Why Women Stay In Violence

370 Words2 Pages
Abstract The study was designed to understand why women in Malawi stayed in violent relationships. It was a comparative study of women from both matrilineal and ptrilineal societies of Malawi that have been living and are still living in domestic violence. The problem of staying in violence is very important in Malawi considering the fact that violence against women has excarbated and almost every week their reports in newspapers about women who have been abused by their spouses and yet no solution has not been found. Divorce has been thought to have its own consequencies and societies do not view this as a solution at all. Probably understanding why the women stayed would bring in solutions from another angle to solve the problem of domestic violence. Qualitative data was collected from 12 women in form of in depth interviews and also 8 focus group discussions were conducted. Six women were from matrilineal marriages and the other six were recruited from patrilineal societies. The study established that there are deeper reasons which make women stay in violence and these are rooted in the traditional reasons of children, poverty, isolation, etc. the reason women stay in violence are mainly a function of self and interconnectedness with the social networks of societies. Decisions to leave would have been easy if they were made in isolation, but society acts as a bench mark for verification of the reasons given for leaving. The other reason is the difficulty in defining what is violence amongst societies and rewards that society accords to the heroines who have survived the violence. Also to note is the fact that modernization through its institutions have brought about barriers that are patriarchy related that have tended to further deprive the opportunities of women to leave the violent marriages. There is need for research to be done on the effects of

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