COUV ACTES - Psychologie communautaire

Community Psychology: Common Values, Diverse PracticesWhen talking about partner violence it is to some extent artificial to speak about physical and sexual violenceseparately as both are usually aspects of the same phenomenon, perpetrated by the same person. In all regionswe saw that physical violence is reported by more women than sexual violence. Nationwide, the prevalence oflifetime physical or sexual partner violence among married women is 42%, just slightly higher than physicalviolence 39%.Issues around silence and stigmaAs in many other countries, also in Turkey, about half of the women had talked for the first time in their life aboutthe violence they were experiencing from their partner, when being interviewed for this study. When women inviolent relationships do reach out, they tend to do so to family and friends. Unfortunately, many women report thatthe response they get from their closest support system, family, made them feel more isolated and guilty:“I went to my mother first..... I told little by little. Her reaction was ‘Didn’t we tell you?’ ‘You brought this uponyourself, now you pay for it’, ‘There is the child, what will you do? Where will you go?’ and so on ....” (Woman, 20years old, married, one child)In large parts of Turkey women are seen as a man’s property, as can be seen from this quote from a woman inour study focus groups discussions:“He thinks ‘she is my legal wife,... she doesn’t have a place to go, no salary, no money, no future, she has kids...., what is she to do, she can’t go, no matter how much I torment her, I can do whatever I want, she won’t leave...”(44 year old woman)Men’s attitudes towards women and violenceThe focus group discussions with men showed in particular the following attitudes of men towards women andviolence:Men and women live in different worlds, putting men and women at different poles with no meeting point.Men have power and women need to accept. If this doesn't happen it creates a tension.The attitudes towards women and violence were different among the different age and educational groups, alonga scale, as summarized in the following sections.Young men, married, high educationYoung and educated men (who often had working wives) were ambivalent; they did not want to (solely) followtheir fathers role (economic role – providing for / supporting family) but also had difficulty handling the tensioncreated by not having all control any longer, while at the same time the women expected their contribution. Theseyoung men considered this a form of violence towards them, from their point of view.231