Rethinking Women’s Mental Health After Intimate Partner Violence

Abstract

This article reports on mixed methods research into intimate partner violence (IPV) and women’s mental health. Using an online national survey and life history interviews, quantitative and qualitative data analysis demonstrates how IPV negatively impacts women’s sense of self, with other multiple losses in relation to income, work, housing, and social participation further undermining recovery into the long term. The feminist concept of sexual politics is used to critically examine current responses to mental health problems after IPV, and a feminist-informed response is outlined that addresses the gender inequalities underpinning IPV and the psychological distress it produces.

Keywords

intimate partner violence coercive control mental health mixed methods feminist theory

Introduction

It is well-known that intimate partner violence (IPV) has a deleterious impact on women’s mental health. Most research in this area focuses on measuring the prevalence of different types of mental illnesses among women who have experienced IPV. While it is generally understood that abuse is the primary cause, women’s distress is tacitly defined as psychopathological through use of the diagnostic categories and language of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 2013), with intervention often narrowly conceived of as pharmacological treatment or counseling. In this article, we report on the findings from a major feminist sociological study into the impact of IPV, uncovering new understandings of how IPV affects women’s emotional well-being and offering new directions for policy and practice to enhance the prospects for timely recovery and prevention.

IPV and Mental Health

IPV is often characterized as physical violence, but it also includes psychological and emotional, sexual, financial, social, and spiritual abuse (DeKeseredy, 2011). Coercive control particularly distinguishes IPV perpetrated by men against their female partners (Stark, 2007, 2012). Stark (2012) defines coercive control as “an ongoing pattern of domination by which male abusive partners primarily interweave repeated physical and sexual violence with intimidation, sexual degradation, isolation and control” (p. 7), the intent of which is to enforce a traditional, servile hyperfemininity. Although there are diverse explanations for IPV and coercive control (Wendt & Zannettino, 2015), it is gender inequality that lies at its heart (Walby, 2009). IPV is enabled by a male-dominated gender order (Taylor & Jasinski, 2011), structured around intertwined material and cultural gender inequalities (McNay, 2004). In spite of improvements over the past four decades, women across the world remain overrepresented among the poor and low paid, underrepresented in positions of power, and undertake most of the unpaid domestic and care work (UN Women, 2017). Although IPV affects women of all classes and cultures (Taylor & Jasinski, 2011), there is evidence that more traditional gender relations, where women are economically dependent on men, increases the risk, with higher levels of dependence linked with more extreme violence (Tjaden & Thoennes, 2000; Walby & Allen, 2004). However, material gender inequalities work in tandem with cultural gender discourses and practices that are conducive to gendered violence. These are historical, multifarious, and interlinked, but variously position men as superior, authoritative, and rational—the primary breadwinners who are rightfully dominant and in charge of households–and women as inferior, emotional, dependent, responsible for domestic work and children, and the property of their male partners (Wendt & Zannettino, 2015). While these gendered ideas may seem anachronistic in contemporary Western societies where there have been gains in gender equality over the past five decades, there is evidence that many violent and controlling men continue to subscribe to traditional beliefs about male supremacy and female inferiority, and narrow ideas about gender roles (Stark, 2007).

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that, worldwide, “almost one third of women who have been in a relationship have experienced physical and/or sexual violence by their intimate partner” (p. 2). In Australia, one in six women have been subjected to physical and/or sexual violence by a current or previous cohabiting partner since the age of 15 (Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS], 2017), while one in four report having experienced emotional abuse (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2018). It is difficult to estimate the prevalence of coercive control, but Stark (2007) estimates that it is used by at least 60–80% of violent men.

According to WHO, gendered violence causes more death and disabilities among women aged 15–44 years than cancer, malaria, traffic accidents, and war combined (de Silva de Alwis, 2012). Mental health conditions that have been specifically linked to IPV include depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), suicidality, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, self-harm, anxiety, and suicidal feelings and thoughts (Romito et al., 2005; WHO, 2013). There is strong evidence that the much higher burden of common mental health problems carried by women across the population as a whole is a direct consequence of IPV (Walby & Allen, 2004). Studies have shown that women who report both past and current violence are almost 6 times more likely to report psychological distress than other women (Romito et al., 2005), while multiple forms of abuse increase the severity of mental health problems (Bonomi et al., 2009), with coercive control having a particularly pernicious impact (Laing et al., 2010; Lindgren & Renck, 2008).

As noted earlier, most research into the impact of IPV on mental health occurs within psychology and medicine and focuses on measuring associations between IPV and specific mental illnesses. Psycho-medical approaches assume and adopt a medicalized understanding of, and approach to, mental illness as real and definable “disorders” that inhabit an individual body and are reflective of psychopathology in that body (Moulding, 2016). More recent psychological and psychiatric research and practice in this area adopts a trauma framework, leading to the diagnosis of women with PTSD (Goldenson et al., 2007). However, even for PTSD where external events are acknowledged, psychological disorder remains effectively located in, and contained by, the individual woman’s body rather than the social body. Within such a conceptualization, traumatizing events become unfortunate experiences that happen to some unlucky individuals, with the social texture and gendered pattern of IPV and coercive control, and its impact on women’s lives and on wider society, rendered largely invisible.

Feminist scholars and researchers have questioned the wisdom of psycho-medical approaches to mental illness for women, particularly for abused women. They have shown how these place women (rather than violent men or society) at the center of a medical gaze that fails to account for the gender power relations that make gendered violence possible (Warner, 2009). In contrast, feminist research into the impact of IPV on mental health is primarily qualitative and focuses on women’s lived experience, avoiding psycho-medical language and interpretation. Feminist research has specifically demonstrated that it is coercive control, and psychological and sexual abuse, that cause the deepest longer-term distress for women (Laing et al., 2010; Lindgren & Renck, 2008). These studies also find that some women find medicalized understandings of, and treatments for, their distress inappropriate (Humphreys & Thiara, 2003; Laing et al., 2010). Feminist research normalizes women’s responses to abuse by problematizing violent men’s behavior and the gender power differences that produce it, and is pragmatic in orientation. However, it also tends to focus on mental health in isolation from the other challenges women face.

The effects and ongoing inequalities resulting from IPV are well-established. In addition to its direct impact on mental health, IPV invades many other aspects of women’s lives, including housing (Baker et al., 2009), employment (Franzway et al., 2009), and social participation (Mburia-Mwalili et al., 2010). However, most of the previous research into the impact of IPV focuses on one dimension at a time. Our study was designed to undertake a systematic analysis of the impact of IPV across mental health, housing, employment, and social participation as interconnected domains of citizenship over the life course. We also sought to increase understandings of the long-term impact of IPV from a feminist sociological perspective, rather than at the individual level only.

Method

The overarching aim of the study was to provide a detailed understanding of how IPV erodes women’s citizenship by generating empirical data on women’s experiences of IPV across their life course and a critical analysis of the impact of IPV on the four key domains of citizenship noted above. This article takes a more specific focus on the impact of IPV on mental health and well-being; the implications for citizenship more broadly are explored in detail elsewhere (see Franzway et al., 2019). The research was underpinned by the understanding that discursive and material gender inequalities are intertwined but also open to contestation and change (McNay, 2004). The study was also framed by a contemporary feminist understanding that race, class, age, ableism, and sexuality intersect with experiences of gender inequality and oppression in complex and diverse ways (Crenshaw, 1994). A mixed methods approach was adopted and included a large national survey and in-depth life history interviews. This enabled the study to capture the breadth and frequency of women’s experiences of the impact of IPV on their lives alongside increased understanding of how the effects of IPV unfold over time in interconnected ways among different groups of women. Inclusion criteria were that women be over 18 years of age; live in Australia, either permanently or temporarily; self-identify with a history of IPV; and have sufficient English to enable completion of the survey. Survey participants were recruited through advertisements in newspapers around Australia, media releases, the social media sites of IPV advocacy groups such as White Ribbon Australia, and through contacts in national and local IPV and crisis housing services.

A total of 658 women completed the survey, which was implemented online and manually. The survey collected both quantitative and qualitative data including demographic information, such as income, age, education, location, number of children, Indigeneity, and ethnicity; the type and duration of IPV; and its impact on women’s mental health, housing, employment, and social participation, with a focus on before, during, and after the violence. A mix of tick-box Likert-type scales and open-ended questions were used. Analysis of the quantitative survey data involved obtaining frequencies by using demographic filters (such as age, location, income, care of children) and univariate and logistic regression analyses. Thematic analysis of qualitative survey responses sought to identify commonalities and differences in women’s experiences of the impact of IPV in the different life domains. Because of the large number of survey respondents, the first 200 completed surveys were manually coded for themes while the remaining 458 surveys were subjected to key word searches derived from this initial coding. Although both quantitative and qualitative findings are presented in this article, there is a greater focus on the latter. Quantitative findings are presented in full in another publication (Franzway et al., 2019).

At the end of the survey, women were asked to indicate their willingness to participate in an in-depth, face-to-face interview and to provide contact details if they wished to take part; almost half of the women volunteered for interviews. A sample of 17 women were selected from across the different demographic groups in the wider sample, including ethnically diverse women, Indigenous women, rural women, women from a range of age groups, and women from different socioeconomic backgrounds. The approach to life history interviews drew upon the work of Connell (2005), Riessman (2008), and Plummer (2001). Life history interviews provide insights that are highly personal but also reflect broader social dynamics and, most importantly, attend to diverse and complex experiences and how they unfold over time (Riessman, 2008). This was crucial to understanding and explaining the interconnections between mental health, housing, employment, and social participation. The questions were developed with reference to survey responses, with the broad areas of inquiry including experiences of IPV; its immediate impact on mental health, housing, employment, and social participation; the interconnected impact of IPV across the four dimensions over time; any support received and its effects; and coping strategies. Interviews of between one and one and a half hours duration were conducted, digitally recorded, and transcribed.

All the authors took part in the qualitative data analysis, each taking the lead in a specific thematic area. The first author (N.M.) led the qualitative analysis of survey and interview data on coercive control and mental health that is reported in this article. Qualitative survey and interview data were coded thematically using axial and selective coding to identify dominant themes and their relationship to subthemes (Liamputtong & Ezzy, 2005). Thematic coding processes were reviewed within research team meetings to ensure there was agreement about the coding framework and a good fit between the thematic codes and the data. Narrative analysis was then undertaken on the interview data, with reference to individual interviewees’ survey data. While thematic analysis identifies thematic categories across the data set, narrative analysis involves keeping individual accounts intact and plotting the themes and causal connections within them (Riessman, 2008). For the narrative analysis, we adopted a method drawn from Connell (2005) that combines a close focus on individual women’s experiences of IPV practices and wider social dynamics and discourses framing the narratives. For example, we attended to the sequence of events and contexts in which mental health problems first arose, and when and how recovery took place; we identified the discourses drawn on in the narratives to explain psychological distress, and the gender discourses at play in the descriptions of practices of IPV and coercive control; and we mapped the complex interconnections between mental health and the other three life domains over time within each narrative.

Findings

Key Survey Findings

The majority of violent partners were male (96.8%), and women reported experiencing IPV from 1–7 years, with an average of 3.25 years. Most women were no longer experiencing violence (82.4%), although the majority of women (63%) who had separated continued to experience violence from their former partner, on average for 2.78 years. The proportion of women born in non–English speaking countries (6.1%) was lower than the wider Australian population (17.9%) (ABS, 2016). The proportion of women from Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander backgrounds (2.9%) was slightly higher than in the wider Australian population (2.8%; ABS, 2016), which most likely reflects the high prevalence of family and domestic violence in Aboriginal communities (Lumby & Farrelly, 2009). The majority (52.6%) of women had completed postsecondary school but most were in lower-income ranges. While 66% of women resided in cities, 34% were located in rural locations. Key demographic characteristics and mental health status are presented in Table 1.

Table 1.

Demographic Characteristics and Mental Health Status.

Age	18–34 years	35–54 years		55–74 years		75 years+
	24%	61.7%		13.6%		0.67%
Country of birth	Australia		Other English-speaking country		Non–English speaking country
	81.2%		12.7%		6.1%
Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander	Yes			No
	2.9%			87.1%
Education	Postsecondary			Secondary
	52.6%			47.4%
Income	AUD>$90,000 pa	AUD$70,000–AUD$89,000 pa	AUD$50,000–AUD$69,000 pa		AUD$30,000–AUD$49,000 pa	AUD<$30,000 pa
	3.9%	8.9%	18.3%		28.6%	40%
Source of income	Employee	Self-employed	Income support		Dependent on partner	Other
	57.4%	4.8%	28.4%		6%	3.4%
Children	Yes			No
	78.5%			31.5%
Location	Metropolitan			Rural/remote
	66%			34%
Type of violence	Physical	Psychological	Sexual	Social	Financial	Spiritual
	91.5%	98.4%	65.2%	94.1%	79%	32.2%
Diagnosis of mental health problem	Yes			No
	52%			48%
When diagnosed	During or after IPV			Before IPV
	87%			13%
Psychological well-being	Poor/very poor before IPV			Poor/very poor after IPV
	8%			65%

Note. IPV = intimate partner violence.

Just over half the women (52%) reported that they had received a diagnosis of a mental illness, with 43% diagnosed during IPV and 44% diagnosed after leaving. Only 13% of the women reported a diagnosis of mental illness prior to IPV. The most common problems were depression (44%) and anxiety (41%), including PTSD and panic disorder. Almost three quarters of women (70%) indicated good psychological well-being before domestic violence, 90% reported poor psychological well-being during violence, and 65% reported poor psychological well-being afterward. Most of the women (84%) had contact with a professional about their psychological well-being. Poor psychological well-being also persisted for some women well after the violence stopped. Of those reporting poor mental health after IPV, 16% continued to struggle 5 or more years later, with 80% of this group reporting very good, good, or fair psychological well-being before IPV.

In relation to the impact on other life domains, women’s workforce participation rates dropped, with 50.2% working full-time before leaving IPV and just 29.6% in full-time employment afterward. Over three quarters of the women (75%) did not continue in the same workplace. Job losses after IPV were reported by 9% of women, almost double the overall Australian unemployment rate for women (ABS, 2014), while home duties doubled from 8.2–16.7%. Over half (60%) of the women experienced significant changes to their hours, work locations, and job levels because of IPV. These changes to employment after IPV help to explain the large numbers of women with low incomes. While living with a violent partner, the majority of women jointly owned a house (42%) or were in a private rental property (36%). On separation, just over a quarter were able to secure private rental property (27%), although the quality of this housing was rarely satisfactory; only 21% had become sole homeowners. Nearly 70% of the women reported that their housing costs increased on separation. Women’s rates of participation in most categories of social activity—friendship networks, hobbies and social groups, volunteering, sports groups, church groups—fell by some 50–60% with most forms of participation failing to return to pre-IPV levels. Only participation in support groups and political groups (usually domestic violence advocacy groups) increased to higher than pre-IPV levels after women left IPV (62% and 60%, respectively).

Logistic regression was conducted to examine the association between a mental illness diagnosis and other variables selected from univariate analyses by fitting two logistic regression models after adjusting for the effects of the other variables. Dummy coding was applied to categorical variables. The magnitude of the association between these variables and a mental illness diagnosis was evaluated through the estimate of adjusted odds ratios (ORs) and the corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CIs). The Hosmer–Lemeshow goodness-of-fit test was used to examine the fit of the final model. Two-sided p < .05 was considered statistically significant. The results of the logistic regression are presented in Table 2.

Table 2.

Final Model of the Logistic Regression Analysis for the Diagnostic Status of Mental Illness in Women Who Have Experienced Intimate Partner Violence.

Variables	Having a diagnosis of a mental illness in lifetime
Variables	OR [95% CI]	p
Income of AUD$30,000 and over (vs. under AUD$30,000)	0.648 [0.442, 0.948]	.025*
IPV preventing from working in a desired way (vs. never)
Sometimes	2.470 [1.372, 4.447]	.003**
Often	1.883 [1.027, 3.454]	.041*
Participation in support groups (e.g., parenting) outside the work and family after IPV	1.734 [1.152, 2.611]	.008**
Psychological well-being after IPV (vs. poor)
Fair	0.385 [0.226, 0.645]	<.001**
Good	0.451 [0.269, 0.756]	.002**

Note. Hosmer–Lemeshow test: χ² = 8.539; df = 7; p = .287. OR = odds ratio; CI = confidence interval; IPV = intimate partner violence.

p < .05. **p < .01.

The logistic regression draws attention to some key associations between mental illness and other variables. First, women who reported a lower income (under AUD$30,000 a year) had higher odds of a mental illness diagnosis than those earning above AUD$30,000. Violence can exacerbate stressors experienced by low-income women, such as maintaining housing and utilities, and may increase reliance on an abusive partner, potentially increasing the risk of mental health problems (Adams et al., 2013). However, many women in the sample were not low income prior to leaving IPV, only becoming dependent on low-paid work or income support once they had separated. The association between low income and increased risk of mental health problems after IPV therefore is likely to be relevant to a wider cross-section of women than only those who already had low incomes during the violent relationship. There is strong evidence that low social class, poverty, and social exclusion are independently associated with mental health problems (Baum, 2016; Sayer, 2007), compounding women’s mental health problems post-IPV.

Second, women who reported a reduced ability to work as desired were more likely to have a mental illness diagnosis, keeping in mind that most women received their diagnosis during or after IPV. Individuals experience disruption to employment due to the episodic nature of some mental illnesses (ABS, 2012). However, IPV independently disrupts both employment (Hughes & Brush, 2015; Swanberg & Logan, 2007) and mental health (Bonomi et al., 2009; Romito et al., 2005; WHO, 2013); later, the thematic and narrative analyses illustrate how the impact of IPV on income, work, housing, and mental health are interconnected and compound each other. Third, women reporting participation in support groups after IPV were at greater odds of a mental illness diagnosis. This most likely reflects informal help-seeking, given that social support is known to be protective against depressive symptoms in women experiencing IPV (Mburia-Mwalili et al., 2010). However, it is important to draw attention to women’s needs for peer support, not just professional help, which the qualitative analysis also examines. We were able to tease out some of the complexities behind the quantitative associations between mental illness and other variables through the qualitative thematic and narrative analysis.

IPV, Coercive Control, and Multiple Loss

Analysis of the qualitative survey responses and life history interviews uncovered the phenomenology of women’s emotional distress during and after IPV, and its interconnections with losses in other life domains such as income, housing, work, and social relationships. Many women placed a greater emphasis on coercive control as central to their distress than other types of violence, which is consistent with the findings from other qualitative research (Laing et al., 2010; Lindgren & Renck, 2008). Coercive control has at its heart loss of liberty for the female partner, including loss of the freedom to make choices, move around in space, and associate with others, with significant implications for psychological integrity, identity, and autonomy (Stark, 2012). A strong sense of identity, autonomy, and freedom are the hallmarks of personhood and essential to the exercise of citizenship (Nussbaum, 2011); the loss of these freedoms therefore may be experienced as fundamentally disorienting and distressing. We explore three key themes from the thematic and narrative analysis of the qualitative survey and interview data about the multiple losses associated with IPV and coercive control: (a) Loss of freedom, (b) Loss of identity, and (c) Loss of home, work, and relationships. To place the women’s emotional distress in context, attention turns first to their experiences of loss of freedom through coercive control.

Loss of freedom

Most of the women who struggled with mental health during and after IPV described coercive control in addition to physical abuse from their male partners; as indicated in Table 1, psychological and social abuse were the most common forms of abuse and these are central to coercive control. The women depicted the practices of coercive control as specifically concerned with subjugating them to the will of the violent male partner by restricting opportunities to exercise freedom and agency. The threat of physical violence hung over these control tactics and was central to their enforcement, even if it was not always enacted (Stark, 2007). As one woman explained with heavy sarcasm, “I experienced only occasional violence because I was very obedient and didn’t need much beyond a threat to refocus me.” Many women provided illustrations of the different forms of coercive control to which they had been subjected, and we have selected from among these to demonstrate the most typical practices.

The imposition of social isolation is one of the most well-known and common tactics of coercive control (Stark, 2007). Many women described violent men preventing them from seeing or contacting friends and family. One woman who had migrated from overseas said, “he was trying to isolate me . . . he started saying, ‘oh you cannot Skype your family.’” Women also spoke of male partners restricting their social lives, and controlling their appearance, weight, and sexualities because of extreme jealousy and fears of infidelity.

I didn’t even realise just how bad things were actually getting because it was so gradual. Like in the beginning it was “Oh you can’t wear that because it makes you a slut. Why do you have make up on? Who are you trying to impress?” And things were just so gradual that by the end I wasn’t allowed to see any friends, wasn’t allowed to go anywhere, do anything without him accusing me of cheating . . . you don’t even realise it’s happening. (Felicia)

Women described constant phone calls, male partners installing listening devices on computers and surveillance cameras in their homes, and in-person stalking both during the relationship and after they had left, also usually motivated by fear and jealousy about other men. Some men prevented women from working to reduce their contact with other men, while others were happy for their female partners to work so that they could materially benefit from it, although they remained jealous and threatened by the arrangement nonetheless. There seemed to be a particular dislike of, and efforts to derail, women’s attempts at further education.

He threw all my books out the window and every time I had an assignment due . . . every time there was an assignment due he would have some, there would be some gigantic argument, the violence was huge when . . . I was at university the violence was enormous. (Q: Okay, so this was perceived as a great threat?) It definitely was, yeah. (Sascha)

As noted by Stark (2007), controlling tactics escalate when women try to better themselves or become more independent. One woman specifically described how violence coincided with her becoming more independent once the children had grown, saying “I was going to meetings with fellow [committee] members, mainly men, at night and he started thinking I was having it off with them, very jealous and it just escalated from there.” Another area of coercive control identified by the women focused on their domestic and child-care practices.

He started to get angry at me for the house being messy . . . it’d be snide remarks, sort of, more like “What have you been doing all day?” “You’ve been home all day, what have you been doing, why isn’t the house clean if you’ve been nothing all day?” (Freya)

Stark (2007) argues that this form of coercive control represents a direct attack on feminine agency because the home is a highly feminized area of responsibility and activity. Many women also described being blamed for the children’s behavior or tactics of maternal alienation, where children are brainwashed by violent controlling men into the belief that their mothers were to blame for the family’s problems (Morris, 1999). For example, Sascha described the following situation:

From the time I left there was this ongoing campaign of maternal alienation to tell the kids how stupid I was and it just went on and on and on and on. And it definitely affected my relationship with the kids and it upset them a lot. (Sascha)

Other women described male partners threatening to kill the children if the women did not do as they were told, exploiting a key site of vulnerability for mothers. (Moulding et al., 2015)

As indicated in Table 1, rape and other types of sexual violence were reported by almost two thirds of the women (65%). Some women specifically linked rape, sexual assault, and sexual coercion to male partners’ fears that they were becoming too independent: “[the rape] happened in the last year when he felt as if he was losing complete control of me.” Another woman described her shock when her partner raped her after she had danced with another man.

That was the funny thing. I thought I had found Mr. Perfect. And this one night we were out dancing and someone asked me to dance and I was dancing with him and I noticed a change in mood, but when I got home he started both raping me and slapping me across the face. (Q: Because you were dancing with someone else?) Because I was dancing with someone else and he said that I hadn’t asked permission, and I remember lying there and thinking “is this happening?” I was in shock. (May)

Most women also described ongoing psychological or verbal abuse as a central element of coercive control. This commonly included accusations of supposed promiscuity and unfaithfulness, criticism about weight and appearance, and calling the women “mad” or “stupid.” Attacking female partners about their appearance, and their mothering and domestic skills, specifically deprives women of agency in stereotypically feminine domains where they can usually exercise at least some power and control (Stark, 2007). The controlling tactics described by the women were therefore consistent with Stark’s (2007) typology of coercive control, with the men attempting to enforce a traditional and compliant femininity on the women as servicers of their physical, emotional, and sexual needs, with little or no autonomy of their own. Interestingly, there was remarkable consistency in women’s descriptions of coercive control across different cultural and socioeconomic groups.

Loss of identity

Large numbers of women described feeling robbed of their sense of identity as individuals and persons as a result of IPV and coercive control, with many saying that they no longer felt like themselves, that they felt like different persons because of IPV, or that they had a reduced sense of themselves.

It has crushed me inside . . . every day is a struggle to get up and face the world. Then to try and look normal to my kids so they don’t feed off my feelings . . . I was once a vibrant, well-liked, sporty and social young woman. I lost 20 years of my life and now I don’t know how to be me. (Eleanor)

Accounts like the one above were extremely common in the survey and interview responses. For example, another woman said, “I am not the same person, the trauma of the relationship has left me a different person, it has absolutely shattered me,” while another said, “It destroyed me mentally, physically and emotionally. I became an empty shell, completely dead inside.” Psychological trauma theories center the idea of lost sense of self and identity due to violence and abuse (e.g., Rorty & Yager, 1996) and recognize emotional “numbing” as a common response (Hund & Espelage, 2006). However, while these feelings are acknowledged in psychological trauma approaches, these are also pathologized as deficits and as signs of psychological dysfunction; by extension, the mentally healthy individual is understood to have a strong continuous identity and sense of self, and appropriately controlled emotional expression.

Almost one third (31%) of the women specifically mentioned lost self-confidence, self-esteem, and self-worth as one of the main effects of IPV, with many identifying that this grew directly from the tactics of coercive control. They described “walking on eggshells” around the perpetrator to avoid physical and verbal assault, adding how they came to feel that their actions were dictated by the violent man’s wishes rather than by their own desires, until they eventually felt little confidence or capacity to make choices.

I lost my identity as an individual. My every movement and action was dictated by the fear of a negative reaction from [former partner]. I adopted the “peace at any price” mentality. I lost my self-confidence, [developed] high levels of anxiety and depression, which he threatened to leave me over if it would be an ongoing issue. (Kiara)

A sense of autonomy and feeling able to make choices is the hallmark of human agency (Davies, 1991), and essential to this is knowing what one thinks, believes, and feels (Nussbaum, 2011). Many women also described losing self-esteem and self-confidence through repetitive psychological abuse about their capacities and characters. Some women went on to develop inner voices that repeated the mantras of verbal abuse; as one woman said, “I get caught in my brain and replay and hear all the things I was called and accused of . . . I believe I will never mentally be the same.” Women described coming to doubt themselves and their place in the world as a result of lost self-confidence and self-esteem. The concept of self-esteem is central and widely used in psychological theorizations of mental health, with low self-esteem understood as placing individuals at risk of psychological disorder (Orth et al., 2008). Poor self-esteem is also one of the main diagnostic criteria used for many mental illnesses proportionately diagnosed in women, ignoring gendered violence and other gender inequalities that might undermine women’s sense of self-worth (Cosgrove & Riddle, 2004). The women’s accounts instead show how their beliefs about themselves and the world were fundamentally called into question by violence and abuse at the hands of an intimate partner who was supposed to love and care for them, with the sense of betrayal and lost sense of self-worth significant (Freyd & Birrell, 2013).

Many women also described developing panic and agoraphobia during or after experiencing IPV and coercive control. More than 40% of women reported that they had received a diagnosis of anxiety, including PTSD. In their qualitative responses to the survey, and during their interviews, some women elaborated that they had specifically experienced panic and agoraphobia, both of which can be highly debilitating for women. Agoraphobia literally means “a fear of open spaces”; however, individual experiences are more complex than this, and other spaces and situations can also be feared and avoided such that it is usually more about other people in the spaces in question than the spaces per se (Kirby, 1996). The experience of panic and agoraphobia is far more common in women than in men; over two thirds of those diagnosed with agoraphobia are women (Davidson, 2000). However, there has been little attention to associations with IPV or other gendered violence. In the following extract, Vivienne described violence and control as opening a window onto a world of fear that she positions as completely outside the “normal” world inhabited by most people:

You end up not quite living in the normal world, you just see this more frightening world. . . . When I’d walk down the street, all I would see were like predators and victims . . . it’s like there’s two worlds and that I’m like, today, I’m in the normal world . . . so the one that you’re in, [but] when a bit much happens, it’s like flicking a switch [and] I’m instantly in this other world and there’s no concept of the normal world existing, all I see is this sort of horror. (Vivien)

Vivien’s portrayal of a specifically gendered reality borne of male-perpetrated violence and abuse would be characterized in psychological trauma theory as the cognitive distortion of “derealization” or “depersonalization” (Michal et al., 2007), which strips the experience of its gendered dimensions. Other women also talked about coming to see the world as an unsafe place because of IPV and feeling frightened outside their homes.

I don’t like being outside in my garden as I feel unsafe. I often feel angry . . . I feel fearful a lot of the time. I see the world as an unsafe place and I am always waiting for when my ability to control my life will be impacted on again. (Patty)

Another woman explained her experience slightly differently:

I am afraid to leave my home. He also used family court to take my children from me even though he abused not only me but also the children. . . . Court is used as a weapon by him and it is a PTSD trigger . . . last time no one believed or helped me and I now have a mistrust of police and judges. I have panic attacks when I leave the house. I have nightmares and I am very jumpy at every sound. (Daphne)

While fear of violence itself contributed to Daphne’s fear of leaving the house, not being believed by powerful male authority figures also plays a key role in her panic, as if the world has become generally unsafe because her experiences have been denied. In her research with agoraphobic women, Davidson (2000) shows how panic in agoraphobia can strip away the individual’s sense of identity so that the outside world feels as if it is “tearing in” and “the felt boundary of the body has broken down” (Davidson, 2000, pp. 33−34). The women’s accounts therefore demonstrate how IPV, along with disbelief from the people and social institutions that should provide support, can demolish a woman’s sense of herself as a person with valid knowledge as well as her sense of the world as a primarily safe and fair place.

Loss of home, work, and relationships

Analysis of qualitative survey and interview data revealed how the impact of IPV on women’s mental health reverberates across the other domains of their lives in ways that compound psychological distress. The connections between poor mental health and work were particularly strong.

[I experienced] lack of concentration, crying all the time, feeling scared and not being able to tell anyone. Shame on the days I went [in to work] with black eyes, shame for lying that I was drunk and fell off my bike. I feel like fellow employees lost trust in me because of my decision to be with him. I was tired and drained, irritable and not a happy person to be around. Management got upset as to why I couldn’t attend night meetings and it was part of my job description to attend. Training sessions I couldn’t attend unless in work hours, then I was scared he would find out, as he would expect me to refuse, otherwise I could be up to no good. (Kylie)

Here, work is compromised by exhaustion and irritability as well as the strain of hiding IPV. Other women talked about being unable to work as much as they wanted because their children were so traumatized by IPV that child care was unsuitable for them, while others simply could not access sufficient affordable child care as single parents. Reduced employment options often lead to reduced income and financial instability, evidenced by the large number of women in our sample with low incomes, with flow-on effects to housing insecurity. In the next extract, having to take a much cheaper house after IPV that was far away from supports affected Elise’s ability to work and caused social isolation, which in turn led to depression.

I am not the same person. I fear life now and feel stuck in a horrible black rut. I had to rent and then bought a much cheaper house in the outer suburbs where I have felt completely isolated and fell into depression. I have changed and this has affected my ability to work. I have lost friendships and have become alienated further from my family. (Elise)

Like the violence and control itself, depression, reduced ability to work, lost friendships, and poor housing conspire to produce a sense of lost identity, revealing complex interconnections between IPV, mental health, work, housing, and social connectedness. For many women, traumatic stress continued to be part of their lives into the long term, impacting across many domains of their lives: “I am no longer confident personally and professionally. I used to be a tax accountant with a comfortable income. Now the children and I live in poverty—the guilt that I can’t provide for them is overwhelming.” Lost confidence and fear serve to disrupt women’s education and employment, reducing their income and housing options and plunging them into poverty, which helps to explain the quantitative association between low income and mental health problems after IPV. These losses in turn exacerbate lost identity and confidence further for women already distressed by IPV. Many women specifically described loss of other significant relationships during IPV that persisted after they left.

All my friends were his friends and when I left they all took his side, as they had no idea what was going on. I lost everyone and even some of my extended family. The ongoing stress and pressure put on me caused me to drop out of many [university] courses.

Many other women similarly described family and friends turning against them and even blaming them for the IPV, leading to social withdrawal and other losses such as education or work. Social isolation is known to exacerbate mental health problems (Baum, 2016; Emerson et al., 2006), and women’s accounts demonstrate how this can play out after IPV through denial and victim-blaming. Some women also emphasized that the only place they felt properly understood and accepted was in support groups with other women who had been through IPV. For example, one woman said, “I only invest in people who understand domestic violence and single motherhood and poverty . . . I am untrusting of other people.” Some women therefore retreated from the wider world because of lack of understanding and denial of their experiences.

Finally, some women reported that their distress was not properly understood or acknowledged by mainstream health care practitioners; as one woman said, “All GPs will do is just put you on anti-depressants which don’t work. The issue isn’t the chemicals in my brain. The issue is my life sucks.” Women in previous studies have reported victim-blaming in mainstream health services, including lack of recognition that their trauma relates to abuse and a singular focus on mental illness (Humphreys & Thiara, 2003). A focus on women’s symptoms makes the abuser invisible, potentially leading women to feel responsible for the abuse (Humphreys & Thiara, 2003). However, still other women in our study saw their diagnosis as validation of their distress, with PTSD most acceptable because it at least acknowledges the role of IPV. Reactions to diagnosis were therefore complex and diverse, with the embrace of a diagnosis of PTSD perhaps in part reflecting a wider lack of social validation of women’s experiences of loss and distress in IPV.

Discussion

More than half the women in the study reported a diagnosis of mental illness, which is comparable to rates identified in a previous Australian study on IPV and mental health (Rees et al., 2011). However, most women reported receiving a diagnosis only after IPV commenced, with almost three quarters describing good psychological well-being before IPV and two thirds identifying poor psychological well-being afterward. These findings are important because there is debate in the research literature about whether women experiencing mental health problems during and after IPV have pre-existing mental illness (Devries et al., 2013); this appears not to have been the case for most of the women in our sample who went on to struggle with mental health only after IPV. Women’s reports of poor psychological well-being after IPV also demonstrate how the negative psychological impact of IPV is more widespread than for those women who meet diagnostic thresholds. These quantitative findings do not tell us much, however, about the specific nature of women’s psychological struggles after IPV, or why they can persist for so long in the absence of a prior history of mental illness. It was the thematic and narrative analysis that enabled a teasing out of the phenomenology of women’s psychological and emotional distress into the longer term. This revealed how the gendered practices of IPV and coercive control can erode a woman’s sense of herself and her place in the world, which is then further undermined by other multiple material and relational losses.

American feminist Kate Millett’s (1969) concept of sexual politics is useful for analyzing the gendered social processes at play in the women’s narratives of IPV and coercive control, and their role in undermining recovery into the longer term. Within sexual politics, the sexes are understood as coherent groups that are subject to politics, just as are races and classes (Millett, 1969). Sexual politics understands structures of power as shaped and reproduced by the gender inequalities of the public–private divide and the patriarchal state, but gender relations are also seen as continually contested, dynamic, and open to change (Franzway, 2016). Our analysis specifically illustrates how sexual politics plays out in IPV and coercive control. Many of the women described violent male partners accusing them of supposed promiscuity and unfaithfulness, criticizing their weight and appearance, and calling them “mad” or “stupid.” These accusations draw on long-standing historical gender discourses where men and masculinity are aligned with rationality, agency, independence, morality, and being in control, while women and femininity are aligned with irrationality, emotionality, immorality, passivity, dependence, and lack of control (Burman et al., 1996; Chesler, 2005; Ussher, 2017; Wirth-Cauchon, 2001). Gender discourses such as these rest on the hierarchical gender binary of male superiority and female inferiority (Ussher, 2017; Wirth-Cauchon, 2001), and their mobilization seeks to reinforce this dualism. Women also described other controlling practices that more specifically positioned them as bodies and property, rather than as persons, owned and controlled by their abusive male partners. These practices included criticism and control of their bodies and domestic work, monopolizing their earnings, jealousy-fuelled restrictions on contact with men, and rape and sexual coercion (Lichtenstein, 2005; Stark, 2007). These practices rest on objectification, where another individual is treated as an instrument which exists solely for the objectifier’s purpose (Nussbaum, 1995). Jealousy, rape, and sexual coercion involve the more particular objectification of women as sexual property (Lichtenstein, 2005), where women are turned into sexual “possessions” or “things” (Stark, 2007, p. 249). Stark (2007) maintains that while women can also be jealous, “the property interest men have in women gives their jealousy [a] uniquely morbid or sadistic quality” (p. 249). The exercise of sexual ownership and control by a male partner therefore can diminish a woman’s sense of herself in the most dramatic ways because her status as a sex object and nonperson is confirmed (Lichtenstein, 2005).

The sociological concept of ontological insecurity is useful for theorizing how the sexual politics of IPV and coercive control impact women’s identities, relationships with others, and sense of place in the world. Giddens (1997) defines ontological security as

confidence or trust that the natural or social worlds are as they appear to be, including the basic existential parameters of the self and social identity, having trust that the world is as it appears to be, including self and social identity. (p. 36)

As the analysis demonstrates, many women described losing their identities, trust in others, and sense of the world as a safe place after IPV and coercive control. Women’s descriptions of IPV-related panic and agoraphobia invoked this idea of ontological insecurity particularly well. Here, women’s retreat into the feminized space of the home can be seen as an effort to recreate, through the four walls of the house, the psychological boundaries so essential to self-identity (Davidson, 2000), thereby providing “the foundation of an ontologically secure existence” (Bordo, 1990, p. 90). The concept of ontological insecurity therefore brings a sociological perspective to understanding the phenomenology of women’s psychological distress in IPV by placing this experience squarely in the social world and the unequal and gendered social relationships that produced it, rather than within individual women’s bodies and minds as symptoms of illness.

However, adopting the theoretical lens of sexual politics takes us further than simply replacing a medical model of IPV-related mental illness with a social one. Using sexual politics to theorize the impact of IPV and coercive control recognizes that the objective of violent and controlling gender practices, even if perpetrators are not entirely aware of it, is to undermine female identity, agency, autonomy, and power. An understanding of IPV and coercive control informed by sexual politics therefore has the potential to shift societal responses out of the realm of “interpersonal relationship conflict” and “psychopathology” and into the realm of gender politics and power. However, in a further twist in the tale, many of the same sexual politics that frame IPV and coercive control also structure the dominant psycho-medical approaches used to explain and treat women’s IPV-related distress. This creates a number of dilemmas with the dominant forms of support on offer, which were alluded to by some of the women in our study.

A psycho-medical approach to mental illness brings with it gender biases and blind spots that prevent a deeper understanding of the impact of IPV and coercive control on women’s well-being. Psycho-medicine adheres to a gender-neutral, universalistic approach to mental illness, yet its models actually rest on male-defined standards underpinned by gender discourses that echo, in certain respects, those framing IPV and coercive control itself. Within Western psychological thought, the masculine-coded qualities of agentic selfhood, autonomy, control, independence, and confidence are considered mentally healthy while the feminine-coded qualities of dependence, emotionality, low self-esteem, lack of self-control, and passivity are aligned with mental illness (Burman et al., 1996; Chesler, 2005; Cosgrove & Riddle, 2004; Ussher, 2017; Wirth-Cauchon, 2001). The “person” of Western thought, and of psychology and medicine, is therefore male and the “mentally healthy individual” is synonymous with healthy masculinity (Pease, 2010; Ussher, 2017). Feelings described earlier by the women in our study, such as fear, sadness, low self-esteem, and low self-confidence are therefore at once highly feminized and indicative of mental illness (Barrett & Bliss-Moreau, 2009; Broverman et al., 1972; Cosgrove & Riddle, 2004; Poland & Caplan, 2004; Ussher, 2017).

A study conducted by Barrett and Bliss-Moreau (2009) throws further light on discrepancies in the treatment of emotional distress in women and men. The study found that emotions in women are perceived to arise from their feminine characters rather than from external factors, while emotions in men are taken to be “situational,” related to external factors rather than character and thereby understandable and justifiable (Barrett & Bliss-Moreau, 2009). Other studies show that anger in men is particularly seen as common and normal, but that women run the risk of being pathologized and judged for anger as an unfeminine emotion (Boysen et al., 2014; Fischer & Evers, 2010). The implications of these divergent responses to emotional distress in women and men are far-reaching and more than esoteric; women are much more likely than men to be diagnosed as mentally ill when their symptoms are objectively similar, and are much more likely to be prescribed psychotropic medication (Sundbom et al., 2017; Ussher, 2010); non-White women are at even greater risk of attracting a diagnosis and receiving inappropriate treatment (Medlock et al., 2017). Women therefore face significant barriers to gaining appropriate recognition and validation of their IPV-related distress from health care professionals, as was identified by some women in our study and in other studies, too (e.g., Humphreys & Thiara, 2003; Laing et al., 2010). The disparate treatment of emotional distress in women and men reflects what has been termed the double bind of femininity, where women are judged through masculinist (and racialized and classed) forms of knowledge that are predisposed to judge, abnormalize, and dismiss them (Ussher, 2017; Wirth-Cauchon, 2001). This double bind can lead practitioners to overlook the very real risks of IPV and fall into victim-blaming (Humphreys & Thiara, 2003; Laing et al., 2010).

As noted in the findings, some women expressed anger at receiving a diagnosis of mental illness because they saw this as ignoring IPV and making them the problem. Experiences of lost identity and self-esteem, anger, fear, and ontological insecurity become detached from the abuse through the process of diagnosis (Humphreys & Thiara, 2003), emptied of their gendered meanings and basis in gender inequality. Even PTSD, a diagnosis preferred by many women, overlooks the specific and gendered nature of distress related to IPV and coercive control, grouping women together with individuals who have suffered accidents and natural disasters. Interestingly, researchers are increasingly identifying PTSD in male perpetrators of IPV, too (e.g., Machisa et al., 2016; Semiatin et al., 2017). This demonstrates in a particularly stark way how gender inequalities can be erased from understandings of IPV through medical discourse so that male perpetrators and female victims come to be suffering from one-and-the-same problem. We are not suggesting that women are never helped by psychiatric or psychological treatment, though, and some in our study reported that they were helped when practitioners demonstrated empathy and care. Nonetheless, diagnosing women as mentally ill without due attention to gendered prejudices about female distress, or the gender and other social inequalities that produce that distress, risks feeding victim-blaming discourses. In the absence of a critical sensibility about gendered prejudices, certain cultural tropes can hold sway about emotionally unstable women who provoke violence through their supposed irrationality and instability, or who seek out, stay with, or return to violent men.

As indicated by some women in our study, a diagnosis of mental illness can bring other risks, too. Some women reported violent male partners using a diagnosis of mental illness to denigrate them during psychological abuse. Other research also shows that mental illness is not uncommonly deployed to damage women in custody cases when it is only rarely used for men (McInnes, 2014). In contrast, men are unlikely to attract a psychiatric label for their violent and controlling behavior toward women; this disparity in part explains why there were women in our study who took umbrage at their diagnosis. Certainly, some men who use violence and control against their female partners have been identified as mentally ill (Machisa et al., 2016; Semiatin et al., 2017), and this has been used to explain and even excuse their behavior. However, most violent men are not considered mentally ill, nor are they likely to be diagnosed as such were they to present to a health care practitioner. Most tellingly, the arguably irrational, aggressive behavior of the violent, controlling man is not considered sufficiently pathological in and of itself to warrant a diagnosis; there simply is no diagnostic category for men who abuse and control their female partners. We are not suggesting that such a diagnostic category be created so much as pointing out the gendered basis of psychiatry’s diagnostic framework and its deployment. The key point is that psycho-medicine ignores gender power relations in IPV and their impact on women because it, too, involves sexual politics, where highly gendered (and raced and classed) forms of knowledge and practice pathologize women behind a veneer of neutrality and professional detachment, while leaving men largely free of these stigmatizing labels.

The qualitative analysis also drew attention to narrow and, at times, problematic responses to IPV on the part of family, friends, the community, service providers, and the state. Sexual politics also plays out in the community’s response to women through the wider politics of ignorance surrounding IPV and its basis in gender inequality. In our study, many women from diverse socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds described denial and victim-blaming from friends, family, and the general community, but also from the social institutions responsible for providing support. Tuana (2006) argues that “to fully understand the complex practices of knowledge production and the variety of factors that account for why something is known, we must also understand the practices that account for not knowing” (p. 2). Within Tuana’s (2006) typology, willful ignorance involves actively ignoring, or “caring not to know,” about phenomena known to exist (p. 4). As is argued by Tuana (2006), certain groups are epistemically disadvantaged in their ability to bring knowledge to light because judgments about “cognitive authority” are imbued with sexism, androcentrism, and other prejudices (p. 13). As we have argued, being a woman brings assumptions of emotionality and reduced credibility, while being a woman with a diagnosis of mental illness doubles this disadvantage (Ussher, 2010), with racial and other social inequalities reducing perceived credibility further. Casting women as mentally ill therefore reflects but also reinforces women’s general epistemic disadvantage as knowers who are less likely to be heard or credited, which helps to fuel the politics of ignorance about IPV but also reinforces sexism and gender inequality (Tuana, 2006). The way that sexual politics can be harnessed to discredit women is similar to, and also intersects with, other social processes such as the “political disabling” and “epistemic invalidation” of disabled people deriving from ableist assumptions that assume “ablebodiedness,” which works to benefit the nondisabled over the disabled (Goodley, 2013, p. 632).

Ignorance about IPV also extends beyond ignorance about its direct impact on women’s bodies and minds to its impact in other life domains into the longer term. As the analysis shows, lost identity and ontological security occur alongside other multiple losses including loss of income, house and home, work, and social connectedness, which interweave and compound each other, worsening many women’s capacities to recover. Willful ignorance on the part of family, friends, the labor market, and the state-funded institutions that should provide support results in large numbers of women struggling alone and turning to peer and advocacy groups instead. As argued earlier, the lens of sexual politics enables a recasting of this experience as a political rather than a personal problem, where gender discourses and material gender inequalities intertwine to produce both IPV itself and the willful ignorance that prevents its proper redress. Second-wave feminists originally drew attention to the political basis of IPV and other problems of gender inequality, captured in the phrase “the personal is political” (McPhail et al., 2007). This insight has become somewhat lost in the intervening decades as individualistic psychological models have become increasingly dominant in IPV research and practice. Our study builds on and extends feminist insights by highlighting not only how sexual politics plays out in IPV itself, but how it also frames the gendered forms of psychological knowledge applied to women, and the wider willful ignorance about male dominance and gender inequality that marginalizes women’s knowledge about, and experiences of, IPV.

Reconceptualizing IPV through the lens of sexual politics calls for a more fulsome response beyond a narrow focus on crisis services, counseling, and support for women, and criminal justice responses and behavior-change programs for men. There is still a significant disconnect in many countries between government policy on mental health and policy on violence against women; the Australian government’s current National Mental Health Policy (Department of Health, 2009) makes not one mention of any form of gendered violence. Governments need to start joining the dots on women’s mental health and gendered violence just as the WHO and United Nations have done (UN Women, 2017; WHO, 2013). The WHO has long acknowledged the centrality of violence against women to improving women’s mental health worldwide (WHO, 2013). Training for health care providers needs to include a focus on approaches to practice that are responsive to women’s stated preferences for kindness, compassion, a nonjudgmental approach, awareness-raising about IPV, and information provision (Chang et al., 2005). As Chang et al. (2015) point out, seeing a health care practitioner is “not merely a screening test to diagnose a pathologic condition” (p. 141). Most importantly, IPV will not decrease and women will not take their place as full and equal citizens until the gender inequality that enables and sustains gendered violence is addressed. This requires major state intervention, including the provision of full access to affordable child care to enable work and study, decent income support post-IPV, affordable and appropriate housing, equal representation in all areas of public life, equal pay, and the systematic challenging of sexism and discrimination in all its forms.

One of the limitations of the study was that lower numbers of women from ethnic backgrounds were recruited than hoped for. This may reflect the survey method and its reliance on English language skills, as well as potential cultural barriers around acknowledging IPV in some cultural groups. The analysis presented in this article also focuses on women who experienced IPV in heterosexual relationships, which reflects our adoption of the feminist theoretical lens of sexual politics. Future research could investigate the impact of IPV on individuals in nonheterosexual relationships.

Conclusion

We have shown how the impact of IPV and coercive control on women’s mental health is more usefully conceptualized as a form of sexual politics that undermines women’s status as persons and citizens, rather than as trauma and mental illness. While the impact of IPV can be profound, this is not to suggest that violent men are necessarily successful in their quest to strip women of agency, autonomy, and personhood, with most of the women in our study leaving violent relationships to rebuild their lives in the face of major constraints and lack of support. Nonetheless, reconceptualizing women’s distress in IPV and coercive control as ontological insecurity wrought by a sexual politics that undermines their rights as persons and citizens shifts understandings away from psychological discourses about individual trauma, dysfunction, and “female madness” and into the political realm, with quite different implications for policy and practice.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the women who gave their time to take part in this study. Aspects of this article were originally published in Suzanne Franzway, Nicole Moulding, Sarah Wendt, Carole Zufferey and Donna Chung, The Sexual Politics of Gendered Violence and Women’s Citizenship. Re-published with permission of Policy Press (an imprint of Bristol University Press, UK).

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: The research on which this article reports was funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Project—DP130104437.

ORCID iD

Nicole Moulding

Author Biographies

Nicole Molding is a Professor of social work at the University of South Australia. Her research and teaching interests are in gendered violence and mental health. Her work has focused on the development of social perspectives on mental health and well-being, and the role of gendered violence and gender inequality in women’s experiences of mental health and well-being. Her publications include The Sexual Politics of Gendered Violence and Women’s Citizenship (2019) and Gendered Violence, Mental Health and Recovery in Everyday Lives: Beyond Trauma (2016).

Suzanne Franzway is Emeritus Professor of sociology and gender studies at the University of South Australia. Her research focusses on sexual politics, greedy institutions, gendered violence and citizenship, and epistemologies of ignorance. She is a scholar activist in the area of women, work, and social movements. Her publications include The Sexual Politics of Gendered Violence and Women’s Citizenship (2019); Challenging Knowledge, Sex and Power: Gender, Work and Engineering (2013); Making Feminist Politics: Transnational Alliances Between Women and Labor (2011); Sexual Politics and Greedy Institutions: Union Women, Commitments and Conflicts in Public and in Private (2001); and Staking a Claim: Feminism, Bureaucracy and the State (1989).

Sarah Wendt is a Professor of social work at Flinders University and has been researching and publishing on violence against women and social work practice for over a decade. Her work focuses on gender power relations and domestic violence and engaging men to address domestic violence. In particular, she has been researching rural women’s experiences of domestic violence in Australia and more recently how domestic violence work shapes social workers living and working in rural communities. Her publications include Domestic Violence in Rural Australia (2009), Domestic Violence in Diverse Contexts: A Re-Examination of Gender (2015), and The Sexual Politics of Gendered Violence and Women’s Citizenship (2019).

Carole Zufferey is a Senior Lecturer of social work at the University of South Australia. She has been researching gendered violence and homelessness for over two decades. Her research projects have included exploring intersectionality and social work responses to gendered violence and homelessness. She has examined notions of home and homelessness, as they relate to gender, age, cultural diversity, migration, sexuality, and class relations. Her publications include Homelessness and Social Work: An Intersectional Approach (2016), Faces of Homelessness in the Asia Pacific (2017), and The Sexual Politics of Gendered Violence and Women’s Citizenship (2019).

Donna Chung is a Professor of social work at Curtin University. Her research interest in gendered violence has spanned over 20 years and involved a number of national studies in Australia as well as researching in the United Kingdom. Her research has examined various facets of gendered violence including domestic violence–related homelessness for women, young people and dating violence, interventions for men who perpetrate domestic and sexual violence, and employment and economic abuse for women experiencing intimate partner violence. Her publications include “Domestic Violence: UK and Australian Developments” in Policy and Social Work Practice (T. Evans & F. Keating, Eds., 2015); Domestic Violence—Working With Men: Research, Experience, Practice and Integrated Responses (2009); and The Sexual Politics of Gendered Violence and Women’s Citizenship (2019).

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