Abstract
This work explores life stories of socially excluded women who experienced multiple victimization. It seeks to understand the existential dimension of victimization experience, particularly how victims integrate their victimization experiences in their meaning or sense that they give to their existence and their lives. The study included 12 participants who suffered multiple victimization and who were in a situation of social exclusion. Individual interviews were conducted about their life stories, adapted from McAdams interview. The qualitative methodology used was grounded analysis. The results highlighted the focus of their life stories in violence suffered in adulthood, specifically, in intimacy. It was found that being from Black race, having a low socioeconomic status, and being unemployed, seemed to increase victimization vulnerability. Despite the several types of violence, participants do not describe and give meaning to the “multiple” feature of victimization. However, victimization is the matrix of their life story, expressing itself in a discourse of vulnerability/fragility. Furthermore, some women revealed discourses of resistance that may reflect the concept of “postvictimization growth,” in which they conceptualize positive changes arising from victimization experiences. From a humanistic and existentialist perspective, victimization might provide some sense of personal unity to these women’s troubled lives.
Introduction
Much is known about the prevalence, dynamics, and impact of violence against women. However, researchers generally focus on isolated forms of violence, disregarding exposure to cumulative or multiple types of victimization, which are especially prevalent among disadvantaged women (Goodey, 2005; Spalek, 2006). Furthermore, the research tends to emphasize the impact of violence and its adverse consequences, portraying victims as “traumatized,” “impotent,” and “passive” (cf. Machado, 2004; Maynard, 1993) without acknowledging their human potential, efforts toward self-actualization, and attempts at meaning making.
This work intends to improve the visibility of multiple victimization and to understand it in the context of women’s lives. To achieve this aim, the life stories of women who have suffered multiple forms of violence were collected. Women were not directly asked about their victimization because it is important to understand whether it is (or is not) spontaneously emphasized by them in their own narratives. When it is emphasized, this study intends to explore how women attribute meaning to their victimization throughout their life trajectory and how it reflects on their perception of their own identity. A grounded analysis was performed that focused on the women’s most significant or remarkable life experiences (positive or negative) from childhood until the time of the interview.
This research, besides aiming to understand how victims make meaning from experiences of victimization, seeks to undertake a broader analysis that goes beyond these experiences: It seeks to understand how women who have experienced multiple victimization construct and give meaning to their lives and themselves despite these experiences. Thus, this article focuses on the existential dimension of the victimization experience in an attempt to understand how victims integrate their experiences of victimization into their sense of the meaning of their existence and the significance of their lives.
Multiple Victimization: An Overview
Victimization studies have revealed that exposure to multiple types of violence is not uncommon and that victimization experiences during childhood are risk factors for subsequent victimizations and may generate a pattern of multiple victimization (Finkelhor, Ormrod, & Turner, 2007).
Multiple victimization has been defined as the experience of two or more different types of victimization during a specific period of time (Olsvik, 2010). Additionally, the literature on the topic considers other distinct phenomena associated with multiple victimization, including repeated victimization (recurring episodes of the same type of violence) and polyvictimization, defined by Finkelhor et al. (2007) as the experience of at least four different types of victimization.
Although violence against women is relatively common (Sabina & Straus, 2008), most studies on the subject focus on domestic and sexual violence (Littleton, Axsom, & Grills-Taquechel, 2009; Schewe, Riger, Howard, Staggs, & Mason, 2006). Such studies also emphasize that exposure to multiple types of violence has a negative impact and that the presence of traumatic and depressive symptoms among victims is significant (Finkelhor, Ormrod, & Turner, 2009). However, few studies have analyzed the prevalence and impact of cumulative exposure to violence within communities, families, or intimate relationships (Kennedy, 2008; Widom, Czaja, & Dutton, 2008).
Moreover, some studies (Olsvik, 2010; West, 2004) suggest that the concept of intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1994) may improve scholars’ understanding of the higher vulnerability to cumulative victimization among minority social groups. The concept of intersectionality proposes that gender, race, class, and other women’s dimensions cannot be analyzed separately. Moreover, studying the ways these dimensions intersect increases researchers’ understanding of the human experience and allows them to situate individuals in the context of “their real lives” (McCall, 2005; Weber, 2001). Gender is not the only factor that structures power relations (Sokoloff & Dupont, 2006). Rather, intersectional axes (race, class, economic status) deploy, maintain, and reinforce formal and informal systems of power (McCall, 2005) in women’s lives and shape their experience of violence. The concept of “intersectionality” (Crenshaw, 1994) addresses precisely these multiple valences and their mutual interference in the lived experience of violence.
Studies have identified several sociodemographic characteristics that may potentiate the risk of multiple victimization: socioeconomic status, ethnicity, immigration, and marital status (Linares, 2004). Literature on the topic has revealed that women living in poor neighborhoods and those who experienced abuse during their childhood are particularly vulnerable to violence and are more likely to suffer multiple victimization (see, e.g., Wenzel, Tucker, Elliot, Marshall, & Williamson, 2004). Social support has been observed to protect against the consequences of multiple victimization, but poor social support may potentiate victimization (Linares, 2004). Therefore, it is extremely important to study the phenomenon in tandem with social exclusion. The literature also highlights the need to study multiple victimization from a sociocultural perspective. Several studies have indicated that the prevalence, perceptions of, and meanings of violence have a variety of cultural influences (Machado, Dias, & Coelho, 2010). From a social constructionist perspective, violent phenomena and their definitions are socially and discursively constructed (Burr, 1995; Gergen, 2009), and it is crucial to understand the ways in which women who have experienced multiple types of violence construct and give meaning to their lives.
Narrative and feminist studies have explored the influence of beliefs, values, and culture on female victims (e.g., Enander, 2010; Prins, 2006). However, as mentioned previously, such studies have primarily focused on the perception and impact of domestic and sexual violence, and only a few of them have explored the experience and meaning of multiple victimization (e.g., Skjelsbaek, 2006).
The literature fails to consider victims’ life trajectories and conditions to address how multiple victimization is experienced and understood. Previous studies have tended to underscore interpersonal victimization and neglect other types of structural and collective victimization. They overlook the “experiential” element and do not consider how victims might envision themselves in the future. Therefore, the present study is particularly relevant because it intends to examine the ways in which women who have been subjected to multiple forms of victimization attribute meaning to their experiences and explores how these experiences are integrated into their life stories.
Aims
This study aims to explore the life trajectories (from birth to the interview moment) of women who have suffered multiple victimization and social exclusion to identify the central themes of their life stories, understand the meaning they give to their victimization experiences, and analyze the ways such experiences influence (or not) those women’s perceptions of themselves and their future.
This study also explores the affect of women’s social vulnerability/exclusion on their perceptions of their future selves. The analysis is guided by the following questions:
What are the central themes of these women’s life stories? What meaning is assigned to these stories?
Is victimization a recurrent theme in their life stories? If so, what types of violence are mentioned? Specifically, is multiple victimization present in their stories? In what ways? How do the women make singular or cumulative types of violence meaningful?
How do they perceive their future selves?
Is there a central and/or unique discourse 1 or multiple discourses in their life stories? Is a victimization discourse dominant? Are alternative discourses available?
Method
Participants
The study included 12 participants selected according to the following inclusion criteria: (a) has experienced multiple victimization, (b) is currently or has recently (in the past 12 months) been involved in interpersonal violence, (c) has experienced social exclusion or vulnerability, (d) has not participated in psychotherapeutic intervention (excluding crisis intervention), (e) has the minimum cognitive skills necessary to understand and report situations, problems, and events. Women who had current substance dependence or abuse problems, presented suicidal ideation or who had diagnosed psychiatric disturbances on axis 2 (mental retardation and personality disorders not related to the abuse) were excluded.
The participants’ ages ranged from 24 to 51 years, and the average age was 36.77 years (SD = 6.83). We tried to include women with diverse sociodemographic characteristics (cf. Table 1). The study recruited the same number of institutionalized and noninstitutionalized women because institutionalized women represent more extreme cases of victimization (Krishnan, Hilbert, & VanLeeuwen 2001) and institutionalization can offer adjustment-related benefits (e.g., Sullivan & Rumptz, 1994).
Participants.
Instruments
The Life Story Interview (Matos & Dias, 2012), adapted from the interview guidelines established by McAdams (2008), was used to gather the participants’ life stories. Each interview was individually conducted. In the interview, participants were asked to identify and narrate their life stories while addressing the main topics of the interview (life moments, significant events, challenges, future plans, values, and personal beliefs).
Procedures
To recruit participants, victim support agencies were contacted and were requested to recommend women who fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Snowball sampling was also used to make informal contact with potential participants. The interviews were conducted at the victim support institutions and the university. The duration of the interviews varied from 45 to 180 minutes. Participants stated their informed consent, and the Data Protection Committee authorized the collection process. The interviews were fully recorded and transcribed.
Constant comparative procedures were used to conduct the data-gathering process (Gordon-Finlayson, 2010), and theoretical sampling was used. After conducting each interview, the researchers applied inductive data analysis and posed systematic questions that guided the data collection process. This process revealed emerging themes, ideas, and concepts that were relevant to the study and guided participant selection. New comparison cases were introduced until theoretical saturation was achieved (Flick, 2002; Gordon-Finlayson, 2010). Comparison cases were selected according to their theoretical relevance to the phenomena, such as ethnicity and institutionalization. The decision to end the process was determined by theoretical saturation, which occurs when the introduction of new cases does not create new ideas, concepts, or knowledge about the phenomena (Flick, 2002). Therefore, the researchers engaged in a systematic and cyclical process of collecting, codifying, and analyzing the data.
Analysis Method
A postmodernist, social constructionist implementation of grounded analysis (Charmaz, 2006; Olesen, 2008) was used to understand the phenomena and their significance and to critically examine how multiple victimization is socially constructed and sustained (Olesen, 2008). Grounded analysis applies an inductive codification procedure that moves from the descriptive level (categories strongly associated with the data) to more conceptual levels (main themes and discourses). We followed the coding procedures outlined by Charmaz (2006) and used Nvivo 8.0 software (QSR International, 2008) to organize the coding and analysis.
The validation of the results was performed as a distinct step to assure the results’ reliability and credibility. Due to the large number of participants (12), 20% were selected (3) to be randomly and independently co-codified. Next, the fidelity rate was calculated using Vala’s (1986) formula: F = 2(C1, 2)/C1 + C2. The number of agreements between the codifiers was divided by the total categorizations performed by each: 2(140)/160 + 190 = 0.8. The result was a fidelity rate of 0.8, which indicates substantially strong agreement.
Results
To facilitate ease of reading, the results are presented according to the questions that guided the analysis:
1. What are the central themes of these women’s life stories? How is meaning assigned to these stories?
Throughout the participants’ reports, the following main themes emerged: victimization, motherhood, adverse structural conditions (e.g., lack of basic living conditions and minimal resources), and work and educational attainment. Table 2 displays these themes in decreasing order from the most to the least mentioned.
Life Story Main Themes.
Number of participants who mentioned the theme.
Total number of references that integrated the theme.
Victimization
All the participants described victimization episodes they had experienced during their childhood, adolescence, and adulthood (see Table 3). Ten out of 12 participants reported situations of parental mistreatment in childhood and adolescence, namely negligence, psychological and physical abuse, and exposure to interparental violence. Several types of adulthood violence were mentioned: victimization perpetrated by an intimate partner, institutional victimization, victimization related to job/place of employment, victimization within the family and social discrimination. Intimate victimization was the most predominant type and was associated with physical and psychological violence, social isolation, economic manipulation, and sexual violence.
Types of Victimization.
Black women consistently mentioned exposure to institutional victimization, whereas the Caucasian women did not refer to it. This type of violence included discredit and negligence and involved situations in which women’s rights were recognized or in which they felt disbelieved as victims (e.g., health services and police):
P6: About my complaint . . . his co-worker who was listening to me wrote on the paper that I refused to answer to the questions, that I used my right to remain silent, my complaint was filed, I lost the status of domestic violence victim.
Stigmatization episodes were also reported (P8: “The fact that I changed my nail polish every week meant I was looking for men with money and that I intended to deceive them. This is how people look at Brazilian women”). Finally, situations of repression and control were also mentioned, typically in the context of shelters’ excessive control over victims’ bank accounts and timetables:
P9: I am deprived of my privacy, not even in my own bedroom do I have privacy, my bank account does not have privacy because if I spend a single cent I have to tell where did I spend it.
Some of the participants have also described victimization related to job/place of employment (P3: “. . . I was working in a laundry and it was hard work, we did not have a break to eat and we were mistreated in front of the clients”).
Episodes of family victimization, physical and psychological violence perpetrated by family members, were reported (P9: “Because two years ago he threw some objects at me, he was very nervous, my father threw some mugs and jugs at me . . .”).
There were also several reports of social discrimination, especially job-related prejudice (P8: “. . . Your mother is a prostitute, your father is a pimp and he owns a prostitution house. The label is on my forehead”) and prejudice based on marital status:
P2: . . . Sometimes we stay away from those people who like gossiping and we stay at home so that we do not have to listen to some things, because we are still living in a period where separated women are criticized.
Intimate victimization constitutes the most reported type of violence. This is probably because it is victims’ most recent violent experience and is still vivid in their memories. Its prevalence may also reflect the fact that the women chose to be in the intimate relationship (unlike their childhood familial context) and did not expect to experience violence in such a context. This type of violence is assumed to be more emotionally stressful and in some cases is associated with self-blame. Additionally, intimate violence tends to co-occur with other types of violence, namely structural and institutional (e.g., work victimization, social discrimination, or institutional victimization). This result also corroborates the literature on the topic, which indicates that isolated experiences of only one type of abuse are rare; it is more typical for incidents of abuse to be associated with other types of violence (e.g., Finkelhor, Ormrod, Turner, & Hamby, 2005).
Motherhood
Participants identified motherhood (see Table 4) as an element of personal fulfillment (P1: “I have always loved children because when I was a child I felt a strong desire to become a mother and then I said: finally I have my baby!”), and their children are a priority in their lives (P5: “Undoubtedly my daughters, even if I have to die for them, I will never give up on my daughters”).
Motherhood.
Nevertheless, participants also mentioned the difficulties related to motherhood and the struggle to provide their children with the basic conditions for well-being. Some participants reported situations in which it was economically impossible for them to keep their children nearby after the dissolution of an abusive relationship (P11: “It was disturbing not having food to feed my little girl . . . pick her up at school and give her water and cookies, hot water and cookies. . . . Then, I called her father”).
Adverse Structural Conditions
Adverse structural conditions (see Table 5) were frequently reported and were associated with certain life circumstances that caused economic and social vulnerability: economic difficulties, unemployment, job instability or precariousness, and obstacles related to educational attainment.
Adverse Structural Conditions.
Economic difficulties were mentioned by the majority of the participants (P1: “Because even though I have paid the rent, electricity and water bills, I have a debt, a debt with the electricity company and with the water supply services”). A current situation of unemployment and job instability/precariousness was also frequently mentioned (P4: “I do not have a labor contract, my payment is based on commissions, I do not have a specific day to be paid, I do not have a real salary”). Additionally, participants revealed that they faced obstacles related to educational attainment due to the unfavorable economic situations of their families; some of them were forced to quit school and enter the workforce prematurely. Several women expressed frustration and sadness at being unemployed and with having to give up on school so early:
P10: My sister was born, my father was the only one who had a job, there were too many expenses and I understood it, but it was not easy for me to accept that, I felt frustrated, very bad and I cried a lot.
Work and Educational Attainment
Though less frequently mentioned, work and educational attainment (see Table 6) were also discussed by the participants. Several talked about job opportunities that had enabled them to achieve autonomy, independence, and a feeling of personal fulfillment (P8: “I felt glorious because I was able to have my own business, I was very proud”). Some of the women also described feelings of pride associated with finishing their education (P9: “I felt proud of myself. I have always been studious and hard-working; I have always wanted to have an aim and to be professionally fulfilled”).
Work and Educational Attainment.
Notably, the adverse structural conditions women faced put all of them in a position of social vulnerability and poverty. This position could include economic difficulties, obstacles to educational access, job instability and precariousness, and unemployment. Thus, economic difficulties and obstacles to accessing education prevented them from achieving equality, such as a stable job/work. Indeed, some of the participants had more than one job, which led to abusive working conditions (e.g., exploitation). All these difficulties seem to make these women more vulnerable to victimization, whether by keeping them in abusive relationships or by making them dependent on others for money or housing, leading to physical and psychological mistreatment. Moreover, such adverse conditions created more difficulties when the women sought support from community facilities, and many women reported the absence and/or ineffectiveness of such support. Others even described being victimized by formal institutions (e.g., victim support agencies or the police). It is important to emphasize that institutional victimization is only mentioned by Black women, which appears to indicate that these women experience a set of intersected vulnerability conditions (victims, unfavorable economic situations, Black race). These conditions seem to increase the risk of co-experienced interpersonal victimization and other types of collective victimization. The economic and social marginalization of these women increased their risk of multiple victimization. This result agrees with the intersectionality framework (Crenshaw, 1994), which explains the high rates of multiple victimization among social minority groups (Olsvik, 2010; West, 2004).
2. Is victimization a recurrent theme in their life stories? If so, what types of violence are mentioned? Is multiple victimization present in their accounts? How do the women give meaning to/understand these experiences?
Victimization was the predominant theme of the participants’ reports and, as previously mentioned, all the women reported violent experiences at some point in their life trajectories. Violence in adulthood was mentioned the most frequently, especially intimate violence, which was typically physical. Moreover, these participants experienced multiple victimization in adulthood, including co-occurring experiences of intimate victimization, institutional victimization, social discrimination, and family victimization.
Throughout their accounts, participants attempted to give meaning to the violence (see Table 7).
Violence Meanings.
Causal attributions were used to justify the violence, primarily through the aggressor’s characteristics (e.g., substance consumption, psychopathology, and familial violence) and contextual characteristics (e.g., unemployment, poverty, or death of relatives). Some participants also made internal causal attributions such as self-blaming (P6: “. . . I was aware of that; I was the one responsible for the violence”).
Reasons to endure the abusive relationship were noted, and the most common ones were expectation of a change in the aggressor’s attitude (P12: “Me and my innocence . . . the belief it was possible for him to change”) and the women’s fear of losing their children (P4: “Because I was scared, because people told me if I left home I would lose my children”). Some participants have also mentioned economic dependence (P1: “Because of financial matters, right now it is impossible for me to leave . . .”) and love (P10: “Deep down, I felt something for him and it was difficult for me to leave him”).
The impact of victimization and abusive experiences was also highlighted and included psychological, familiar, and social impact. Among the psychological impacts, depressive symptoms assumed a major role, especially suicidal ideation (P1: “My will was to throw myself off a bridge and even today there are moments in which I think: I want to end this”), sadness (P3: “I felt extremely sad, I hid myself and cried a lot”) and lack of self-esteem (P8: “I lost my self-esteem, I lost my strength… the psychological feeling that I was powerful disappeared”).
Several women described the effect of their abuse on their families, especially on their children. They noted that it affected their children’s behavior and attitude at school and resulted in social isolation. The impact on their children was often understood from their own exposure to interparental violence (P12: “My child is very agitated, there was too much disturbance, he was only three years old when he left home and went to a shelter house and he is becoming extremely aggressive, he is constantly kicking . . . ”).
Social isolation was characterized by loss and by separation from relatives and friends:
P10: I lost all my friends, my relatives, I lost everything and I stood aloof from everybody because whenever I spoke to someone I was pointed out as a victim so I had to pretend I did not know people . . .
3. How do victims perceive their future selves?
We collected information about women’s expectations, future plans, and projects and actions that were already being implemented to achieve certain goals (see Table 8).
Future Projections.
Almost all of the participants’ expectations included improved future living conditions. The women expressed ambitions for independence and basic living conditions, including a house of their own that would facilitate the healthy development of their children (P9: “a bigger house for him and for me, because he is growing and it is impossible to have only one bedroom; above all, I want him to grow healthy”). Most of the participants were living in small bedrooms in shelters, with relatives or with the aggressor. In addition, some participants stressed the need to find a job or to better their precarious working conditions (P1: “Essentially, I imagine myself having a stable job with a sure and reliable salary, which I do not have at the moment as my work is based on commissions”). Some participants also expressed a desire to continue studying. Others mentioned a desire to have their families reunited. This typically included seeing their children again; many were not living with their children because of economic difficulties.
Regarding projects and actions, the results showed that only a minority of the participants were doing something to achieve their goals, whether looking for a job (P3: “I have already gone to two job interviews . . . I also surf the net looking for jobs . . . I travel by bus, I do not know people but I ask here and there”) or continuing their education (P10: “I tried the University, I made the exams, but I was applying for a course that only had two vacancies and there were seven candidates so it was not possible. I will try again next year”).
In summary, although all the women faced multiple victimization and structural difficulties throughout their life narratives, they were capable of developing expectations about the future that indicated their confidence and hope in a better life. However, such expectations were primarily related to the achievement of basic conditions (e.g., a job and house), which indicates the precariousness of their living conditions. Despite the women’s expectations, they did not implement effective plans to accomplish them. This fact may indicate a lack of available resources or even an unawareness of such resources or how to access them. Furthermore, this could also be related to the women’s adverse structural conditions, namely, the educational attainment and economic difficulties that obstruct the achievement of their goals.
4. Is there a dominant discourse or multiple discourses in their life narratives? Does the victimization discourse prevail or are there alternative discourses available?
A transversal analysis of the participants’ accounts resulted in three types of discourses: the perseverance and resistance discourse, the fragility and vulnerability discourse, and the self-sacrifice discourse (see Table 9).
Discourses.
The perseverance and resistance discourse was the most predominant and was characterized by narratives describing strategies for overcoming adversities and obstacles (P2: “And then I was attending a course and at the same time dealing with so much mess, but I moved forward . . . I went straight till the end and I did not give up”). The institutionalized participants revealed more of this type of discourse than those who were not institutionalized.
Despite their victimization, the women’s interviews contained evidence of a perseverance and resistance discourse. Importantly, they demonstrated an awareness of “post-victimization growth” (Taylor, 2012; Tedeschi & Calhoun, 2004), a belief that positive changes can result from victimization. This belief was evident in statements that discussed learning and empowerment,
P12: I have learned a lot during the two years I lived with him, I have learned to control myself, to face things, to become aware that I had the capacity to face and overcome… and that gave me a lot of strength to deal with the situation, I have learned to be a strong person.
and a sense of mastery when observing women living in similar situations,
P1: I look at people and I see them following the same path I followed and I say: my God, do not go that way, even though I did it. However, now I can see things differently, I am in the next step.
Some participants, however (including some of the women who used the resistance discourse), associated their victimization experiences with a discourse of fragility and vulnerability, describing feelings of discouragement and powerlessness:
P1: Back then, I was capable of more easily overcoming difficult moments. Nowadays, I am not. It seems that I can’t see straight, I do not have a goal that makes me move and live for; because I am massacred every day, every day.
Finally, participants also used a self-sacrifice discourse, emphasizing the need to act for the benefit of others and to give without receiving, regardless of life adversities and disappointments (P9: “I believe that it is worth it to help those in need, and to love people. I believe that I can always help even when people hurt me”).
Discussion
From No Awareness of the “Multiple” Nature of One’s Victimization to Perceiving Victimization as a Personal and Life Unit
This study aimed to understand the experiences of women subjected to multiple victimization while enduring adverse living conditions. According to McAdams (2001), the process of storytelling imbues storytellers’ lives with meaning and unity. The life stories collected provided access to women’s sense of their lives and themselves. The results show that participants’ life narratives focused on victimization experiences, describing abusive episodes from childhood to adulthood. These data are congruent with research showing that victimization in childhood is a strong predictor of victimization in adulthood (e.g., Finkelhor, Ormod, Turner, & Holt, 2009).
Unexpectedly, despite the cumulative experience of several types of violence, participants did not describe or give meaning to the “multiple” nature of their abuse, reporting only individual victimization experiences. However, some participants engaged in a fragility and vulnerability discourse, establishing a connection between childhood and adulthood victimization experiences and using this connection to conceptualize their lives. Through a social constructionist perspective, which suggests that phenomena are socially constructed (Burr, 1995), this attitude is understandable. The concept of the multiple victimization of women is only now beginning to interest the international scientific community. Therefore, studies on this topic are still rare. Consequently, the phenomenon is not yet well known, and the academic community, the professionals who support the victims, and the victims themselves do not have the information or the language necessary to identify and describe multiple victimization.
Although they are unaware of the “multiple” nature of their victimization, the women in this study have endured multiple victimization throughout their lives. It is therefore unsurprising that victimization is the central theme of their narratives. Because victimization recurred throughout their lives, it is necessarily the most “persistent” element of their life stories and the element around which they organize, in a more or less coherent way, their perceptions of their lives. From a narrative perspective (cf. White & Epston, 1990), their self-narratives are dominated by this problematic experience, which predominates over alternative ways to construct reality and possibly develop different attitudes toward it (e.g., change of attitude when facing violence). From an existentialist perspective, victimization might provide some sense of unity to these women’s troubled lives.
From Vulnerability and Self-Sacrifice to Resistance
Transversal discourses appeared in the participants’ accounts in association with identity issues, including fragility, self-sacrifice, and perseverance/resistance.
The women who expressed vulnerability or fragility evaluated their lives negatively, revealing feelings of discouragement, negative perceptions of themselves, and disbelief in the possibility of solving their problems. This is an extremely common type of discourse in maltreated victims (Matos, 2002). This vulnerability or fragility discourse and the women’s sense of powerlessness to achieve their goals may explain the lack of effective actions taken toward change. This result reinforces the importance of developing interventions that emphasize empowerment and the construction of “innovative moments” of change in women’s life trajectories (Matos, Santos, Gonçalves, & Martins, 2009).
Interventions must also acknowledge and explore such women’s vulnerability conditions. In accordance with the proposals of several authors (e.g., Sokoloff & Dupont, 2006), the present study emphasizes the need for a specialized intervention when working with women who have been exposed to multiple types of oppression and marginalization. In addition to considering women’s specific structural and cultural needs, intervention practices must consider the uneven trajectories and heterogeneity of these victims to promote the equality of conditions and opportunities (economic and social). These women experience vulnerability conditions that, through their intersection (gender, race, socioeconomic status), potentiate cumulative victimization experiences, whether interpersonal, structural, or institutional. Therefore, both individual and structural interventions that involve the institutions and political structures that support victims are necessary (Kriese & Osborne, 2011).
Although they experience adversity and are victimized in several contexts and by different people, the women interviewed also engage in a self-sacrifice discourse characterized by a life lived for the benefit of others. This attitude could arise from the victimization story, in which the women’s needs and well-being were always trivialized, leading the women to nullify themselves for the benefit of others (parents, partners, etc.). This self-sacrifice may potentiate higher vulnerability because, on an extreme level, it can lead them to tolerate or legitimate victimization situations, especially when “self-sacrifice” implies their own abnegation.
Although there is a “victimization” discourse that characterizes their life stories and convinces them that they are fragile, the perseverance/resistance discourse emerged as a complementary alternative discourse, emphasizing the overcoming of obstacles. This discourse was primarily found among women who have ended relationships and live in shelters. It may reflect these women’s sense of mastery (they feel they are experts compared with other women), which arises from their belief that they have learned from and become empowered by their victimization experiences. Such discourse counterbalances the “vulnerability” discourse, emphasizing the idea that, despite their disadvantages, the women have the capacity to act and the ability to change their circumstances (Samuels-Dennis, Ford-Gilboe, Wilk, Avison, & Ray, 2010). This discourse is relevant to the literature on “post-traumatic growth,” or the belief that positive changes can result from a traumatic event (Tedeschi & Calhoun, 2004). A similar concept, “transformation through suffering,” is the experience of a positive psychological transformation following periods of turmoil or trauma (Taylor, 2012).
Therefore, vulnerability and growth/resistance are not incompatible, but complementary, and the participants articulated both discourses. This reinforces the need for interventions that not only focus on victims’ deficits but also on their resources and their capacity to potentiate positive changes and their own growth. Changing what one believes to be the meaning of one’s experiences and developing insight into this process are crucial for victims’ therapeutic success (Matos et al., 2009). Therefore, it is essential to work with these women to help them assign meanings to their experiences that can facilitate positive development. Such meanings are primarily found in the “growth/resistance” discourse. From a narrative intervention perspective, the oscillation between the “vulnerability” discourse and the “growth/resistance” discourse can be used to promote reconceptualization innovative moments (particular and specific narratives that differ from the problematic narrative), which can give victims a metaperspective of the victimization story (and their own vulnerability; Matos et al., 2009). Through such intervention, women will be able to assign new meaning to their personal identity, becoming authors and performers of their life stories’ new scripts (growth/resistance stories) and, eventually, reduce their vulnerability to revictimization.
The alternation between these two discourses could be discussed in terms of the way it transforms the meanings women give to their lives. Despite the discourse of resistance, the discourse of victimization is present, expressing itself through the women’s vulnerability and fragility. Because these are women who, in addition to being victimized throughout their lives, have experienced violence in the past 12 months (at the time of interview), they may be undergoing a process of continual transformation. The resistance discourse, for example, may be a temporary experience or a permanent change. It would be useful to follow these women over time and ascertain the nature of the changes they experience.
The inability to conclude whether the identified discourses express temporary or permanent changes is one limitation of this study. To address this limitation, we are developing a second study in which we follow the lives of these women for 1 year, evaluating them at three distinct moments: 4 and 8 months following the interview in this study and at the end of 1 year. At each evaluation moment, we will use symptomatology and victimization questionnaires and a qualitative interview to assess the changes operating in the women’s lives since the previous evaluation moment.
It is important to understand the psychological processes involved in the construction of women’s life trajectories—the ways in which they were able, in a self-directed manner, to produce significant changes in their lives.
The aim of the present study was to more widely introduce the concept of multiple victimization and to give visibility to the victims and the people who support them. The results of this study could be used to inform interventions for women victims, providing an integrated understanding of the different forms of victimization associated with marginal social positions and allowing practitioners to reinforce women’s adaptive efforts to cope and transform their violence-dominated lives.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Work funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia), project “Multiple Victimisation of Socially Excluded Women: The Intersection of Meanings and Trajectories of Change” (PTDC/PSI-APL/113885/2009).