Lecture Critique
The lecture was on Intimate Partner Violence and how Gender Ideology affects peoples attitudes towards future behaviors and intentions. The lecture was given by Ms. Ana Rodriguez, a PhD Student studying Ana first briefly explained her research between the Indian subjects and the FIU College students. She had us group up into different groups and asked us a set of questions about the three main topics we were exploring as it pertains to Intimate Partner Violence. First, we spoke about gender roles and our attitudes towards what roles are appropriate for women and men. The difference between PHRII staff and the FIU students were mostly similar, we discussed our opinions on statements such as “Today, women have all the opportunities that men have.” And “The woman should take the main responsibility for housework.” There were few differences in how the FIU students answered versus the PHRII staff, we mostly all agreed that women are not as emotional than men, and that today women are starting to have equal opportunities that men have, but there is still a lot of work to be done. We also all disagreed with the statement that women should have all the responsibility for the housework, however some PHRII women agreed with the second statement mentioned more than the FIU students. Next, we discussed different statements about violence in relationships, with statements such as “Threatening a partner is okay as long as I don't hurt him or her.”, and “I think my partner should give me a detailed account of what he or she did during the day”, again there were few differences between both groups. The next set of questions were about violence in general, asking people our general views on people who commit violent crimes and what is seen as right or wrong.
Once we had a basic understanding of the different topics contributing to this issue, Ana explained how our attitudes and views towards women affect out behavior and decisions in regard to Intimate Partner Violence. Women who see themselves in a certain way can impact them negatively in their intimate relationships. She concluded by showing the differences in her research results and it showed that men do not make as many connections with their views towards women when considering the impact IPV has on women.
The lecture explained that women are the usually always the victims of IPV. Based on the research, it was found that the men in the study did not make as many connections as women did between general attitudes towards women with their gender beliefs and their outlook on IPV specifically wife beating. Intimate Partner Violence is any form of intentional physical, psychological or sexual abuse. IPV can be between the same gender, and in any format of a relationship. It can be between people no longer in a relationship; cohabitating. One interesting thing that Dr. Stephens brought up in the lecture is that if the aggressor in the relationships happens to be the mother in law, or part of the extended family of one of the people in the relationship, it still counts as IPV because the abuse on the individual is a result of their relationship with the other person.
The relationship between an individual and their environment is important, and affects their behaviors, if you change the situation, it can change the person. This is very important to how we think about perpetrators and victims of violence should be taken away from their context or on what type of punishment they get, what people have to take more focus on, when we want to change in the context of violence.
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Weiss, N. H., Peasant, C., & Sullivan, T. P. (2017). Intimate Partner Violence and HIV-Risk Behaviors: Evaluating Avoidant Coping as a Moderator. AIDS And Behavior, 21(8), 2233-2242. doi:10.1007/s10461-016-1588-2
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Mert, A. E. (2017). Women's work, gender ideology and domestic division of labour: Where do men stand?. Journal Of International Social Research, 10(48), 429-441.
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