What Are The Risk Factors For Intimate Partner Violence?

Many factors have been linked to a man’s risk of physically assaulting an intimate partner, including:

• Young age

• Low income

• Low academic achievement

• Involvement in aggressive or delinquent behavior as an adolescent.

A history of violence in the male partner’s family (particularly having seen his own mother beaten or having experienced violence as a child) and growing up in an impoverished family are also important factors related to perpetrating partner violence. 

Many studies find excessive alcohol use to be strongly associated with perpetrating partner violence, though there is debate as to whether heavy drinking causes men to be violent or whether it is used to excuse violent behavior.

Certain personality factors – including insecurity, low self-esteem, depression and aggressive or antisocial personality disorders – are linked to partner violence, as are factors such as discord or conflict in the marital relationship.

Women are particularly vulnerable to abuse by their partners in societies where there are marked inequalities between men and women, rigid gender roles, cultural norms that support a man’s right to inflict violence on his intimate partner, and weak sanctions against such behavior.

World Health Organization, 2002.  For more information, please visit: http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention.

Gender-Based Theories of Violence Against Women

The violence against women approach focuses on the belief system prevalent in relationships between women and men, wherein the male believes he is entitled to be superior to women. Thus, he is willing to control and coerce the female by a variety of means, including violence, in order to maintain that authority. This gender role belief system may be present in same-sex relationships as well. The gender-based analysis holds the perpetrators accountable for stopping their own violent behaviors. Moreover, it recognizes the ways in which women are undervalued and have been conditioned via the female role belief system to believe in their own inferiority in relationship to men. The gender-based violence against women theory emphasizes the importance of educating women and men as to the dangers and limitations of gender role conditioning and the supporting belief systems specific to those roles. The violence against women perspective connects all forms of male violence against women—such as child sexual abuse, rape, sexual harassment, workplace violence, beatings, and homicide— across the age spectrum of women’s lives. It also acknowledges a connection between male violence against women and other forms of domination based on race, sexual orientation, class, and other social constructs.

Excerpted from Garske, Donna. Transforming the Culture: Creating Safety and Justice for Women and Girls. Preventing Violence in America. (R. Hampton, P. Jenkins, & T. Gullotta, editors). Thousands Oaks, CA: Sage Publication, 1996.