What Is the Impact of Gender Violence on Women and Children?
My Pre-Research Assumptions about Gender Violence
There are several assumptions that I have about gender violence that are informed by my socialization as opposed to research findings. One of these assumptions is that gender violence is predominantly perpetrated by men against women. Most of the time, the man in a relationship is the stoner partner and therefore has the physical ability and strength to inflict pain on the woman. This is an important element that supports my assumption of women being the victim demographic in gender violence.
The second assumption is that victims of gender violence do not take proactive steps to report the violence to law enforcement agencies such as the police. There is the possibility of marriages being torn apart as a result of prosecution of one of the members of the family. This makes it difficult for women to report that they have been battered since they fear that their families will fall apart and hurt the children in the process. Therefore, I have another assumption that statistics that are always released by law enforcement agencies about gender violence victims and cases in general do not reflect the true extent to which gender violence is occurring in our society. The numbers are much less compared to the actual cases, most of which go unreported by the victims.
Another assumption that I have about gender violence is that there are remedies to this menace. Societies around the world are now advanced in terms of advocating for the rights of different groups of people. Women or men who are victims of gender violence should not be an exception. I am of the opinion that victims only suffer in silence out of choice and not because society does not have laws in place to protect them from gender violence in homesteads.
The Annotated Bibliography
Anderson, K & Umberson, D (2001).Gendering Violence: Masculinity and Power in Men’s Accounts of Domestic Violence. Gender and Society Vol. 15, No. 3 (Jun., 2001), pp. 358-380. (JSTOR)
This article will help provide grounding for the argument that it is men who are mostly found to be perpetrators of gender violence. It will also help explain the way in which men try to clear themselves by blaming women for the violence. Additionally, it will help in highlighting some of the effects gender violence has on women and children.
Dutton, D. (1994). Patriarchy and wife assault: the ecological fallacy. Violence and Victims, Vol. 9, No. 2, pp. 167-182. (JSTOR)
This article will be very important in explaining and dispelling some of the assumptions most people have about violence against women. In this article, Donald Dutton uses data to show that patriarchy or the large emphasis placed on the males in families in power relations does not necessarily lead to greater violence against women. He makes it clear that even in lesbian relationships, there is more violence compared to heterosexual relationships. This will help in showing there are other factors that are at play when violence is perpetrated by men against women. Additional ideas that the article has that will be useful in the paper include the emphasis that gender violence has serious negative effects on women and children.
Jewkes, R. (2002). “Intimate partner violence: Causes and prevention.” The Lancet 359 (9315): 1423–1429. (CINAHL)
This article will help me give some of the causes of gender violence. The author uses several sources to discuss in detail the issues that lead to domestic violence among intimate partners. Social norms and alcohol abuse are some of the cause given. The article also gives the impact of gender violence in families, and this will be very important in helping provide back-up for the issues the research paper will focus on as having been brought about by gender violence against women. Like most of the sources in this research, this article notes that women are usually the victims of gender violence, and this will be vital in giving strength to the ideas raised by the other sources. Finally, the author gives ways in which gender violence can be prevented, a dimension that will be very important in supporting the gender violence prevention part of the research paper.
Johnson, J.K, Haider, F, Ellis, K, Hay, D, & Lindow, S (2003). The prevalence of domestic violence in pregnant women. BJOG: an International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Vol. 110, pp. 272–275. (PubMed)
This article will help reinforce the reality that boyfriends and husbands are the major perpetrators of the violence women suffer in relationships. It will also help argue the idea that not even pregnant women are spread from gender violence. This will help show how widespread gender violence is. Additionally, the fact that even pregnant women suffer gender violence will help show how dangerous and risky gender violence is for women given the great risks associated with physical and emotional abuse during pregnancy.
Johnson, M & Ferraro, K (2000).Research on domestic violence in 1990s: making distinctions. Journal of Marriage and the Family 62 (November 2000): 948–963. (JSTOR)
This article details the dynamic nature of research on gender violence in the 1990s. It has vital information such as the gender that perpetrates violence more than the other, men, and the gender that has more victims of gender violence, women. Additionally, the article will help describe the power patters and the need to control that is vital in understanding why most men engage in wife battery. Like the article by Donald Dutton (1994) and Kaur and Garg (2008), this article also touches on the negative effects of gender violence on women and children, and this will play an important role in discussing this part of the research paper. The usage of several references in this article shows that sufficient research was done, thereby giving the article credibility.
Kaur, R & Garg,S (2008). Addressing domestic violence against women: an unfinished agenda. Indian Journal of Community Medicine, 33 (2): 73-76. (CINAHL)
This article contains valuable information regarding gender violence. It identifies women as the gender making a greater percentage of the victims and makes it clear that gender violence is an old problem. Additionally, the article makes it clear that the perpetrators, the victims, and the children suffer immense negative consequences that are either physical or emotional, and in some cases, both. This article will help in setting the ground for identifying women as the victims in the most part and men as the perpetrators. It will also help identify the negative effects that gender violence has on the women and the children within a family setting. The ideas raised in the article are supported by research as shown by the references, and this helps give credibility to the article. The article’s ideas are in agreement with those shared by Donald Dutton especially on how gender violence negatively affects women and children…
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