Violence Against Women

Research ethics, especially the protection of research study participants, has been an enduring concern of investigators and scholars of victims of violence. Previous work has analyzed the overt and hidden risks of harm to study participants through poorly designed and implemented protocols, cross-cultural insensitivity, unjust exclusion of certain victim types, and neglect to ensure safety of research staff. This article extends this work by calling for greater attention to exploiting participants and victims as a class of persons. The need for this wider view derives from concern about the academic research environment with its emphasis on research, publication, and extramural funding. The authors argue that compliance with federal regulations and IRB directives is necessary but insufficient to conduct truly ethical research. Recognition of the unique pressures that researchers face in the context of the economically competitive university is required to delineate and manage exploitation risks. Such pressures have sometimes led to the rush from print to practices and policies with unintended harmful results for victims of violence as a class of persons. The authors suggest a number of strategies for researchers to define and manage the dangers of engaging in this type of unethical conduct.

This paper responds to the commentaries offered by Mulla and Hlavka, Conte, Cerulli, and Cromer and Newman. We reflect on their differing points of view, attempt clarifications, and then re-state our central concern in regard to research ethics in studies of violence against women. We think that IRB-oriented approaches suffer from too much rule adherence, too much focus on doing things the right way and too little attention to the larger ethical question of to how figure out the right things to do. We continue to raise concern about inept research as potentially damaging to a class of persons, not to the specific subjects of any particular study. Thus, we see not just a matter of poor design, mishandling of analyses, or even of clumsy inferences from the data in some research; these errors are correctible by better training and review. But these errors also have the potential for misleading the public and policy makers and thus suggest ethical dimensions to clumsy work. We conclude by proposing use of wide reflective equilibrium as a way of entering into deeper dialogue about the complex ethical issues surrounding this field of research. Hopefully, we can move beyond mere rule compliance to seriously considering the end effects of our science.

Past scholarship has weighed the risks and rewards of legal remedies for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. Missing from this debate, however, is an analysis of the social incentives for victim advocates to offer legal options to their clients. Preliminary findings show that victim advocates perceive that outsiders respect legal work more than their care work with clients (listening, caring, and empathizing). This study offers three explanations for this phenomenon: (1) the devaluation of women’s care work in general, (2) the confidentiality constraints on communicating the value of their care work, and (3) popular assumptions that care work requires professional credentials in order to be legitimate.

Access to safe and affordable housing is a key concern for women leaving abusive partners. Yet little is known about women’s housing patterns around leaving. In this community sample, approximately equal numbers of women did not move, moved once, and moved two or more times during the transition period around leaving. Overall, moving patterns were associated with housing type and suitability, economic circumstances, and severity of violence. This study calls into question the tendency to equate leaving with moving, draws attention to the different housing patterns after leaving, and highlights the need to tailor housing supports to diverse women.

African American women are at high risk for sexual assault. In addition, many African American women endorse the use of social support and religiosity to cope with trauma. The current study investigates the relationship between these two coping strategies and posttrauma symptoms in a sample of 413 African American female sexual assault survivors using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. Findings indicated that survivors with greater social support were less likely to endorse the symptoms of depression and PTSD. Conversely, increased use of religious coping was related to greater endorsement of depression and PTSD symptoms. Counseling and research implications are explored.

This article explores the increase in gender-based violence against civilian women in Iraq since 2003 and connects it to the U.S.-led invasion of that country. It outlines the complex nature of the gender-based violence and the impact that it has had on civilian women in Iraq. It then analyzes the links between this violence and the politics of the postinvasion period. This article also explores how this violence has been politicized. Ultimately, the article (re)politicizes gender-based violence through a feminist lens and argues that the security of Iraq’s women is fundamental to the stability of Iraq as a whole.