Examine the patterns of and reasons for domestic violence in society

Examine the patterns of, and reasons for, domestic violence in society Domestic violence is defined by the Women’s aid federation in 2008 as “physical, psychological, sexual or financial violence that takes place within an intimate or family-type relationship and forms a pattern of coercive and controlling behaviour. It may involve partners, ex-partners, household members or other relatives.” According to the British Crime Survey in 2007, domestic violence accounts for 16% of all violent crime. Catriona Mirrlees- Black’s survey of 16,000 people estimates that there are 6.6million domestic assaults a year, almost half involve physical injury. As domestic violence does not occur arbitrarily, there must be a social pattern which results to social causes. Violence by men and women is the most conspicuous pattern. Kathryn Coleman found that women were more likely than men to experience violence, which included four types of abuse; family abuse, sexual assault, partner abuse and stalking. Similarly, Catriona Mirrlees- Black found that 99% of incidents against women are committed by men and that one in four women had been maltreated by a spouse at a time in her life. Rebecca and Russell Dobash’s research in Scotland identified jealousy, money, children, drunkenness and arguments over food as common ‘triggers’ to domestic violence. Examples of this are: why were you late home for a meal, why did you borrow money from my account and why did you do a new hairstyle. The examples above exemplify the argument that marriage legitimates violence against women by conferring power and authority on husbands and dependency on wives. Moreover, statistics on domestic violence minimise the true extent of the problem for two main reasons. The first is that victims are unwilling to report this offence to the police. On average a woman suffers 35 assaults before making a report. One of the main reasons that the wife, who is often the target of this assault