, spiritual abuse (religion used to justify placing victim into subordination, or denying victim religious/spiritual activities) or general harassment such as stalking and online and telephone harassment. It is estimated that one third of women and one out of six men worldwide have experienced abuse. Domestic violence (or family violence) is not confined to a single race, culture or socioeconomic status. It is also not confined to a certain age, with 1 in 7 South Australian girls as young as 12 had been reported to be raped or sexually assaulted by a boyfriend, and one third had experienced physical violence from a partner. The "Why don’t they just leave?" mentality is ignorant towards the nature of domestic violence and the possible lack of economic and social support available to people in situations with an abusive partner or parent. “…rates of violence by an intimate partner may be higher in settings where the behaviour is normative, and where women and men believe that marriage grants men unconditional sexual access to their wives.” Said the WHO Multi-country Study on Women's Health and Domestic Violence against Women. The study also concludes: “…the proportion of women agreeing with a particular justification was higher among women who had experienced partner violence than among those who had not.” The first quote from the World Health Organisation Study, is similar to the “Gender and power feminist theory” outlined in “Violence in the Family”, Volume 99 of the “Issues in Society” series by The Spinney Press. This passage on pp. 12 – 13 explains that feminist
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