Theoretical and Definitional Issues in Violence against Women

Abstract

In the first edition of this book, we stated what was obvious to experts in the field: The number of studies on violence against women has increased dramatically in recent years (DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 2001). Nearly 10 years later, we can easily repeat this observation. Certainly, it is a major challenge to keep up with the empirical and theoretical work on one of the world’s most compelling social problems. That the field’s leading periodical, Violence Against Women: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal, is able to publish monthly is an important statement on the amount of time, money, and effort devoted around the world to enhancing a social scientific understanding of the myriad ways in which women are harmed by intimate partners and strangers in private and public places. Although new studies are being conducted daily and new theories are being constructed and tested, one thing we do not have is an agreedupon firm definition of violence against women. As Kilpatrick (2004) correctly points out, the debate about whether to define violence against women narrowly or broadly is “old, fierce, and unlikely to be resolved in the near future” (p. 1218). Similarly, what the authors of this chapter observed more than 15 years ago still holds true: “Right now, there is an important battle being waged over the nature of women’s behavior and its role in woman abuse” (Schwartz & DeKeseredy, 1993, p. 249). One location for this battle is that many people use language that specifically names women as the objects of abuse or names men as the abusers: They use terms such as “woman abuse,”“violence against women,” and “male-to-female violence.” Others fervently oppose these specific labels and instead use gender-neutral terms such as “family violence” or “intimate partner violence” (IPV),

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