Re-Examining Intimate Partner Violence: Feminist Social Work Reflections

Abstract

Intimate partner violence has been one of the foremost public health problems and a violation of women's human rights impacting one in three women worldwide (UN Women, 2020). Offering an insight into and questioning the concomitant edifices of violence inherent within the intimate marital relationships, the authors put forth arguments to interrogate the unique factors that impact women’s experiences and understandings of the abuse and demonstrate how gendered discourses function to polarize women’s sexuality.

The authors argue that violence both stems from and perpetuates gender differences and disparities and embodies lived experience where one can see the ubiquity and reproduction of male dominated gender relations (Wendt & Zannettino, 2015). Backed by research evidence from the post pandemic global and national intelligences, they unfold the multifarious impact of violence by intimate partners on women and how these pose a greater risk gross vandalism of human rights while magnifying the gendered perils of the public health crisis. The paper also contours domestic violence and its trepidation effect on women’s reproductive and sexual health while reaffirming the impact of gender-based power imbalances within sexual relationships on sexual, reproductive, physical and mental health of women.

As feminist social work academic/ researchers, the authors attempt to link their pragmatic reflections through social work practice and the feminist perspective ‘at work’. They focus on valuing the local experiences and understandings of marital violence and the gendered relations and identities that inhere in such experiences while accelerating the vigour to identify, realize and take actions paving pathways to sustainable development. They contend the pertinent role of social workers from a feminist lens in addressing the critical issues surrounding intimate partner violence and delineate holistic social work interventions relevant to the global dynamic environment advocating human rights-based perspective.  The paper concludes with few suggestive eclectic mechanisms to address the issue of violence within marriage from a feminist social work perspective.