Social Themes of Domestic Violence Against Women

Domestic violence against women is an ancient and common problem in any society. Knowing the leading social themes may help us to prevent and control domestic violence against women. The current study aims to investigate the role of access or lack of access to the resources in domestic violence against women.

The thematic analysis applied as the research method. Thirty-one women who had domestic violence experience between 2015 to 2017 chosen by purposeful and snowball sampling methods as the research sample. Data has been gathered by interviewe and analyzed by the thematic analysis method. As a result, the main themes got emerged.

Women who suffered from domestic violence mentioned four important resources; social support, legal system support, economic resources, and personal resources. Women’s stories revealed family and friends did not support them as they were supposed to do. They mentioned a few reasons for it. Families were worried about divorce stigma, they were busy with their own problems and did not have enough economic resources to support the battered women. Also, some people consider it as a common private issue in all families. According to what women mentioned in the interviews, the legal system did not have effective performance neither. There are a few possible explanations for it including lack of supportive rules and ambiguous laws. Also, the process of proving domestic violence is time-consuming, hard and needs observable marks of violence as documents. Not having access to enough economic resources and not having a powerful personality are other factors of domestic violence.

Based on finding of this research to empower a domestic violence survivor, it is suggested to devise an action plan to increasing effective social support, economic independency, personality traits and level of self-confidence, at individual-level factors and passing clear protecting laws, facilitate the court-based process and social work intervention at level of social factor.