Gender and the Nexus Between Preferences and Patriarchal Practices: Justifications of Intimate Partner Violence in the Dominican Republic

Abstract

In the Dominican Republic (DR), high rates of intimate partner violence (IPV) coexist with low rates of support for IPV. This raises questions about the actual underlying preferences for justifying IPV in the DR. We expect marriage to be influential in this relationship insofar as it reinforces gendered norms that may rationalize IPV apart from legal proscriptions against it. Our analysis of survey data finds that wives are less likely to justify IPV, but recently married husbands are more likely to justify it. Marriage seems more of a conduit for justifications of IPV whose roots lie in institutions throughout DR society.

Keywords

intimate partner violence economics of gender violence Dominican Republic

Introduction

On September 30, 2012, Jonathan Minaya Torres drew a knife he had hidden in a bouquet of roses and stabbed his wife, Miguelina Altagracia Martinez, 52 times in a beauty salon in Santiago, Dominican Republic (DR), in front of one of their children and salon patrons. Miguelina Martinez had gone to the district attorney’s office 18 times in the 2 weeks prior to her murder to report her husband’s violent threats that made her fear for her life and led her to leave her home. He killed her because she no longer wanted to be with him. As Minaya Torres left the beauty salon, news of his heinous crime quickly spread through the neighborhood, and outraged Santiagans sought, captured and beat him until local police rescued him and took him to the nearest hospital for treatment of his injuries. The irony that law enforcement saved the life of the murderer, but failed to protect his victim, Miguelina Martinez, after his repeated threats of violence, highlights one of the worst aspects of the gendered preferences and practices of public institutions so many women face.

Violence against women and girls is one of the most persistent human rights violations in the world. An emerging literature in Development Studies argues that domestic violence, or intimate partner violence (IPV) affects human development and economic growth as well (Agarwal & Panda, 2007; Bhattacharya, 2015; Duvvury et al., 2013). IPV is typically viewed as a consequence of persistent masculinist traditions exacerbated or circumscribed by socioeconomic and political factors. Recent literature on IPV is bifurcated between studies of advanced industrialized societies and those focused on poor agricultural societies (Aizer, 2010; Finnoff, 2010; González-Brenes, 2004; Koenig et al., 2003). Less common are systematic analyses of IPV in intermediate societies—those that are neither rich nor poor—such as many Caribbean and Latin American countries, many of which have high levels of IPV. These intermediate societies typically have high levels of income inequality with large pockets of stultifying poverty; yet, they often have relatively developed institutions of civil society, including some providing prevention and intervention services for IPV, which may provide women with better exit options in cases of IPV.

Among intermediate states, the DR is distinctive. It is firmly situated among middle-income developing countries with respect to socioeconomic development indicators; for example, during the years 2006-2011, the DR averaged a 5.7% economic growth rate; and in 2012, its gross domestic product (GDP) expanded by 4.5% (Abdullaev & Estevão, 2013); thus, the DR has a greater rate of economic growth than the regional average for Latin America. In contrast, it has a higher poverty rate, lower life expectancy (for men and women), and lower literacy rates than the regional average. Moreover, the DR has the highest rate of femicide in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the sixth highest rate in the world (Esplunges et al., 2010). According to its nationwide Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) of 2007, as many as half of Dominican women surveyed experienced physical, sexual, or emotional IPV at the hands of their domestic partner. Despite one of the highest rates of femicide in the world, survey respondents in the DR are less likely to justify IPV as compared with respondents in other developing nations. The simultaneous presence of high rates of IPV and high levels of reported opposition to IPV in the DR raises questions about the factors leading to these contradictory results.

IPV in the DR

Miguelina Martinez’s tragic murder is just one harrowing example of how extensive IPV is in the DR. According to the DR’s Attorney General’s office, of the 1,383 Dominican women killed between 2005 and 2011, more than 50% were at the hands of their intimate partner (Amnesty International 2012), notwithstanding that Law 24-97 criminalizes IPV in the household. The DR is party to the Convention to End All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), it maintains a Ministry of Gender Affairs, and Law 24-97 criminalizes gender violence in the household. It also provides institutional support for victims of IPV; for example, Law 88-03, enacted in 2003, established shelters and halfway houses for women fleeing violent partners. The DR has local agencies including police stations—some with all women officers, and district public prosecutors—specifically tasked with helping women to protect themselves against IPV. Also, women’s organizations and various sectors of civil society work to bring awareness and an end to IPV.

There is not only a tension between the public pronouncements and private practices of Dominican men and women but also public institutions and officials. As a result, other aspects of Ms. Martinez’s case are not uncommon. For example, like Ms. Martinez, Dominican women reporting IPV often are turned away from local police stations, and cases of IPV are routinely dismissed by local prosecutors and judges who seem more inclined to operate on the basis of sexist norms and gender hierarchies rooted in the cultural tropes of machismo and marianismo than the law. According to Roxanna Reyes, the Prosecutor for Women’s Affairs and Deputy Attorney General in the DR, because of this underlying gender bias among judges, although 62,000 women reported experiencing some sort of sexual or physical violence in 2011, only 4% of these cases went to trial (Kumar, 2012). Thus, despite the laws, institutions, and public outcry, IPV remains a grave issue in the DR.

The incongruence between these public and private practices of individuals and institutions raises the issue of the underlying unstated preferences of Dominicans toward IPV. The locus of such preferences likely is cultural institutions that encourage and sustain gendered expectations of men and women, such as religious institutions, marriage, and family. Such institutions reflect and reinforce preferences often beyond the institutional frameworks that gave rise to them. In the overwhelmingly Catholic DR, where extended families are typical, marriage—in the sense of marital status and type of union (i.e., traditional marriage or consensual union)—seems the operative variable. Marriage as a cultural institution reflects and reinforces norms that privilege and proliferate contrasting behaviors for men and women, which given their embeddedness in the culture, make them resistant to change. Marriage is particularly influential as it instantiates and perpetuates gendered norms associated with the culture that may rationalize some forms of IPV, notwithstanding legal proscriptions against it.

Endogenous Preferences and IPV

The concept of endogenous preferences reminds us that individuals do not make choices from a “blank slate” (i.e., with exogenous preferences), but rather laws, norms, and social/market institutions influence and shape human behavior and beliefs. Bowles (1998) notes that “however acquired, preferences must be internalized, taking on the status of general motives or constraints on behavior” and endogenous preferences “have explanatory power in situations distinct from the institutional environments which account for their adoption” and “may explain behaviors in novel situations” (p. 79). Although marriage is contractual in a legal sense, sanctioned and governed by the state and church (or both), its noncontractual aspects include norms guiding the quotidian interactions of spouses, which reflect legal and broader societal norms, the power relations among men and women in society, as well as the endogenous preferences of husband and wife. The latter in the DR include prominent patriarchal practices and beliefs. As a result, the institution of marriage is heavily gendered, encouraging certain roles for husband and wife that reflect both legal and religious norms governing appropriate spousal conduct (e.g., laws that define rape as only occurring outside of marriage, or religious sanctions against adultery) and patriarchal practices as well (e.g., the “myth of the male breadwinner,” machismo, and marianismo).

For example, Dominican women are highly mobile, independent, educated at higher rates than Dominican men, and participate in the Dominican economy as workers in industry, agriculture, service sectors, and government (Lambert, 2009). As inheritance is the primary conduit of cross-generational wealth, it is important to note that in the DR inheritance is divided equally among children, regardless of gender or marital status of birth parents. Yet, undergirding this seemingly gender-neutral system is the sexist cultural norm, the “myth of the male breadwinner,” which suggests that men should be the final decision makers in the household even when they are not the primary financial providers. A corollary is the belief that it is the responsibility of women to cook and clean and provide overall care for the household (Chant & Craske, 2003), which justifies and sustains the view that women working outside the home are only supplemental wage earners, which, in turn, helps to suppress women’s wages, hence, their ability to be economically self-sufficient. These gendered beliefs are influenced by enduring cultural tropes of machismo and marianismo, which encourage and even celebrate gender hierarchies in both the public and private spheres. Machismo promotes a masculinist gender hierarchy and justifies, inter alia, the fallacy that masculinity is challenged when women disrupt the public/private divide, for example, by working outside the home and/or not privileging domestic work. Marianismo complements machismo and socializes women and girls to believe that, like the Virgin Mary, they must endure all hardships and sacrifices to support and maintain a cohesive household (Chant & Craske, 2003). The persistence of these views generates and reinforces sexist preferences that pervade Dominican society and help explain why proscriptions against IPV coexist with high rates of IPV in the DR.

The prevalence of publicly unstated but privately expressed preferences for IPV may help explain the results of several studies focused on developing countries of a positive relationship between the incidence of IPV and assigning blame to the women victims instead of the male perpetrators (Nayak et al., 2003; Rani et al., 2004; Uthman, Lawoko & Moradi, 2009). In many intermediately developed countries such as the DR, women tend to justify IPV to a greater extent than men (Rani et al., 2004; Uthman, Lawoko & Moradi, 2009). This is cause for concern in itself but is made worse given the consistent findings that women who are more accepting of IPV are at higher risk of being abused by their partners (Faramarzi et al., 2005; Lawoko, 2008). In the DR, the presence of laws to prevent and prosecute IPV on one hand, and the high rate of femicide, the inability of public institutions to protect women from—and prosecute men for—IPV, and the persistence of sexist norms that promote male gender hierarchy, on the other hand, suggest the need to examine the likely source(s) of endogenous preferences that justify IPV. To be sure, human behavior is often contradictory and even hypocritical, and Dominicans are not exceptional in this regard. Nor is it surprising that survey respondents may condition their responses on social expectations. What is exceptional is the rate of femicide in the DR—among the highest in the world. Our focus is to determine the extent to which Dominican men’s and women’s endogenous preferences justify IPV, controlling for a host of economic, educational, demographic, and sociopolitical factors.

Justifying IPV in the DR

The DHS of 2007 administers a standard set of questions to both male and female respondents, including several questions that tap into the endogenous preferences that motivate attitudes and behavior toward IPV. For example, the DHS asks respondents whether men’s IPV against women is justified in any of the following situations: (a) if she goes out without telling him; (b) if she argues with him; (c) if she burns the food; (d) if she neglects the children; (e) if she refuses to have sex with him.¹ Questions 1, 2, and 5 address a husband’s exercise of physical and sexual control over his partner; and Questions 3 and 4 focus on women’s performance of gendered domestic duties to cook and care for children (Yount & Li, 2009). Justify_M takes the value of 1 when male respondents agree with at least one justification for IPV and 0 otherwise, and Justify_W is coded similarly for women respondents. Table 1 indicates that among those who participated in the gender violence module of the DHS, more than 90% of men rejected all of the justifications for IPV at rates almost identical to their wives (as evident in the column entries for Justify_M = 0 and Justify_W = 0, respectively). However, there are inconsistencies between men’s views on whether IPV is justified and the actual incidence of IPV that women report. The same column entries in Table 1 (i.e., Justify_M = 0 and Justify_W = 0) also indicate that more than 90% of women who reported experiencing physical, sexual, and emotional IPV had husbands who denied any justification for IPV.

Table 1.

The Incidence of IPV and Responses to Justifications for IPV (Individual Level).

Women experiencing these types of IPV	(Justify_M = 0)	(Justify_M = 1)	(Justify_W = 0)	(Justify_W = 1)
Emotional IPV (N = 810)	92.47 (749)	7.53 (61)	92.59 (750)	7.41 (60)
Less severe physical IPV (N = 478)	90.59 (433)	9.41 (45)	90.38 (432)	9.62 (46)
More severe physical IPV (N = 160)	91.25 (146)	8.75 (14)	91.88 (147)	8.12 (13)
Sexual IPV (N = 143)	92.31 (132)	7.69 (11)	92.31 (132)	7.69 (11)

Note. IPV = intimate partner violence.

These responses indicate that men and women both report that IPV is not acceptable, yet, recognition of that fact does not seem to reduce the likelihood of men using IPV against women. In fact, Table 2 shows that in more than 80% of the households experiencing IPV both partners indicate that they found IPV unacceptable. These statistics suggest that Dominican men and women both realize that IPV is not justifiable in principle but is acceptable in practice. The source of this disparity between beliefs and practices of IPV likely is found in more enduring factors associated with private norms that are less responsive to public reforms. Among these privately held and socially reinforced norms that justify IPV in the DR are sexist beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors, such as the “myth of the male breadwinner,” machismo, and marianismo. These pervasive underlying beliefs and attitudes generate endogenous preferences justifying IPV.

Table 2.

The Incidence of IPV and Responses to Justifications for IPV (Household Level).

	Emotional IPV	Less severe physical IPV	More severe physical IPV	Sexual IPV
	N = 810	N = 478	N = 160	N = 143
Justify_M = 0 Justify_W = 0	86.17 (698)	82.01 (392)	84.38 (135)	85.31 (122)
Justify_M = 1 Justify_W = 0	6.42 (52)	8.37 (40)	7.50 (12)	6.99 (10)
Justify_M = 0 Justify_W = 1	6.30 (51)	8.58 (41)	6.88 (11)	6.99 (10)
Justify_M = 1 Justify_W = 1	1.11 (9)	1.05 (11)	1.25 (2)	0.70 (1)

Note. IPV = intimate partner violence.

The patriarchal practices that these endogenous preferences promote are reinforced in schools, the workplace, media, religious institutions, the criminal justice system, and government, but their most enduring and widespread support in the DR, we anticipate, is through the institution of marriage, which helps explain why both men and women may justify IPV in certain circumstances. Such preferences generate norms that not only constitute but may also supersede the legal sanctions of marriage. For example, the long-held legal view that rape does not exist within marriage—that is, by law marriage is a contract in which the wife grants perpetual and irrevocable consent—reflects a sexist norm. Furthermore, to the extent that legal marriage in the DR privileges heterosexual men, this is more a reflection of cultural norms defining the law rather than the other way around. Sanctions against adultery or polygamy are also more cultural than legal in their origins. And obviously, religious as opposed to civic-based marriage reflects cultural more than legal norms. In sum, gender norms in a society provide the context for understanding the incidence of IPV and explicating the underlying factors that generate it. Women’s and men’s views of what constitute justifications for IPV reflect the myriad ways that they internalize societal norms, including patriarchal ones, generating and reinforcing endogenous preferences that normalize IPV.

For example, Heise (1998) finds that in Latin America, between 8 and 32% of women and men report that IPV is justified if the husband thinks his wife is being unfaithful. In sub-Saharan Africa, a study of attitudes toward IPV among male and female nurses found that most respondents believed that IPV was a normal occurrence among married couples (Kim & Motsei, 2002). Such findings suggest a normalization of IPV in developing countries. Various studies analyzing women’s and men’s attitudes toward IPV have revealed that factors ranging from wealth and GDP per capita to residence and level of gender equality affect women’s and men’s attitudes toward IPV. For example, some studies find that poor, rural women are more likely to justify IPV than richer, urban women (Yount & Li, 2009). Hindin (2003) finds that rural women in Zimbabwe have a greater likelihood of justifying IPV than urban women, and she finds a negative relationship between household wealth and women’s justification for IPV. Uthman, Lawoko, & Moradi (2009) also find that increased wealth and urbanization are associated with a lower likelihood of justifying IPV among both men and women in their study of 17 sub-Saharan African countries. These findings support Kabeer’s (1999) argument that poor women are less likely to escape from violent partners because of their lack of resources. They are further supported by Uthman et al.’s (2010) findings that higher levels of GDP per capita and greater equality among men and women are associated with smaller gender gaps with respect to justifications for IPV.

Factors such as age, education, occupational status, and media exposure are also salient in understanding attitudes toward justifying IPV. For example, Rani et al. (2004), drawing on pooled DHS data from Benin, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mali, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zimbabwe, found that older women and men, those with at least a secondary education, and wealthier women were most likely to reject justifications for IPV. Yount and Li’s (2009) analysis of IPV in Egypt found that women who marry at older ages have a lower odds ratio of justifying IPV than women who marry young. Khawaja et al.’s (2008) study of Palestinians found that younger unemployed men were more likely to justify IPV, but among women only previous experience with IPV is associated with justifications for it. In Zimbabwe, women professional, clerical, or sales workers had lower odds ratios of justifying IPV than women in manual, domestic, or agriculture employment. Fawole et al.’s (2005) study of attitudes toward IPV among civil servants in Ibadan, Nigeria, found that younger people tended to accept more justifications for IPV than older respondents: 71.4% of respondents below the age of 36 agreed that a husband was justified in beating his wife if she “does not do what she is told,” while only 28.6% of respondents older than 36 responded the same way. More educated Nigerian women and men civil servants had a lower odds ratio of justifying IPV. In the DR, asset-poor women who earn more money than their spouses are more likely to experience sexual IPV than either asset-rich women, in general, or asset-poor women who earn the same amount or less than their husbands (Bueno & Henderson, 2017). Studies have found that employed women are at an increased risk of IPV when their husbands are unemployed (Hindin & Adair, 2002), which is consistent with male backlash arguments (e.g., Jewkes, 2002).

Relative decision-making ability in the household also impacts IPV. In the Philippines, for example, women in households characterized by joint decision-making reported lower levels of IPV, whereas in households where either spouse reported making more decisions, women were at increased risk of IPV (Hindin & Adair, 2002). Also, women who report low levels of individual autonomy are more likely to justify IPV (González-Brenes, 2004; Lawoko, 2006). For example, Zimbabwean women were more likely to justify IPV if male partners made more decisions in the household compared with themselves (Hindin, 2003); however, the study also found that women who report more decision-making power in the household believed IPV to be justified if the wife argues with the husband, refuses to have sex, and/or neglects the children. In a study of men’s attitudes toward IPV in Zambia and Kenya, Lawoko (2008) found that men who believed that decisions in the household should be made equally by women and men have a lower odds ratio of justifying IPV than men who believed husbands alone should have the final say in household decision-making. Similarly, a study of Palestinian couples found that male partners who reported being supportive of women’s autonomy had three and a half times lower odds ratio of justifying IPV than male partners who were unsupportive of women’s rights (Khawaja et al., 2008).

In sum, understanding the influence of an array of social, economic, and demographic factors on gender values, beliefs, and practices is important in determining how different context(s) generate and justify IPV. It is necessary to control for such factors when analyzing IPV in the DR and, in the next section, we discuss the research design we utilize in our evaluation.

Research Design

Data Description

Our analysis draws on DHS data for the DR conducted in 2007. The DHS is a household-level survey administered by Macro International in many developing nations including the DR, where it is conducted in conjunction with the Dominican government, United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the World Bank, and the Global Fund. DHS data are excellent for evaluating our research question given the breadth of economic, educational, demographic, and sociopolitical variables in the data set. We draw on a subsample of 1,820 women, aged 15-49, currently married or cohabitating, who were randomly selected to participate in the domestic violence module of the DHS survey. Of the 1,820 respondents, 626 women are from rural areas and 1,194 are from urban areas. We include data on women who are married or partnered, in traditional marriages or consensual unions, or women who have partners but currently are not living with them. The domestic violence module is an addition to the DHS survey, which collects household and individual-level data from both women and a subsample of their male partners; using the Conflict Tactics Scale, women were asked questions to determine their experiences of IPV in the household. The reported instances of IPV were measured as discrete variables, and women were asked both if they had experienced any of these forms of violence in their lives, and if they had experienced any of these forms of violence in the last 12 months.

In addition, the DHS has begun in recent years to collect data on women’s and men’s attitudes toward gender violence and gender equity. The DHS collects data primarily from women respondents, but it also includes interviews of a subsample of their male partners. Data on the subsample, the Couple’s Recode, provide information on the couple’s asset wealth status, occupations, education, and household characteristics, as well as both the husbands’ and wives’ views on gender violence, gender equity, and gender hierarchy.

Table 3 provides descriptive statistics of the sample comprising 7,766 couples. Typically, wives are younger than their husbands; the mean age for women is 33.2 and for men it is 38.6. Reflecting trends in educational attainment in the DR, the mean years of education for women is 7.8; for men, it is 7.2. Nearly 52% of women reported they were unemployed, while they reported only 0.35% of men as unemployed. The largest sector of employment for women is service and sales, followed by manual labor, and professional/management/technical. Roughly 7% of women are in domestic services, nearly 5% have clerical positions, and 2% are self-employed agricultural workers. A total of 44% of men in the sample are manual laborers; 26% of men are self-employed agricultural workers; almost 14% of men in the sample work in sales and services, and 13% are in the professional sector.

Table 3.

Dominican Women’s and Men’s Characteristics from the 2007 DHS (by Percentage, With Frequency in Parenthesis, Except Where Noted).

	Women (N = 7,766)	Men (N = 7,766)
Age
Mean age in years	33.2 (SD = 8.5)	38.6 (SD = 9.5)
15–24	18.4 (1,432)	6.6 (511)
25–34	37.1 (2,878)	29.6 (2,298)
35–44	33.2 (2,577)	34.8 (2,699)
45–59	11.3 (879)	24.5 (1,904)
55–59		4.6 (354)
Education
Mean years of education	7.8 (std dev. 4.60)	7.2 (std. dev. 4.57)
No education	6.1 (474)	6.4 (500)
Primary education	49.5 (3,841)	54.7 (4,295)
Secondary education	29.7 (2,309)	27.5 (2,136)
Higher education	14.7 (1,142)	11.4 (882)
Labor market
Not working	51.6 (4,003)	0.4 (27)
Professional	10.2 (788)	12.9 (1,008)
Self-employed agricultural	2.0 (156)	26.0 (2,015)
Manual labor (skilled and unskilled)	10.0 (788)	44.2 (3,436)
Clerical	4.8 (374)	2.6 (198)
Sales and services	14.0 (1,088)	13.8 (1,074)
Domestic	7.4 (573)	0.1 (8)

Note. DHS = Demographic and Health Survey.

Almost 54% of the couples live in urban areas and 46% are rural. A total of 85.5% of men and 14.5% of women are reported as heads of households (see Table 4). The DHS classifies households into wealth quintiles: poorest, poorer, middle, richer, and richest.² We combined the bottom two quintiles into the asset-poor category; and the top two quintiles constitute the asset-rich, while the middle asset category remains the same. A total of 66% of households report having daughters living at home, and just more than 70% have sons in the household. In terms of marital duration, 29% of women and 32% of men have been married 9 years or less, 35% of the couples have been married between 10 and 19 years, and roughly 25% have been married 20-29 years.³ The vast majority of women and men in the subsample report watching television at least once a week.

Table 4.

Married or Cohabiting Couple’s Characteristics from the 2007 DHS (by Percentage, With Frequency in Parenthesis).

	Couples (N = 7,870)
Poor	53.5 (4,154)
Middle	19.9 (1,542)
Rich	26.7 (2,070)
Rural	46.1 (3,584)
Urban	53.9 (4,196)
Head of household
Women	14.5 (1,127)
Men	85.5 (6,639)
Children living at home
Daughters	66.2 (5,141)
Sons	70.8 (5,500)
	Women	Men
Marital status
Consensual union	76.5 (5,938)	76.7 (5,960)
Married	23.5 (1,828)	23.3 (1,806)
Marital duration
9 years or less	29.9 (2,325)	32.9 (2,557)
10–19 years	39.4 (3,063)	36.0 (2,796)
20–29 years	25.6 (1,990)	24.1 (1,872)
30 years or more	5.0 (388)	7.0 (541)
Accessing media
Newspaper	39.3 (3,054)	41.6 (3,232)
Radio	75.3 (5,846)	85.2 (6,616)
Television	85.4 (6,630)	87.5 (6,796)

Note. DHS = Demographic and Health Survey.

The descriptive data on household decision-making, gender equity, gender hierarchy, and justifications for IPV provide insights into Dominican gender norms. The DHS collects data on household decision-making by asking whether the husband, wife, or the couple jointly, has the “final say” in certain household decisions. For three of the four questions, a majority of couples agree that the decisions are made jointly; and the greatest disparity is with respect to deciding what to do with partner’s earnings in which five times as many men as woman say the wife alone decides. Moreover, whereas nearly one in five women report that they alone decide the number of children, only one in 10 men agree. Nevertheless, more than 70% of couples—the highest percentage for these questions—report that they jointly decide on the number of children. In sum, while the answers given by couples often differ, generally wives tended to respond that the couple decided jointly, whereas husbands tended to respond that they decided individually.

A five-question survey was presented to both wife and husband, who were asked whether they agreed or disagreed that IPV was justified in a given scenario. Nearly the same number of women (5.43%) as men (5.31%) agreed with at least one justification for IPV (see Table 5). The scenario endorsed by most women (4.22%) and men (3.43%) is that IPV is justified if the wife neglects the children, which speaks to the extent to which women and men internalize the sexist norm of women’s singular responsibility for childcare. The greatest disparity in women’s and men’s views is that IPV is justified when the wife goes out without telling the husband (1.6 and 2.9%, respectively), which, given the mobility of Dominican women, likely has an inordinate impact on IPV in the DR as compared with other countries. Table 5 also disaggregates by gender and income levels and indicates that asset-poor men were more likely to agree with each of the putative justifications for IPV as compared with asset-rich men; a similar relationship was found for women.

Table 5.

Women’s and Men’s Responses to Justifications for IPV (by Percentage Agreeing With the Statement, With Frequency in Parenthesis).

	All women	All men	Poor women	Poor men	Middle women	Middle men	Rich women	Rich men
Wife beating is justified if:
Wife goes out without telling him	1.6 (126)	2.9 (224)	2.6 (106)	3.9 (160)	0.8 (12)	2.4 (37)	0.4 ( 8)	1.3 (27)
Wife neglects the children	4.2 (328)	3.4 (266)	5.5 (230)	4.7 (195)	3.6 (56)	2.9 (45)	2.0 (42)	1.3 (26)
Wife argues with husband	0.9 (67)	1.4 (108)	1.4 (58)	2.1 (85)	0.3 (5)	0.8 (13)	0.2 (4)	0.5 (10)
Wife refuses sex	0.7 (52)	.9 (68)	1.0 (42)	1.3 (52)	0.4 (6)	0.6 (9)	0.2 (4)	0.3 (6)
Wife burns food	1.3 (101)	1.2 (93)	1.8 (75)	1.7 (71)	1.0 (15)	0.7 (11)	0.5 (11)	0.5 (11)
Men agree with at least one justification for IPV		5.3 (412)
Women agree with at least one justification for IPV	5.4 (422)
Justify_IPV	7.2 (301)	7.2 (301)	7.2 (301)	7.2 (301)	4.5 (70)	4.2 (65)	2.5 (51)	2.2 (46)

Note. IPV = intimate partner violence.

Table 6 shows that 21% of men answered that husbands have a right to get angry when their wives refuse sex; 3.5% say husbands have a right to withhold financial support; and less than 1% agreed that husbands have a right to use force when a wife refuses sex. These relationships were consistently greater for poorer men. Women in the survey also were presented with five statements that support gender inequality; more than 32% of them agreed that family decisions should be made by men (Table 7). Close to 4% agreed that husbands should not help with household chores; and 24% agreed that wives should not work. Close to 6% agreed that the wife does not have the right to express her opinion; roughly 11% agreed that it is better to educate a son than a daughter. In the statement that had the lowest approval by women, 2% agreed that a wife should tolerate beatings to keep the family together. As is evident in the data, there are class differences among respondents’ answers, with asset-poor women endorsing gender inequality to a greater extent than asset-rich women.

Table 6.

Men’s Attitudes to Violent Reactions to Partner’s Refusal of Sex (by Percentage Agreeing With the Statement, With Frequency in Parenthesis).

If his wife refuses to have sex with him, a husband has the right to?	All men	Asset-poor	Asset middle	Asset-rich
	(N = 7,766)	(N = 4,154)	(N = 1,542)	(N = 2,070)
Get angry	21.4 (1,665)	22.7 (941)	22.1 (340)	18.6 (384)
Refuse financial support	3.5 (275)	4.7 (194)	2.7 (42)	1.9 (39)
Use force	0.7 (54)	.9 (38)	0.3 (5)	0.5 (11)

Table 7.

Women’s Responses to Gendered Statements (by Percentage Agreeing With the Statement, With Frequency in Parenthesis).

	Asset-poor	Asset middle	Asset-rich	Aggregate women’s responses
	(N = 4,154)	(N = 1,542)	(N = 2,070)	(N = 7,766)
Family decisions should be made by men	39.7 (1,651)	29.2 (450)	19.2 (398)	32.2 (2,499)
Husband should not help with chores	4.0 (164)	2.9 (44)	1.8 (37)	3.2 (245)
Married women should not be allowed to work	25.2 (1,048)	23.2 (357)	22.9 (473)	24.2 (1,878)
The wife does not have the right to express her opinion	7.8 (324)	4.0 (61)	2.8 (58)	5.7 (443)
A wife should tolerate beatings to keep the family together	2.8 (116)	0.9 (14)	1.4 (29)	2.1 (159)
It is better to educate a son than a daughter	12.9 (534)	11.7 (181)	8.2 (170)	11.4 (885)

Although these descriptive statistics provide some interesting preliminary insights into the relationships of interest in our study of IPV in the DR, a more rigorous analysis using multivariate logit regression will allow us to better determine the independent impact of the main variables of interest controlling for a host of other factors.

Logit Regression Analysis

The main dependent variable, Justify_IPV, is a dichotomous variable that takes the value of 1 if the respondent answers “yes” to any of the questions that suggest a justification for IPV, and 0 otherwise. We include separate analyses focusing on the responses of men, Justify_M, and women, Justify_W, respectively; and we also disaggregate the analyses by income level. The independent variables are broadly consistent, using either gender-specific dependent variable (i.e., either Justify_M or Justify_W), with some exceptions described below. The main independent variables focus on economic, educational, demographic, and broader sociopolitical factors including, among the latter, several specific gender issues. Most of these variables are dichotomous, or dummy variables, taking the value of 1 for the presence of the characteristic and 0 otherwise. For example, Head takes the value of 1 if the husband is the head of household, and 0 otherwise; Poor, takes the value of 1 if the respondent is in one of the two poorest quintiles; Middle measures whether the respondents are in the middle quintile; and Rich measures membership in the two top wealth quintiles. Seven dummy variables measure the respondents’ occupation. Occupation_Prof takes the value of 1 if the respondent holds a professional, technical, or management position, and 0 otherwise; Occupation_Man is coded similarly if the respondent is employed as a skilled or unskilled manual worker; and similar codings measure self-employed agricultural workers, Occupation_Agr; sales or service workers, Occupation_Ser; clerical workers, Occupation_Cle; domestic workers, Occupation_Dom; and unemployed workers, Occupation_Une, respectively. We also code Urban, which takes the value of 1 if the couple lives in an urban area, and 0 otherwise.

The education variables are a series of dummies that measure the respondent’s highest level of educational attainment: Education_None takes the value of 1 if the respondent has no formal education, and 0 otherwise; Education_Prim takes the value of 1 if the respondent’s highest level of educational attainment is primary school, and 0 otherwise; Education_Sec takes the value of 1 if the respondent’s highest level of educational attainment is secondary school (i.e., high school), and 0 otherwise; and Education_Post-Sec takes the value of 1 if the respondent’s highest level of educational attainment is postsecondary school (e.g., college), and 0 otherwise.

A series of dummy variables measure marital status; Married is coded 1 if the couple is married and 0 if they are not married but in a consensual union. Marriage duration variables specify whether the couple has been married for 9 years or less, Married₉; 10-19 years, Married_10-19; 20 to 29 years, Married_20-29; or 30 years or more, Married₃₀₊. Also, to account for the presence of children in the household we utilize two dummy variables: Sons and Daughters. Age variables are a series of individual dummies that differentiate respondents between the ages of 15 and 24, Age₁; those between 25 and 34, Age₂; those between 35 and 44, Age₃; those between 45 and 54, Age₄; and for men respondents only, those between 55 and 59, Age₅.⁴

Following the implementation of Law 24-97, which makes domestic violence illegal in the DR, media have been employed widely to increase awareness of IPV, and to dissuade men from IPV. However, despite these campaigns, there is also a considerable amount of media that promotes informal norms of gender hierarchy. Hence, we control for the role of the media with three dummies: Media_TV takes the value of 1 if the respondent reports watching television at least once a week on average, and 0 if less than once a week or not at all; Media_Radio is coded 1 if the respondent listens to the radio at least once a week, and 0 if less than once a week; and Media_News is coded 1 if the respondent reads a newspaper or magazine at least once a week, and 0 if less.

Several gender-specific variables gauge the level of decision-making responsibility of the partners, their views of the acceptability of IPV in cases of the wife’s refusal of sexual intercourse, and their view of the appropriateness of a male gender hierarchy. For example, Decision varies from 1-3 and is a composite of responses to the following questions: (a) Who has the final say on large household purchases? (b) Who has the final say on visits to family members, friends, or relatives? (c) Who has the final say on what to do with the wife’s earned income? (d) Who has the final say on having a (another) child? A response that the man had the final say is coded 3; a response that both shared equally is coded 2; and if the response is the wife alone, the response is coded 1. So, the higher the value on the index, the greater the household decision-making ability of the husband, and the lower that of the wife. There are two Decision variables based on the men’s and women’s respective responses to the questions comprising the index (Decision_M, Decision_W).

In addition, Refusal relies only on men’s responses; varying from 1-3, it is a composite of responses to questions beginning with “if your wife refuses to have sex with you . . .,” whether “you have the right to get angry,” “you have the right to refuse financial support,” “you have the right to use force to have sex with her?” Each affirmative response was coded 1, and 0 otherwise; hence, the higher the value of Refusal, the more willing the husband to use coercion and violence after a wife’s refusal of sex. Gender Hierarchy draws only on women’s responses and is a composite varying from 1-6 that gauges women’s support of gender hierarchy in the household based on whether they agreed or disagreed with the following statements: (a) family decisions should be made by the man, (b) men should not help with household chores, (c) married woman should not work, (d) a wife does not have the right to express her opinions, (e) a wife should tolerate beatings to keep her family together, (f) it is better to educate a son than a daughter. Responses are coded 1 for “agree” and 0 for “disagree”; thus, the higher the value on Gender Hierarchy, the greater the support of male gender hierarchy.

We estimate our models using logit regression, which is appropriate when the dependent variable is dichotomous. The model takes the form:

\Pr (y = 1) = \exp (α + β x k + δ d k) / (1 + \exp (α + β x k + δ d k))

where y = 1 if the outcome occurs (that is, for “yes” responses to the indicators of IPV), x is a vector of continuous variables, and δ is a vector of dichotomous variables. We report the results of the logit model in terms of odds ratios, which associate a unit change in x_k to a β_k change in the odds ratio of the outcome, holding all the other independent variables constant. We obtain the odds ratio by taking the exponential of both sides of the equation, which considers the odds of observing a positive outcome (y = 1) rather than a negative outcome (y = 0):

Ω = \Pr (y = 1) / \Pr (y = 0) = \Pr (y = 1) / 1_\Pr (y = 1)

An odds ratio of x_k greater than 1 indicates an increased probability of the outcome, Justify_IPV. Conversely, an odds ratio of x_k less than 1 indicates a decreased probability of the outcome (Long & Freese, 2006). The basic model, which only varies with respect to whether we focus on men’s or women’s justification of IPV as the dependent variable, takes the following form:

\begin{array}{l} \Pr (J u s t i f y_{I P V} = 1) = F (β 1 H e a d + β 2 P o o r + β 3 M i d d l e + β 4 R i c h + β 5 W e a l t h I d x \\ + β 6 U r b a n + (β 7 - β 13) O c c u p a t i o n_{P r o f - U n e} + (β 14 - β 17) E d u c a t i o n_{N o n e - P o s t - S e c} \\ + β 18 M a r r i e d + β 19 M a r r i e d_{9} + β 20 M a r r i e d_{10 - 19} + β 21 M a r r i e d_{20 - 29} \\ + β 22 M a r r i e d_{30 +} + β 23 S o n s + β 24 D a u g h t e r s + (β 25 - β 30) A g e_{1 - 5} \\ + (β 31 - β 33) M e d i a_{T V - N e w s} + β 34 D e c i s i o n + β 35 R e f u s a l / G e n d e r H i e r a r c h y) \end{array}

Results

The results from the regression analyses are reported in Table 8. Focusing on the statistically significant relationships for women’s justification of IPV, we find that women with a secondary education (compared with those with only a primary education, the baseline category) have a lower odds ratio (0.61)—thus, a decreased probability—of justifying IPV; this holds for asset-poor women as well. Coupled with the finding that asset-poor women with a secondary education have a lower odds ratio of justifying gender hierarchy in the home or in society, the finding supports the view that educating women is important to their challenging gender hierarchies and the IPV it breeds (Rani et al., 2004). Women in every major occupational category except professional and service sectors, including nonworking women, have positive log odds of justifying IPV (compared with women clerical workers, the baseline category), which seriously complicates the view of the workplace as an ameliorative for justifying IPV—a relationship that only seems to hold for asset-rich professional men. Asset-rich older women between 45 and 54 years old are the only age group showing a significant relationship to the outcome and, in this case, they had a lower odds ratio of justifying IPV, which is consistent with previous findings that older respondents are less likely to justify IPV (Rani et al., 2004; Uthman, Moradi & Lawoko, 2009; Yount & Li, 2009). Interestingly, only asset-poor women are less likely to justify IPV.

Table 8.

Justification for IPV.

	Women	Men	Poor women	Rich women	Poor men	Rich men
Education_None	0.99 (.26)	1.34 (.43)	1.05 (.20)	1.10 (1.23)	1.70* (.48)	0.78 (1.4)
Education_Prim		1.40* (.29)			1.69*** (.32)	1.60 (.57)
Education_Sec	0.61** (.12)		0.58** (.11)	0.83 (.30)
Education_Post-Sec	1.33 (.58)	0.43* (.21)	0.50 (.23)	1.19 (.56)	0.17* (.17)	0.42 (.27)
Occup_Une	2.24* (1.05)	2.82 (2.32)	1.15 (.55)	2.26 (1.71)	2.83 (2.38)
Occup_Prof	1.57 (.96)	0.70 (.26)	1.30 (.86)	1.21 (1.04)	0.87 (.36)	0.24* (.19)
Occup_Ser	2.94 (1.40)		1.28 (.65)	3.08 (2.42)
Occup_Dom	2.41* (1.23)		1.26 (.64)	1.90 (2.41)
Occup_Man	2.91** (1.42)	1.14 (.24)	1.73 (.87)	3.71 (3.10)	0.73 (.15)	1.32 (.51)
Occup_Agr	3.87** (2.17)	1.67** (.40)	1.66 (.90)		0.92 (.20)	1.47 (.95)
Age₁	1.32 (.40)	1.73** (.46)	1.27 (.27)	1.96 (1.01)	1.34 (.28)	0.81 (.55)
Age₃	0.87 (.20)	0.86 (.17)	0.95 (.21)	0.71 (.31)	0.80 (.14)	0.83 (.35)
Age₄	0.69 (.25)	0.75 (.20)	0.83 (.30)	0.14** (.14)	0.77 (18)	0.54 (.32)
Head	0.94 (.18)	0.86 (.18)	0.98 (.17)	0.89 (.32)	0.94 (.17)	0.86 (.34)
Poor	1.34 (.27)	0.86 (.17)
Rich	0.93 (.25)	0.42*** (.13)
Wealth Idx			0.78* (.11)	1.01 (.32)	0.73** (.11)	1.08 (.38)
Urban	1.05 (.16)	1.40** (.23)	1.00 (.14)	0.82 (.28)	1.70*** (.24)	1.27 (.54)
Married	0.42*** (.11)	0.97 (.29)	0.70 (.17)	0.68 (.23)	0.62* (.16)	0.52 (.21)
Married₉	0.94 (.28)	1.42* (.28)	1.17 (.25)	0.71 (.33)	1.25 (.22)	2.73** (1.18)
Married_20-29	1.09 (.26)	0.81 (.20)	0.95 (.22)	1.40 (.64)	0.82 (.18)	1.1 (.59)
Married₃₀₊	0.93 (.38)	0.62 (.22)	1.29 (.51)	2.20 (2.90)	0.72 (.22)	1.01 (.87)
Sons	0.80 (.12)	0.70** (.11)	0.73** (.10)	0.89 (.30)	0.76** (.10)	0.91 (.32)
Daughters	1.01 (.15)	0.86 (.14)	0.80* (.09)	1.23 (.41)	0.89 (.12)	1.03 (.36)
Media_News	0.68** (.12)	0.78 (.147)	1.01 (.16)	0.57* (.18)	1.16 (.18)	0.96 (.32)
Media_Radio	0.83 (.15)	1.45* (.31)	1.05 (.14)	0.86 (.33)	1.10 (.19)	2.80 (1.91)
Media_TV	0.88 (.17)	0.55*** (.11)	0.90 (.13)	1.68 (1.74)	0.76* (.12)	0.30* (.21)
Decision_W	1.15** (.07)		1.16*** (.06)	0.88 (.11)
Decision_M		1.16** (.08)			1.23*** (.06)	0.87 (.13)
GenHier	1.38*** (.06)		1.35*** (.05)	1.30** (.15)
Sex Refusal		1.50*** (.07)			1.50*** (.05)	1.48*** (.11)
Women’s Autonomy		0.89 (.14)			0.83 (.12)	1.10 (.36)
N	7,766	7,766	4,154	2,070	4,152	2,070
McFadden’s R²	.09	.15	.06	.07	.14	.20

Note. Main cell values are odds ratios. RSE in parentheses. RSE = robust standard error; IPV = intimate partner.

p < .10. **p < .05. ***p < .01.

Among significant sociodemographic factors, we find that marital status is associated with a reduced likelihood of justifying IPV, which suggests that women who are married by the church, the state, or both, are less likely to justify IPV as opposed to women cohabitating or in consensual unions—and this holds for asset-rich women as well. These findings appear to undermine the view that marriage, as an institution, has a major impact on generating preferences justifying IPV. We also find that asset-poor women with either sons or daughters living at home have a lower odds ratio of justifying IPV compared with those who do not have children living at home. Similarly, women who read the newspaper at least once a week are less likely to justify IPV than women who do not read the newspaper at all; this holds for asset-rich women as well.

Women with less decision-making ability in the household (i.e., a higher value of Decision_W) are more likely to justify IPV than women who report making more decisions in the household. This finding holds for asset-poor women as well. Women who are less gender-progressive (i.e., a higher value of GenHier) are more likely to justify IPV than women who are more gender-progressive; and this is one of the few relationships that holds for both asset-rich and asset-poor women, and is consistent with previous studies that find that less decision-making ability in the household is associated with a greater probability of justifying IPV (González-Brenes, 2004; Hindin, 2003; Hindin & Adair, 2002; Lawoko, 2006).

Turning to the findings for men, among the significant variables there are several contrasts and continuities with the findings from women respondents. For example, while women with a secondary education are less likely to justify IPV, the opposite holds for men. Men with primary education are significantly more likely to justify IPV; this holds for asset-poor men as well. In fact, asset-poor men with no education are more likely to justify IPV. Only men with higher education—and asset-poor men with higher education, specifically—are significantly less likely to justify IPV. Coupled with the results on women respondents, these findings provide even stronger support for the view that higher education is an important mechanism for challenging justifications for IPV and, in the case of men, it is important that this education goes beyond the secondary level.

Men who are self-employed in the agricultural sector are more likely to justify IPV than men in the clerical field or service/sales sector, but asset-rich professional men are less likely to justify IPV. Similar to previous studies, we also find that 15-24 year-old men have a higher odds ratio of justifying at least one of the motives for IPV. The finding that asset-rich men, in general, are less likely to justify IPV is consistent with Uthman, Moradi & Lawoko (2009) and we also find that asset-poor men (measured by Wealth Idx)—just as asset-poor women—are less likely to justify IPV.

We find that men living in an urban setting are more likely to justify IPV than men living in rural areas, and this holds for asset-poor men as well. The latter appears inconsistent with previous findings that rural residence tends to be associated with higher levels of IPV; however, this study focuses on the effect of urban and rural contexts controlling for a range of economic, educational, demographic, and sociopolitical variables, which may mitigate the previously observed impact of region in studies without these controls. It may also be the case, more simply, that the relationships between regional context and IPV in the DR are just different from what we observe in other states and regions.

Turning to a key variable of interest, although there is not a significant relationship between marriage and a man’s justification for IPV, we find that asset-poor married men are less likely to justify IPV. Tellingly, men who report being married for 9 years or less have a positive likelihood of justifying IPV, and this effect is even more pronounced for asset-rich men. Thus, while marriage, per se, may not be significantly associated with IPV justification for men, husbands who have been married for less than 10 years are significantly more likely to justify IPV, which provides some support for the arguments regarding marriage as a source of endogenous preferences discussed above. This support is accentuated by the fact that such men constitute about one third (32.9%) of all married men in the study (see Table 4).

Consistent with previous findings, we find a “protective effect” such that the presence of sons in the household is associated with a lower odds ratio of husbands justifying IPV (Mahalingam et al., 2007); however, the presence of daughters has a weaker effect. With respect to media, although men who report listening to the radio frequently are more likely to justify IPV, men who watch television—once or more a week, on average—have a lower odds ratio of justifying IPV; the latter holds for both asset-poor and asset-rich men. This finding suggests that popular media campaigns against IPV are more successful on television and probably need to be expanded to radio even more intensely. In a different sense, the findings regarding differences in media effects may reflect a combination of economic and educational factors insofar as poorer and less-educated Dominican men may not be able to afford a television and also may be more likely to rely on the radio for information and entertainment. Nevertheless, there are striking contrasts in the impact of media on women’s and men’s justification for IPV.

Less surprisingly, men who report more decision-making power in the household have a higher odds ratio of justifying IPV, and this holds for asset-poor men as well.Even less surprisingly, men who condone coercive or violent responses to a wife’s refusal of sex have a higher odds ratio of justifying IPV. In sum, the differences in the findings on justifications for IPV between men and women highlight the way that similar factors differently affect men’s and women’s preferences regarding justifications for IPV in the household and the broader society. These findings also point to the need to target men and women jointly, but differently, to promote gender equity and reduce IPV.

Discussion

Our findings have implications for research and policy. In the broadest sense, the disparate and variable findings demonstrate the importance of country-specific data based on fieldwork and focus groups in analyzing IPV in general, and in the DR in particular. Clearly, the disparities between the preferences for, and the incidence of, IPV in the DR present challenges for interpretation; but, it may be that those inclined to support IPV strategically misreport their preferences, or that the justifications for IPV delineated in DHS surveys do not adequately capture the motives for IPV in the DR. While little can be done to prevent misrepresenting one’s preferences in survey responses, it may be useful nevertheless to reconsider the construction of some of the DHS questions to better capture the specific context of gender relations in the DR. For example, it may be that in the DR, where women are highly mobile and it is publicly not acceptable to espouse violence against women, different questions may better capture orientations toward IPV such as “wife beating is justified if a wife has sexual relations with another man,” “wife beating is justified if a woman refuses to return with her husband in the case of a prior separation,” “wife beating is justified if a woman refuses her husband sex for a prolonged period of time,” or “wife beating is justified if a wife leaves her husband for another man,” which might be more contextually relevant to the DR.

Beyond their research implications, the findings reveal that despite institutions to help women protect themselves from IPV, endogenous preferences for deep-rooted gendered norms and conventions seem to govern both men and women respondents’ behavior and attitudes toward IPV in ways that have limited the ability of laws and institutions to prevent IPV. Marriage seems to be an important conduit for these preferences, particularly for relatively new husbands (those married for less than 10 years) who have an increased likelihood of justifying IPV even as their wives are significantly less likely to justify IPV. This suggests that the early years of marriage are a critical time for positive interventions to prevent the further transmission of endogenous preferences justifying IPV. In fact, premarriage counseling of prospective husbands may be an even more effective prophylaxis.

The results suggest seven specific policies to reduce IPV in the DR. First, the DR should invest more heavily in education in general, and in education that disrupts gender norms that justify IPV in particular. The DR has one of the lowest levels of spending on public education in Latin America, but the results suggest that investing in public education at the primary and secondary level and providing low-income students with access to higher education are powerful impetuses for decreasing justifications for IPV. Second, IPV awareness programs and interventions should target both young men and young women as both were more likely to justify IPV compared with their older counterparts. Third, given that the results show that wealth status influences beliefs about IPV, targeting anti-IPV campaigns to women and men (and boys and girls) in under-resourced communities is important. Fourth, the findings on relative wealth lend support to arguments for a more equitable distribution of income as a means to curtail IPV; for example, policies should support a “living wage” for workers in vulnerable employment sectors. Fifth, as the type of marriage influences women’s justification for IPV, and more than three-fourths of couples in the sample reported being in consensual unions, it seems important to target anti-IPV campaigns accordingly. As noted above, given that men in the earlier years of marriage are more likely to justify IPV, this may reflect a learning curve as husbands acquire over time nonviolent and egalitarian methods of communication and compromise with their wives, ending the transmission of endogenous preferences toward IPV. Sixth, the results suggest that anti-IPV campaigns should target homes without children and utilize media to reduce justifications for IPV. Seventh, and finally, it is important to challenge the belief that women should not work outside the household.

Conclusion

In this article, we examined the extent to which Dominican men and women justify IPV, controlling for a host of economic, educational, demographic, and sociopolitical characteristics of the respondents, paying particular attention to gauging the endogenous preferences of Dominicans toward IPV. Recognizing the simultaneous high rates of IPV in the DR and high levels of reported opposition to IPV, we argued that this implicated, inter alia, the endogenous preferences of Dominican respondents leading them to justify IPV in certain contexts, particularly within the institution of marriage, which generates cultural norms of behavior that may supersede legal proscriptions of IPV. Our analysis found that Dominican men as well as women justify IPV, but in ways that often are complex, contingent, and counterintuitive. While marriage as an institution is not significantly associated with justifications for IPV—in fact, married women are significantly less likely to justify IPV—men who have been married less than 10 years are significantly more likely to justify IPV. We conclude that marriage seems to be more of a conduit than an incubator of justifications for IPV in the DR. Rather, justifications for IPV are inculcated by a variety of institutions throughout Dominican society and therefore require multifaceted and extended interventions to counter them.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Carmen Diana Deere, James K. Boyce, Lisa Saunders, Sonia A. Alvarez, and Joyce Jacobson for comments on earlier drafts.

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) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Cruz C. Bueno

Notes

Author Biographies

Cruz C. Bueno is an assistant professor of Black Studies at the State University of New York, New Paltz. She is an economist specializing in economic development, gender violence, and the political economy of race, gender, and class inequality. She is the recipient of the 2014 Rhonda Williams Prize from the International Association for Feminist Economics. Her quantitative and qualitative work has been funded by the Inter American Foundation’s Grassroots Development Fellowship and has been published in Feminist Economics and the Review of Black Political Economy.

Errol A. Henderson is an associate professor of Political Science at Pennsylvania State University, where he teaches International Relations. He has authored more than 40 publications including The Revolution Will Not be Theorized: Cultural Revolution in the Black Power Era (SUNY Press, 2019) and (with Zeev Maoz) Scriptures, Shrines, Scapegoats, and World Politics: Religious Sources of Conflict and Cooperation in the Modern Era (University of Michigan Press, 2020). His present work focuses on the African diaspora and black women’s leadership in the Urban Peace and Justice Movement in the United States.

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