Understanding Formal Responses to Intimate Partner Violence and Women’s Resistance Processes: A Scoping Review

Abstract

Intimate partner violence (IPV) literature addresses the ways in which women oppose violent male partners through acts of “everyday resistance.” There is a limited understanding, however, of the relationship between women’s resistance and their formal help-seeking in the context of IPV. Our scoping review, which includes 74 articles published in English-language journals between 1994 and 2017, attempts to help fill this gap by developing systematic knowledge regarding the following research questions: (1) How are formal institutional responses discussed within the literature on resistance to IPV? (2) How does institutional help-seeking facilitate or obstruct IPV survivors’ personal efforts to resist violence? We find that institutions and organizations succeed in facilitating resistance processes when they counter victim-blaming ideas and provide IPV survivors with shared community and a sense of control over their futures. However, they fall short in terms of helping survivors by expecting survivors to adhere to a rigid narrative about appropriate responses to violence, devoting insufficient attention to individual-level factors impacting survivors’ vulnerability and ability to access help, and replicating abuse dynamics when interacting with survivors. Policy and practice implications are discussed.

Perceived Reportability of Intimate Partner Violence against Women to the Police and Help-seeking: A National Survey

“…Second, an integral analysis of help-seeking behavior follows ecological approximations. In this regard, the current research follows recent recommendations for IPV analysis, including a range of factors and the multidimensional nature of the phenomena ( Hammock et al, 2017 ; Herrero et al, 2020 ; Juarros-Basterretxea, Herrero, et al, 2022 ; Juarros-Basterretxea, Ocampo, et al, 2022 ; Osborn & Rajah, 2020 ). A third strength of the present study is its ability to advance research on the effect of perceived reportability on the potential selection of various sources of help, from more informal to more formal.…”

“…The empirical literature seems to support this claim. Hanson et al (2019) (see also Cheng et al, 2020 ; Cho et al, 2023 ) found that women tend to choose the police as help purveyors in more severe cases of IPV, suggesting that seeking help from the police reflects the desperation of the situation ( Osborn & Rajah, 2020 ). This finding leads to the following question: “Why do most victims come to the police only when they experience severe violence?”.…”