Patriarchy and Violence Against Women: Explaining VAW and the state's official response to VAW

• In Event: Crtical Perspectives on Violence and Gender

Abstract

Violence against women (VAW) constitutes a serious, widespread social problem affecting nearly two million women in the United States annually. Research concerning VAW tends to focus on individual and event characteristics often ignoring cultural and structural correlates of VAW. In an effort to explain macro-level influences of VAW, feminist criminologists have put forth various hypotheses (e.g. ameliorative, backlash, and Marxist) which generally scrutinize the power relations between women and men and outline how patriarchy perpetuates VAW and influences societal responses to VAW. Studies evaluating VAW using a feminist perspective have produced conflicting results. The current study argues that the empirical literature has underdeveloped patriarchy as a theoretical concept which may contribute to the inconsistent relationship of patriarchy and VAW. Further, existing research often treats women, and the violence against them, as singular categories, possibly obscuring important variation across types of violence, race, ethnicity, and relationships. Using hierarchal linear modeling, the current study examines patriarchy as an explanation for VAW and the state’s official response to VAW (i.e. clearance rates) using National Incident Based Reporting System Data.

Author

• Margaret Schmuhl, John Jay College of Criminal Justice / CUNY Graduate Center