The Qualitative Study of Domestic Violence against Women (Case Study: Women Referring to the Social Emergency Services in Ilam City)

The phenomenon of domestic violence is considered as the origin of many individual and social harms and it occurs in all developed and developing countries and among all socio-economic, age, and vocational groups. In the current study, using the qualitative approach of grounded theory, husbands' violence against wives was studied based on the viewpoint and life experience of women affected by violence.
In order to collect data 35 women who were victims of violence and had referred to the social emergency centers were interviewed. The research findings were classified in 29 primary concepts in open coding, then were classified in eight main categories. The canonical category obtained as "the reflection of socio-cultural structure of the society".
The results show that the highest rate of violence has been experienced among women aged 30 to 40 years. Findings of this study show that among types of violence, psycho-emotional and physical violence is more common. The qualitative findings of the current study, while referring to the general elements of husbands' violence against women such as low level of education, unemployment, poverty, and the undesirable economic conditions, also presented some special categories like the existence of patriarchal thoughts, compulsory marriage, the reduction in interpersonal trust, the reduction in social support, experiencing violence in family of origin, low level of women's authority in the family structure, and the reduction in cooperation in the family