Social Dynamics, Gendered Subjectivities, and Surreptitious Acts of Agency From Women to Face Intimate Partner Violence in a Rural Community of Peru

The article analyzes women's inner subjective processes while engaged in male-to-female intimate partner violence (IPV) situations. Through in-depth interviews with 12 women who had suffered violence in a rural community in Peru, it examines three topics: social dynamics that simultaneously contribute to resist within and openly question IPV, the transformations of hegemonic femininity in the community and the implications on their gendered subjectivities, and women's surreptitious acts and processes of agency to recalibrate power within their situation of IPV. In conclusion, women experience inner psychic tensions about themselves, their partners, and their relationships, which enables them to question IPV while resisting within the violent situation.

Understanding Formal Responses to Intimate Partner Violence and Women's Resistance Processes: A Scoping Review

Intimate partner violence (IPV) literature addresses the ways in which women oppose violent male partners through acts of "everyday resistance." There is a limited understanding, however, of the relationship between women's resistance and their formal help-seeking in the context of IPV. Our scoping review, which includes 74 articles published in English-language journals between 1994 and 2017, attempts to help fill this gap by developing systematic knowledge regarding the following research questions: (1) How are formal institutional responses discussed within the literature on resistance to IPV? (2) How does institutional help-seeking facilitate or obstruct IPV survivors' personal efforts to resist violence? We find that institutions and organizations succeed in facilitating resistance processes when they counter victim-blaming ideas and provide IPV survivors with shared community and a sense of control over their futures. However, they fall short in terms of helping survivors by expecting survivors to adhere to a rigid narrative about appropriate responses to violence, devoting insufficient attention to individual-level factors impacting survivors' vulnerability and ability to access help, and replicating abuse dynamics when interacting with survivors. Policy and practice implications are discussed.

Understanding Women's Resistance to Intimate Partner Violence: A Scoping Review

Scholars widely acknowledge that women oppose male violence and control in intimate relationships. Yet there is limited comprehensive knowledge of how resistance features in intimate partner violence (IPV) research across the social sciences. Our scoping review helps fill this gap, analyzing and synthesizing 74 research articles published in English-language scholarly journals between 1994 and 2017. Our review is guided by the following questions: (1) How is research on IPV and resistance designed and executed? (2) How do IPV researchers define the term resistance? (3) What specific types of resistance do IPV researchers discuss in their work? (4) What policy and practice implications are provided by current literature on women's resistance to IPV? We find that scholarship on resistance to IPV is varied, spanning 10 scholarly disciplines with research samples drawn from 19 countries. Studies overwhelmingly used qualitative data, gathered through a range of techniques. The 42 articles that explicitly or implicitly defined resistance either conceptualized the term in the context of power relations, defined it as a form of agency, or understood resistance as a mechanism of physical, economic, and existential survival. Articles also identify several subtypes of resistance strategies including avoidance, help-seeking, active opposition, violent action, and leaving a violent relationship. In terms of practice and policy, articles identify several ways in which institutions fail to meet women's needs, and recommend training so providers and legal personnel may better assist IPV victims.

Understanding the Body and Embodiment in the Context of Women's Resistance to Intimate Partner Violence: A Scoping Review

Scholars acknowledge that women oppose male intimate partner violence (IPV). Yet there is limited comprehensive knowledge regarding how women's bodies and embodiment, that is, their physical and emotional practices and the cultural and social systems that influence them, figure in this process. Our scoping review helps fill this gap by analyzing and synthesizing 74 research articles published in English-language scholarly journals between 1994 and 2017 to address three research questions: (1) How does existing IPV research conceptualize resistance? (2) To what extent do the body and embodiment appear in this research? and (3) What common themes emerge from investigation of the role of embodiment and the body in the context of IPV? The articles identify several subtypes of resistance strategies including avoidance, help-seeking, violent action, and leaving a violent relationship. The reviewed research also regularly describes women's physical and emotional states in the context of IPV. Only a small number of these texts, however, define or conceptualize embodiment. Our analysis of the manner in which the body figures in women's resistance to IPV yielded four themes: (1) the active body, (2) the injured/constrained body, (3) the interactive body, and (4) the transformative body. We conclude with a discussion of policy and practice implications, such as the need to increase awareness about how institutions enforce embodied norms among victims and use the body to assign blame and/or proffer assistance in the context of IPV.

Seeking safety from male partner violence in Turkey: Toward a context-informed perspective on women's decisions and actions

Women's stay/leave decision-making in violent relationships has become a subject of investigation in psychology over the last few decades. Despite making significant contributions to the understanding of how women's psychological processes shape their responses to violence, much of this research has lacked a contextualized approach. The present study aimed to provide a feminist context-informed examination of women's decision-making and safety-seeking processes. Twelve women who had experiences of violence in their marital relationships were interviewed individually. The study was carried out in Istanbul, Turkey, and all participants were socioeconomically disadvantaged women. A constructivist grounded theory approach was used for the data analysis. The results indicated that women's helplessness, beyond being a psychological construct, was a reality shaped by the conditions of marginalization in their lives. More than being related to the experience of psychological trauma, the women's narratives revealed the disempowering barriers associated with the lack of socioeconomic and institutional resources. Under these circumstances, regardless of their decisions to stay or leave, the women underlined their ongoing strategic efforts to ensure their safety, as mainly strengthened by the relational support available to them.

Correlates of Safety Strategy Use Among South African Women Living With HIV and at Risk of Intimate Partner Violence

Intimate partner violence (IPV) and HIV are correlated and endemic in South Africa. However, safety strategy use to prevent IPV among HIV-positive women is understudied. This study assesses correlates of specific safety strategy use among 166 Black South African women recently experiencing IPV and testing positive for HIV. Associations were observed between consultation with formal (i.e., counselors, clergy, IPV specialists) and informal networks (i.e., friends/family) and participant language (isiZulu, isiXhosa, Sesotho, and English), past year IPV, and engaging in HIV care. Future HIV-IPV programs should consider how characteristics of different IPV safety strategies may influence strategy uptake and ultimately HIV care.

Empowering Through Psychodrama: A Qualitative Study at Domestic Violence Shelters

Psychodrama is a therapeutic method in which the stage is used to enact and reenact life events with the aim of instilling, among other positive changes, hope and empowerment in a wide range of populations suffering from psychological duress. The therapeutic process in psychodrama moves away from the classic treatment of the individual in isolation to treatment of the individual in the context of a group. In domestic violence situations, in which abusive men seek to socially isolate their victims from family and friends, the social support that psychodrama provides can positively influence the psychological health and well-being of the participants. This qualitative study examines the manner in which psychodramatic treatment can empower abused women residing in domestic violence shelters and help them regain control of their lives. An action research study of domestic violence survivors living in a women's shelter in Israel, over a 12-month period, demonstrates the role of psychodrama therapy in promoting the reduction of anxiety, stress, guilt, and self-blame, while reinforcing perceptions of self-worth and confidence. These findings contribute to our understanding of the potential of psychodrama in helping reshape life roles and reframe experiences within a creative process, with the aim of facilitating a transition from powerlessness to powerfulness among vulnerable populations.

Rural Malawian Women's Resistance to Systematic Oppression, Violence, and Abuse by Their Husbands

In Malawi, 41% of women aged 15 to 49 report ever experiencing intimate partner violence (IPV). Although there is evidence of the pervasiveness of IPV in Malawian society, the context in which it occurs and how women respond is not well described. The purpose of this study was to describe experiences of IPV of rural Malawian women. In-depth interviews were conducted with 55 rural Malawian women aged 21 to 75 years (M = 39) as part of a larger, mixed-methods study. This qualitative thematic analysis highlights husbands' IPV against wives and women's actions to protect themselves and their children, and to thrive despite the violence. Our use of a postcolonial feminist perspective led us to acknowledge Malawian women's acts of resistance in the midst of the harsh realities of IPV and gender inequality. We contend women's resilience and resistance against oppression within intimate relationships are critical tools in the process of reducing IPV. Structural interventions that (a) address the multiple distal and proximal factors affecting IPV, (b) are tailored to and owned by local populations, and (c) involve both men and women as architects and active participants, we believe, hold the greatest promise for reducing IPV in Malawi.