Violence Against Women

This article explores the utility of applying the Transtheoretical Model of behavior change to the problems facing battered women with a goal of understanding and systematically measuring how battered women work to overcome the abuse in their lives. The central constructs of the Transtheoretical Model—stages of change, processes of change, decisional balance, self-efficacy—are described with supporting research, and the relevance of this model for the issues with which battered women deal is discussed. An awareness of the process and stages of change may be useful for members of the criminal justice system and the helping professions in their dealings with victims of abuse.

One out of three women in the United States has been sexually abused by the age of 18. The legacy of the trauma influences, for example, the survivor's ability to trust others, to recognize appropriate boundaries, and to form intimate relationships. The dynamics of the therapeutic relationship can engender intense responses and activate many of the feelings from the original trauma. This article presents a framework that describes and explains the connections between past sexual abuse, the survivor's present symptoms, and the ways that these influence the transference and countertransference. The frame-work can help clinicians conceptualize the interplay between the sexual abuse and the treatment process. The therapist will therefore be able to avoid some problems in the therapy and better manage those that do arise.

At least 85% of rapes and attempted rapes of college women are perpetrated by nonstrangers, and more than 50% occur on dates. This study developed a set of scales measuring college women's susceptibility to date and acquaintance rape (DAR). Preliminary DAR scales and three convergent/discriminant validity scales were included in a questionnaire completed by 374 dormitory residents. Three reliable DAR scales emerged: Perceived Vulnerability, Self-Efficacy, and Self-Determination, as well as one marginally reliable scale: Victim-Blaming. Five of six predicted correlations between pairs of DAR scales were supported. Three of five hypothesized correlations between DAR scales and convergent/discriminant validity scales were supported. The DAR scales show promise as measures of women's susceptibility to DAR and as useful tools in rape prevention education.

This article explores the way in which one Australian newspaper represented men's violence against women and children in a series called “The War Against Women” in 1993. Notwithstanding widespread media coverage of men's violence, “The War” series responded with a shock-of-the-new reaction to statistics and reports indicating wide-spread domestic violence and sexual assaults in Victoria, Australia. The article comments critically on the newspaper's discursive construction of the problem of men's violence and its attempt to represent that violence as a war.

We are wasting our time instead of discussing the development of the country. We should have something better to discuss than [wife-beating]!” (Comment by a Parliamentarian, Papua New Guinea, 1987).

The [domestic violence] victim is often responsible in that he or she has made a bad choice of companions... [p]eople have to be more selective about their friends and lovers. (Milton H. Raphaelson, presiding justice of the Dudley District Court, Massachusetts, 1996).