History Of Domestic Violence: The Mistreatment Of Women

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Domestic violence is when one family or household member physically harms another household or family member. Domestic violence is a problem that has long history of being tolerated and in some cases had laws in order to protect a male’s right to enforce physical punishment upon his wife. Many laws that allowed that were hundreds of years old and were able to be overturned however many laws still in some ways allowed the mistreatment of women. This tolerance for the mistreatment of women and the allowance of it in order to appease men have many historical elements that helped to structure the way the justice system treats cases involving women verses men.
Domestic violence has a long standing history because in most of the world there were
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The act of men abusing their families was typically done behind closed doors and never to be spoken of outside of the home this helped to ensure that the perpetrator was able to remain in control of the situation. The bruises left behind while visible in some cases would be turned a blind eye to by those around. Many people feared getting involved because while many knew violence was morally wrong no one wanted to overstep their boundaries into a families personal issues. This apprehension to overstep bounds was strong enough to even cause many doctors who saw signs of physical abuse to rationalize bruises and not make accusations. With the use of x-rays in the 1950s battered child syndrome was discovered because radiologist, who had no direct contact with patients and thus didn’t feel constrained like many doctors, were able to acknowledge the existence of abuse in children (Pfohl, 1977). As women began to become more of figures outside of the home and began to speak up more for themselves domestic abuse became more widely discussed in the public atmosphere. During this time many other movements involving women began which helped to increase public awareness of domestic abuse along with these …show more content…
Domestic violence, while it can effect anyone has many elements that have been shown overtime to lead to one particular group to be more subjected to experience domestic violence over another. A person’s social class has been shown to have an impact on whether they are more likely to be effected by domestic violence. A person of a lower class is more likely to be subjected to domestic violence. This can be explained through many theories that believe a person’s level of poverty can have an impact on how they deal with violence and stress. This is because men who have more wealth are able to use their finances and other factors that the less wealthy don’t have in order to establish control and maintain their power, men who are less wealthy don’t have access to those resources and therefor are more likely to resort to physical violence as a way to assert their dominance and remain in control of those around them (Basile, Hall, & Walters, 2013). Race and ethnicity have been shown to be closely correlated with domestic violence. It has been noted that while there are higher rates of domestic violence amongst minorities they can’t be explained because of one single factor and in fact may have many different factors influencing them like income, unemployment, and various other factors (Cunradi, Caetano, Clark, & Schafer, 1999). A person’s gender has been used to