Psychological Reactions to Different Types of Gender-Based Violence in Women Survivors of Violence in the Context of a Developing Country

2021 ◽  
pp. 088626052110479
Author(s):  
Farzana Akter ◽  
Farah Deeba

Literature on the psychological effects on women survivors of violence (WSV) suggests there may be a relationship between the specific type of gender-based violence and patterns in the development of mental health consequences. Understanding these relationships would support early targeted (or early specialist) intervention. Since violence against women in families is a common social health problem in developing countries, the study attempted to explore the abuse specific reaction patterns within such a context. A total of 600 WSV ( mean age = 26.86, SD = 7.47) were recruited from different social service organizations working for WSV in Bangladesh. To identify the type of gender-based violence (i.e., physical, sexual, emotional, psychological, and economic violence) experienced and psychiatric sequelae (i.e., post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, and substance abuse) in WSV, multiple reliable and valid measures were used. The results of the hierarchical multiple regression analysis showed that amongst the various different types of violence, only psychological, sexual, and economic violence have a significant independent predictive ability on PTSD, anxiety, and depression in the Bangladeshi WSV. Violence related factors such as witnessing violence in childhood among parents and history of childhood abuse had the unique predictive ability on suicidal ideation and substance abuse, respectively. Our result suggested that accepting physical and emotional abuse at any stage of life is very common for Bangladeshi women. This study suggested that non-physical forms of violence have the most significant independent predictive ability in the development of psychiatric symptoms. It is suggested that to develop appropriate support services for WSV within this socio-cultural context, further research is required which focuses on the psychological impact of non-physical forms of violence.

2021 ◽  
pp. 088626052199792
Author(s):  
Kazhan I. Mahmood ◽  
Sherzad A. Shabu ◽  
Karwan M. M-Amen ◽  
Salar S. Hussain ◽  
Diana A. Kako ◽  
...  

There is increasing concern about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown’s social and economic consequences on gender-based violence. This study aimed to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on gender-based violence by comparing the prevalence of spousal violence against women before and during the COVID-19 related lockdown periods. This study was conducted in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq using a self-administered online questionnaire survey after the COVID-19 lockdown period in June 2020. Data were collected from a sample of 346 married women about the occurrence, frequency, and forms of spousal violence before and during the lockdown period. Significant increases in violence were observed from the pre-lockdown period to the lockdown period for any violence (32.1% to 38.7%, p = .001), emotional abuse (29.5% to 35.0%, p = .005), and physical violence (12.7% to 17.6%, p = .002). Regarding emotional abuse, humiliation (24.6% to 28.3%, p = .041) and scaring or intimidation (14.2% to 21.4%, p < .001) significantly increased during the lockdown. For physical violence, twisting the arm or pulling hair (9.0% to 13.0%, p = .004) and hitting (5.2% to 9.2%, p = .003) significantly increased during the lockdown. Forcing to have sexual intercourse also significantly increased during lockdown (6.6% to 9.5%., p = .021). The concerned authorities and women’s rights organizations should collaborate to enhance the prevention of violence against women. An effective prevention strategy should emphasize recognizing and acknowledging the extent of the problem, raising awareness about the problem and the available resources to address it, and ensuring social and economic stability. Lessons learned about the increased prevalence of spousal violence against women during the COVID-19 pandemic and the need to adopt appropriate strategies to prevent and address it will be valuable for similar future crises.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (14) ◽  
pp. 67-89
Author(s):  
Salina Abji

Scholars have identified crimmigration – or the criminalization of “irregular” migration in law – as a key issue affecting migrant access to justice in contemporary immigrant-receiving societies. Yet the gendered and racialized implications of crimmigration for diverse migrant populations remains underdeveloped in this literature. This study advances a feminist intersectional approach to crimmigration and migrant justice in Canada. I add to recent research showing how punitive immigration controls disproportionately affect racialized men from the global south, constituting what Golash-Boza and Hondagneu-Sotelo have called a “gendered racial removal program” (2013). In my study, I shift analytical attention to consider the effects of the contemporary crimmigration system on migrant women survivors of gender-based violence. While such cases constitute a small sub-group within a larger population of migrants in detention, nevertheless scholarly attention to this group can expose the multiple axes along which state power is enacted – an analytical strategy that foundational scholars like Crenshaw (1991) used to theorize “structural intersectionality” in the US. In focusing on crimmigration in the Canadian context, I draw attention to the growing nexus between migration, security, and gender-based violence that has emerged alongside other processes of crimmigration. I then provide a case analysis of the 2013 death while in custody of Lucía Dominga Vega Jiménez, an “undocumented” migrant woman from Mexico. My analysis illustrates how migrant women’s strategies to survive gender-based violence are re-cast as grounds for their detention and removal, constituting what I argue is a criminalization of survivorship.The research overall demonstrates the centrality of gendered and racialized structural violence in crimmigration processes by challenging more universalist approaches to migrant justice.


2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-85
Author(s):  
Falak Shad Memon

Climate-induced gender-based violence is an emerging area of study. Although studies on women and climate change are not new, a fresh understanding of gender-based issues and related problems are becoming of greater concern now. Women in Pakistan are generally at a disadvantage due to their societally- perceived norms, roles and responsibilities. This study aims to examine the experiences of women in flood settlement camps and to identify an association between natural disasters and violence against women. For this study, with the help of qualitative research methodology, 20 women were interviewed in the flood-prone areas of Sindh. Findings show that most women experience different types of violence, physical as well as emotional, committed by partners and even by complete strangers. The rate of such violence rises when women are displaced and are in temporary shelter facilities during a post-disaster period. Committing violence under such situations results in critical implications for both women victims and the development and implementation of gender-sensitive climate change and disaster planning policies.


Author(s):  
Tamara K. Rostovskaya ◽  
◽  
Natal’ya A. Bezverbnaya ◽  

Research on gender-based violence focuses on levels of physical, sexualized, and psychological impact. This article is devoted to one of the most latent forms of violence — economic, faced by members of a multi-generational family: spouses, children, parents, grandparents. Attention is drawn to the fact that it is women who are more susceptible to various forms of economic deprivation. The authors noted that economic violence is: a restriction in access to financial resources; control over access to health care, employment, education; exclusion or complete exclusion from the financial decision-making process; discrimination in the procedure of inheritance, obtaining property rights, restriction or prohibition of the use of movable and immovable property. Special attention is paid to the analysis of the consequences of economic violence for different sectors of the economy. It is revealed that the consequence of economic violence and economic deprivation can be: the aggravation of poverty, the inability to obtain education, difficulties in socialization and realization of the individual in the professional sphere. The article also suggests indicators of economic violence. Economic violence creates a risk of physical violence, promotes sexual exploitation, and trafficking.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin R Weiss

Abstract Despite constructions of domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking as discrete forms of violence, research shows that violence often co-occurs. Victims experiencing multiple forms of violence require different interventions from victims experiencing only one. Service providers’ understandings of domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking as discrete, then, potentially undermine their goal of effective intervention. Drawing on 26 months of participant observation in an anti-gender-based violence nonprofit organization, I explore how advocates construct each form of violence as independent from the others. Results show that both organizational features, such as training curricula and organizational jurisdictions, and rhetorical strategies, such as an under-emphasis on co-occurring violence, contribute to the construction of each type of violence as discrete. This paper is of interest to researchers, practitioners, and policymakers committed to designing and implementing effective responses to gender-based violence. I also advance social problems theory, showing that organizational features, not just interactional processes, contribute to typification.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 280-292
Author(s):  
Christabel Oyowo Ayeni

Objective: The Aim Of The Study Was To Determine The Prevalence Of Gender-Based Violence And Pregnancy Outcomes In Pregnant Women Attending Antenatal Care Clinics In Two Selected Primary Health Care Centres At Abuja FCT, Nigeria. Methodology: The Descriptive And Analytical Cross-Sectional Research Design And A Convenience Sampling Method Were Used. A Pretested Semi-Structured Questionnaire With A Cronbach’s Alpha Value Of 0.77 Was Administered With The Interviewer-Administered Data Collection Technique To Collect Data. The Study Population Were Pregnant Women Who Attended Antenatal Clinic At The Primary Health Care Centres At Karu And Jikwoyi In Abuja-FCT; The Sample Size Was 384 Pregnant Women Between The Ages Of 15-44 Years. Raw Data Generated From The Completed Questionnaire Was Analysed For Simple Frequency, Percentage, And Chi-Square Analysis Using The SPSS Version 16. Results: Prevalence Of GBV Among The Participants Was 59.6%, 99.4% Accounted For Emotional Abuse, Physical Abuse At 28.5%, And Sexual Abuse At 13.6%. The Findings Indicate That GBV Single Cases Of Emotional Abuse Was 66.7%, Physical Abuse Was 0.4%, Combined Cases Of Emotional And Physical Violence Were 19.3%, Emotional Combined With Sexual Was 4.8%, While The Case Of Multiple Violence Of Emotional, Physical And Sexual Was 8.8%. Overall, Husbands Were The Perpetrators Of The Abuse And Accounted For Emotional Abuse At 96.9%, Physical At 89.2%, And Sexual Abuse At 100.0%. Conclusion: The Effect Of Physical Abuse On Pregnant Outcome Among Pregnant Women In Their Previous Pregnancies Was That 27.6% Had A Miscarriage, While 6.9% Had Preterm Delivery.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Gitobu Cosmas Mugambi ◽  
◽  
Karin Michotte ◽  

Background: Gender based violence (GBV) remains a public health concern. Internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees have been shown to be at the highest risk of gender based violence. Somalia has been without a stable government for 26 years resulting in weak community and formal protection structures hence disproportionately increasing the vulnerability of females to gender based violence. Continued displacement of community members in South Central Somalia due to war, inters clan conflicts and the ongoing drought has resulted in more IDPs living in settlements along major urban areas. These IDPs continue to face violations such as forced evictions, discrimination and gender based violence. Objective: This study was aimed at investigating the past and present forms of structural violence faced by IDPs in Mogadishu as well as their knowledge and perceptions regarding the same. Methods: A descriptive cross sectional design was used in this study, in the month of May 2017. The study population for this survey was 320 IDPs in 10 IDP settlements in KM-11 and KM-13 regions of Mogadishu, South Central Somalia. Results: The study established a 91.7% prevalence rate of female genital mutilation among the female respondents. World Health Organization (W.H.O.) type III was the most common form of FGM that female respondents in the two IDP settlements (38.9%) had faced, followed by W.HO. type 4 (23.1%) and W.H.O. type I and II (15.9%). The mean age at which FGM was carried out among this group was 7 years while forced and early marriages (mean of 16 years) are common among this population group. Sexual assault and rape were singled out as the most common forms of violence faced by females in the two IDP settlements with the risk factors for this violence being described as displacement, overcrowding in IDP settlements, poor lighting in the IDP settlements at night, unaccompanied females in the IDP settlements and female headed households. Respondents expressed their overwhelming preference for community protection structures in averting GBV and customary law in arbitrating gender based violence cases. There was low awareness on services available for GBV survivors and so was the knowledge on the urgency to seek medical services within the 72 hours window period following rape. Conclusion: The study has established that structural violence is common among IDPs living in Mogadishu and it is constraining them from achieving the quality of life that would have otherwise been possible if they were not displaced. There is need to strengthen both community and formal protection units as well as raise awareness regarding the effects of the various forms of violence facing female IDPs, create awareness regarding services available for GBV survivors and ensure that these services are available and accessible to the IDPs


Author(s):  
Mona Lena Krook

Chapter 7 applies a more critical, comparative lens to the developments discussed in previous chapters. It outlines a series of debates and controversies emerging from practitioner work, which have been subject at times to tense academic engagement, including disputes over terminology; violence against women or gender-based violence as the defining feature of this phenomenon; differing typologies and classifications of specific forms of violence; views on targets and perpetrators of violence; the presence of intersecting forms of violence based on race, class, age, and other identities; and contextual factors and their role in shaping incidents of violence. The chapter stakes out the position of this book in relation to each of these debates, providing a short summary of the ideas subsequently elaborated at length in the next part of the book.


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