Consequences of Male Partner Violence for Low‐Income Minority Women

The current study used a random sample of 563 low-income women to text Johnson's (1995) theory that there are two major forms of male-partner violence, situational couple violence and intimate terrorism, which are distinguished in terms of their embeddedness in a general pattern of control. The study examined the associations between type of violence experienced and respondents' physical health, psychological distress, and economic well-being. Analyses revealed three distinct patterns of partner violence: intimate terrorism, control/no threat, and situational couple violence. Compared to victims of control/no threat and situational couple violence, victims of intimate terrorism reported more injuries from physical violence and more work/activity time lost because of injuries. Compared to women who experienced no violence in the previous year, victims of intimate terrorism reported a greater likelihood of visiting a doctor, poorer health, more psychological distress, and a greater likelihood of receiving government assistance. Key Words: health and women, low socioeconomic status and women, partner violence. We explore the dynamics of violent relationships by testing Johnson's (1995) control typology among a sample of relatively poor minority women. The two main goals of the current study are to validate empirically the distinct types of partner violence specified by Johnson and to examine how these types are differentially related to women's well-being. First, we distinguish between types of partner violence based on the violent partner's use of nonviolent controlling behaviors. Second, we examine how women's physical, psychological, and economic well-being are associated with the type of violence they experienced. AN INTEGRATION OF TWO CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF PARTNER VIOLENCE Prior to 1995, two distinct perspectives regarding the nature of partner violence, referred to as the family violence perspective and the feminist perspective, existed within the social science literature (Johnson, 1995; Kurz, 1989). Differences in sampling methods led to different conclusions about gender, violence, and power, and ignited rancorous debates among researchers (Kurz; Straus, 1993; Yllo, 1993). Family violence researchers, relying primarily upon large national data sets, have found that women are as likely as their male counterparts to initiate and carry out physical violence against an intimate partner. On average, this gender-symmetric violence tends to be relatively low in frequency and severity. In sharp contrast, feminist researchers focus primarily on clinical populations and use data collected from hospitals, police logs, and safe houses to show that physical violence is only one of many tactics used to control a partner (Kirkwood, 1993) and that batterers (almost always men) increasingly dominate their partners through both frequent and severe violent and nonviolent controlling behavior. Johnson's (1995) conceptual framework attempts to resolve the debate between family violence researchers and feminist researchers. Johnson theorized that family violence and feminist researchers study two very different populations, thereby uncovering different phenomena. Johnson labeled these types of partner violence common couple violence and patriarchal terrorism, subsequently referred to as situational couple violence (Johnson & Leone, in press) and intimate terrorism (Johnson & Ferraro, 2000). The importance of categorizing types of violence, rather than viewing partner violence as a continuum of severity or frequency of physical violence, rests on the assumption that intimate terrorism and situational couple violence involve qualitatively different patterns of control rather than high or low levels of physical violence. According to Johnson, the central difference between situational couple violence and intimate terrorism is the motivation underlying the physical violence, rather than severity or frequency. …