A Cross-National Examination of Global Gender Inequality and Femicide by Intimate Partners and Family Members.

Using cross-national data, we analyze the effects of economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, political empowerment, legislating reserved seats for female political candidates, and prevalence of domestic violence victimization on lethal violence against women across 39 nations. These significant factors have been studied individually with little work on their comparative, unique effects on femicide. Our paper makes such a comparison. The dependent variable, femicide by intimate partners and family members, is constructed using data from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the World Bank Group. All data are for the year 2011, a year that also corresponds to available data in the sources for our independent variables. These sources are the 2011 World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report, the United Nations Statistics Division, International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Our resulting sample size is 39 countries from five regions of the world: Northern and Eastern Europe (n = 7), Southern and Western Europe (n = 11), Asia and Oceania (n = 7) Africa (n = 2), and the Americas (n = 12). The unit of analysis is nation and the total number of cases of femicide by intimate partners and family members from the nations is 2,067,450,894. Our study supports backlash theory and finds in nations where educational attainment and percent women reporting domestic violence are higher, and in nations having legislated quotas for female political participation, the incidents of femicide by intimate partner and family members increase. Counter to most previous research, we find no relationship between economic participation and opportunity or political empowerment and femicide by intimate partners and family members.

The effects of academic and interpersonal stress on dating violence among college students: a test of classical strain theory.

This study examines Merton's Classical Strain Theory (1938) as a causative factor in intimate partner violence among college students. We theorize that college students experience general life strain and cumulative strain as they pursue the goal of a college degree. We test this strain on the likelihood of using intimate partner violence. Strain due to unrealistic expectations of intimate partnership and economic strain are also examined. The analysis examines the following causative factors representing strain: 1) the College Undergraduate Stress Scale (Renner & Mackin, 1998); 2) cumulative academic strain measured by college classification; 3) cumulative intimate partner strain measured as the length of time in the relationship; 4) academic strain measured by number of hours studied weekly, and 5) economic strain measured by number of hours worked weekly. Additionally, we examine the extent to which gender and race/ethnicity differentially affect intimate partner in the context of these measures of strain. The Conflict Tactics Scales II (Straus et al, 1996) are used to measure dating violence and include indicators for sexual coercion, physical aggression, injury, and psychological aggression. Data were collected from 142 students in lower-division classes from Texas Tech University. Results show that general strain and cumulative intimate partner strain increase the use of dating violence among college students. The longer dating partners are in a relationship, the higher the chances of psychological aggression, physical assault, and sexual coercion. Converse to our expectations, time spent working reduces psychological aggression due to reducing time spent together rather than reflecting economic strain.