Domestic Violence against Women: a Comparative Study of Levirat and Sororat from the Perspective of Law and Culture

Violence against women has several types that most notably is domestic violence. Previous studies have shown that violence against women is not only influenced by individual (biological and psychological) factors, but sometimes by the cultural context. In fact, culture, which by its nature should facilitate the problems of (women) life, sometimes becomes a cause of harm or problems. For example, some behaviors that are considered violent according to legal and criminological criteria, are normal in the cultural context, and women and local society members have also accepted them as a norm. In this article, domestic violence against women was analyzed based on the factor of culture. The main question is “Does the normalization of violent behavior in a particular culture, remove the legal and criminological character of violence?” To answer this question, in a qualitative study with a case study method, the marriage patterns of the Levirat and Sororat in Guilan were analyzed. The findings showed that this pattern of marriage, which has cultural support and is commonplace by the family and members of the local community, imposes multiple harm to women. Therefore, from a legal point of view, such a cultural tradition can be an example of violence, except in cases where the parties are factual free to marry. It seems when violence is created and supported in the context of culture, the most effective solution to it is to change cultural patterns that no longer have the necessary function in society.