Understanding Violence Against Women (1996) / Chapter Skim
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1 Introduction
1 Introduction
Pages 7-22
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From page 7... ...
Women are also significantly more likely to be killed by an intimate than are men. In 1993, 29 percent of female homicide victims were killed by their husbands, ax-husbands, or boyfriends; only 3 percent of male homicide victims were killed by their wives, ex-wives, or girlfriends Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1993~.i
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From page 8... ...
The annual rate of rape is estimated to be 7.1 per 1,000 adult women, and 13 percent of all women will experience forcible rape sometime during their lives Kilpatrick et al., 1994~. The exact dimensions of violence against women are frequently disputed, yet even conservative estimates indicate that millions of American women experience violent victimization.
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From page 9... ...
report Understanding and Preventing Violence Weiss and Roth, 1993) limited its definition to "behavior by persons against persons that intentionally threatens, attempts, or actually inflicts physical harm." The 1993 NRC study cleliberately excluded behavior that inflicts harm unintentionally, while the Gelles and Straus definition inclucles behaviors that may be unintentional but are perceived by the victim to be intentional.
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From page 10... ...
may also include sexual coercion or assaults, physical intimidation, threats to kill or to harm, restraint of normal activities or freedom, and denial of access to resources." The Task Force on Male Violence Against Women of the American Psychological Association defined violence as "physical, visual, verbal, or sexual acts that are experienced by a woman or a girl as a threat, invasion, or assault ant! that have the effect of hurting her or degrading her and/or taking away her ability to control contact {intimate or otherwise)
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From page 11... ...
Whether one uses a narrow definition confined to physical and sexual violence or one accepts a broa(ler definition of violence against women, definitional debates also surround each of the individual components. For example, how does one define rape or sexual assault?
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From page 12... ...
Code uses the categories aggravated sexual abuse when someone "knowingly causes another person to engage in a sexual act by using force against that other person, or by threatening or placing that other person in fear that any person will be subjected to death, serious bodily injury, or kidnapping" or by knowingly causing
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From page 13... ...
The use of behavioral descriptions in studies assures that what is being measured are experiences rather than an indiviclual's conceptions of the words rape or sexual assault. In this report, rape means forced or coerced penetrationvaginal, anal, or oral; "sexual assault" means other forced or coerced sexual acts not involving penetration; and "sexual violence" includes both rape and sexual assault.
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From page 14... ...
In this report, "physical violence" refers to behaviors that threaten, attempt, or actually inflict physical harm. The behaviors listed in the Conflict Tactic Scales, while not all inclusive, typify the type of behaviors meant by physical violence.
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From page 15... ...
It has been argued that separating physical and psychological conditions "overly simplifies the topic and denies reality" Hart and Brassard, 1991:63~: physically violent acts can have psychological consequences and psychological acts can have physical consequences. The difficulty of separating physical violence and psychological abuse is exemplified by the treatment of threats of physical violence, with researchers split over whether to classify such threats as physical violence or psychological abuse.
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From page 16... ...
The Conflict Tactics Scales subscale on verbal aggression Nitrous and Gelles, 1990) measures some aspects of psychological abuse: items include "insulted or swore at you," "did or said something to spite you," "threatened to hit or throw something at you," and "threw or smashed or hit or kicked something." Other measures that have undergone validity testing are the Psychological Maltreatment of Women Inventory, which consists of 58 behavioral items Footman, 1988)
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From page 17... ...
There is no separate section of the report devoted to psychological abuse because it has received very little study in and of itself. Rather, it is considered to be part of the pattern of behavior of serious physical violence, psychological abuse, and sometimes sexual violence, between intimate partners that has been well described E.g., Martin, 1976; Dobash and Dobash, 1979; Walker, 1979; Browne, ~ 987~.
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From page 18... ...
103-322, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 19941, Congress directed the National Research Council to develop a research agenda on violence against women Chapter 9, § 402911: The Attorney General shall request the National Academy of Sciences, through its National Research Council, to enter into a contract to develop a research agenda to increase the unclerstanding and control of violence against women, including rape and domestic violence. In furtherance of the
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From page 19... ...
In carrying out its charge, the panel limited its consideration to violence against women aged 12 and older. Child abuse and neglect and child sexual abuse were outside the purview of this panel and are covered by the report Understanding Child Abuse and Neglect National Research Council, 1993)
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From page 20... ...
The panel's main task was to lay out a research agenda to improve understanding of violence and controlling that violence in the context of women's lives. This entailed review ing the literature on intimate partner violence, rape, sexual assault, and stalking.
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From page 21... ...
2. Altboupb lesbian couples are technically included in this definition, there teas been very little research on violence in lesbian for male gayj relationships, and it is not covered separately in this report.
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