Scholarship

Unsafe at Home

FOR A STARTLING GLIMPSE OF HOW PERVASIVE violence has become in our society, simply look to the symbol of peace and security: the home. Three or four women are murdered by their domestic partners every day. One and a half million women are battered annually. Violence by intimate partner is the primary source of injuries to women in the United States. Eighty-three percent of poor women have experienced abuse. And studies indicate that the more severely a woman is battered, the more likely she is to become abusive herself.

“I’ve spent my whole career trying to resolve the ‘Why?’” says Kersti Yllö, who approaches the question as a feminist sociologist. “Why is the family our society’s most violent institution, aside from the military in times of war? It is a very individual, private matter, but it is an epidemic.” In their pursuit of “why?,” Yllö and her fellow scholars have learned much about who is most likely to be victimized, how abusive relationships occur and perpetuate, and even how an abusive relationship can be turned back into a loving one.

Yllö is a professor of sociology, associate provost, and director of the College Learning Center at Wheaton College in Norton, Mass. She returned to Denison this spring, in the 25th year of the Women’s Studies Program, to deliver a Provost’s Lecture regarding domestic violence.

She joined the faculty at Wheaton in 1981, after earning her M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of New Hampshire, where researchers conducted the first national survey on violence in families in 1975. Her own work focuses on domestic abuse, especially marital rape and battering, as well as abuse during pregnancy. Her current projects, in conjunction with the U.S. Marine Corps and Boston’s Children’s Hospital, involve analyzing the success of efforts to reduce the incidence of domestic violence. Yllö also serves as vice president of Common Purpose, the largest domestic-violence intervention program in Massachusetts.

“The intersection of race, class, and gender affects each of us differently,” Yllö explains. “You can’t understand the problem without taking gender and power into account.”

For three decades, Yllö and other feminist scholars of her generation have been quietly focused on identifying the underlying causes of domestic violence (a term that commonly refers to abuse between domestic partners, not elder or child abuse), as well as developing intervention and support services and legal remedies to address the issue.

Yllö characterizes domestic violence as “intimate oppression,” one of many domination tactics adopted by abusers. But she notes that relationships haunted by abuse should not be forsaken. Instead, she refers to the Power and Control Wheel, a tool developed by the Domestic Abuse Intervention Project in Duluth, Minn., to help both batterers and their victims identify problematic, coercive, controlling behaviors, and replace them with nonviolent approaches that establish and reinforce the equality of both partners. Using these principles, Yllö explains, “We can create homes where love and equality triumph over violence and oppression.”

Further breakthroughs in Yllö’s field occurred with the development of a multidimensional perspective on the roots of domestic violence. “The intersection of race, class, and gender affects each of us differently,” Yllö explains. “You can’t understand the problem without taking gender and power into account. You can study the psychology of its perpetrators and victims, and try to identify what social services can help. But theory and research have to have implications in practice.”

Recent studies confirm that the incidence of domestic violence is disproportionately higher among women of color and poor women, who have fewer social protections. These victims are also more likely to become batterers themselves. Women perpetrators were twice as likely to be African-American, and women who were in shelters had family incomes double that of women perpetrators. Women of color who batter are much more likely to be charged with a crime than white men accused of similar behavior.

A “solution” may be a distant dream, but even though the subject is difficult to research–its victims are frequently reluctant to discuss their experiences–there has been some progress. “We have criminalized the behavior, and there are shelters, but there’s a lot more to do,” Yllö says. Rates of violence have gone down since the 1970s, and homicide rates have declined. “The number of men murdered by their wives has gone down. And paradoxically, shelters have saved the lives of thousands of men who batter–by removing the wife.

“I think this generation of young women expects equality and opportunity as a matter of course, not as something needing a movement to achieve. That’s a good thing,” Yllö says. That wasn’t exactly Yllo’s experience 30 years ago. It wasn’t until she took a course on issues of gender and power from former professor Joan Staumanis that she understood inequalities that she had seen but never questioned. That course, she said, “shaped the work I’ve done ever since.”

Despite her faith in her nearly all-female audience’s discernment, Yllö had a few words of advice to share: “Violence and abuse are widespread and affect all classes and racial/ethnic groups. Do not confuse jealousy with love. A man who genuinely loves you will appreciate you as a whole and independent person, not as a possession. The best protection against victimization is to avoid relationships with controlling men, and to maintain your independence and be able to support yourself.”

Yllö is encouraged by increased public awareness– medical, criminal-justice, and other professionals are now educated on the issue, and dedicated advocates at shelters have saved countless lives–but after nearly three decades of studying domestic violence, she is still perplexed by the realities. “We remain a violent and sexist culture. It’s disappointing to witness another generation of batterers and victims.”

Amy Deeds is a freelance writer from Granville. She wrote “Life Endangered” about Julie Hanna ‘97 in the spring issue of this magazine.