Power and domestic abuse Flashcards
Lukes’ faces of power…
Sociologists look at the nature of power, then apply their responses to the nature of power within the family. The sociologist Stephen Lukes identified three different views or ‘faces’ on power, they are:
> Decision making (what Lukes termed the first face of power)
> Agenda setting otherwise known as non-decision making (what Lukes termed the second face of power)
> Controlling wishes and desires (Lukes’ own radical or third face of power)
Decision-making…
This examines how power is gained through winning the argument/discussion over an issue.
The person or group who win the argument gain all the power and can act on their decision. However within the family it is important to distinguish between major and minor decisions.
When the actual decisions were looked at in detail what Edgell (1980) discovered was that only about half of the family decisions were taken jointly.
Big decisions…
The husband dominated the more important decisions like moving house, family finances, and buying a car.
The more frequent and less ‘important’ decisions were left to the wife. These decisions tended to be about interior decorating, food management, and children’s clothes.
This difference between the power to make major or minor decisions indicates that power is more complicated than just winning the discussion as some groups/individuals can set the agenda relegating an issue from a major to minor one.
Agenda setting…
This helps address the capacity to create major and minor issues. With setting the agenda or non-decision making, some ideas about family life have already been made for people, and so it’s difficult to start discussing them because the agenda has already been set (agenda setting).
If the agenda has already been set about an issue, this means one group or person has the power to set the agenda. Therefore the recipient group have no power and subsequently unable to make a decision, known as non-decision making.
Gains and power…
Setting of the agenda is important in family life as those people who gain from setting the agenda hold more power.
One example is where men’s jobs are largely seen as being more important that women’s.
This transfers to the family whereby a husband’s power comes from his ‘superior job’ and can stop the discussion (agenda is set) of him cooking the evening meal because he’s worked all-day. Therefore because the wife/partner’s is seen to have a ‘lesser’ valued domestic role the agenda is set she’ll cook the meal.
Feminism…
Feminist writers argue this agenda setting means men gain a two-fold advantage as they aren’t tarnished by the negative aspects of being a carer/housewife while at the same time benefiting from women undertaking these roles.
Oakely argues that having set the agenda the wife is becomes dependent on the male breadwinner and women’s housework is seen as different a softer option form ‘real’ work. Defining housework as a female activity means the agenda is set, as such work is naturally female.
Lukes pointed out that the second-face of power didn’t explain – in this example, women – why so many women accepted housework as being ‘natural’.
Shaping desires…
The final type of power is the ability to shape the wishes and desires of people. This is known as Lukes’ third face of power.
This form of power is more subtle than the previous two because it is about one group or individual shaping the wishes and desires of another group/individual without them realising they’re being manipulated.
Ideology…
The idea with this view of power is the ability of one group to control another without them knowing it’s happening. This occurs in the family because women have grown to accept their subordinate status through Lukes’ third face of power.
One ‘tool’ used to sell a woman’s subordinate status is through ideology. By cementing certain ideas into society as normal and inevitable women accept their subordinate role as carers and housewives because they’ve been ‘sold’ this idea. In general women don’t try and challenge these normal ‘biological’ ideas because if they do they’re seen as odd.
Domestic abuse…
It is estimated that 1 in 4 women, and 1 in 6 men will suffer some sort domestic violence in their relationship. 89% of the incidences are committed by men against their wives. Domestic violence accounts for 30% of violent crime. However domestic violence is not taken very seriously in court, in fact it is often considered ‘part of married life’.
Domestic abuse statistics…
Statistics understate the true extent of the problem for two main reasons;
> Victims may be unwilling to report it to the police.
> Police and prosecutors may be reluctant to record, investigate or prosecute cases.
Yearshire found that on average a woman suffers 35 assaults before making a report.
Cheal found that state agencies (like police) are reluctant to get involved in the family because they assume that the family is private, good and individuals are free to leave if they wish.
Radical feminists - Dobash and Dobash (1979)…
Dobash and Dobash argue that in patriarchal societies there is still cultural support for the view that men have a ‘right’ to ‘discipline’ their wives or partners. Furthermore, there has been little institutional support offered by society to the battered wife.
They found that one of the major factors precipitating assaults was the husband’s perception that the wife was not performing her domestic duties to his satisfaction. Insofar as our society still accepts a domestic division of labour which allocates the majority of domestic duties to women, this leaves them vulnerable to this sort of criticism, and possible subsequent assault.
Other findings…
The study also showed that many women are economically dependent on men, since many women are in poorly paid employment. As such, many women who leave abusive husbands are forced to return for economic reasons and because of the stigma surrounding the break-up of marriage.
These findings have been interpreted by radical feminists to suggest that widespread domestic violence is an inevitable feature of patriarchal society and serves to preserve the power that all men have over women.
Elliot on Vanessa George…
However, Elliot rejects the radical feminist claim that all men benefit from domestic violence. Not all men are aggressive and most are opposed to domestic violence. Similarly, radical feminists fail to explain female violence, including child abuse by women and violence against male partners. For example, it would be difficult to explain the actions of Vanessa George who systematically sexually-abused children in the nursery where she worked by claiming that society is patriarchal.
Wilkinson – domestic violence, inequality and stress…
Wilkinson sees domestic violence as the result of stress on family members caused by social inequality. He argues that families on low incomes or living in overcrowded housing are likely to experience higher levels of stress.
This reduces their chances of maintaining stable and caring relationships and increases the risk of conflict and violence. The findings of studies by Wilkinson and Mirlees-Black show that not all people are equally in danger of suffering domestic violence: those with less power, status, wealth or income are often at greatest risk.
Right Realists…
Domestic violence only occurs in Dysfunctional Families. Family instability comes from a rise in cohabitation and divorce and a decline in moral standards. They argue that domestic violence occurs more commonly in lower class families due to lower moral standard.
However, ignores female on male domestic violence as well as domestic violence in middle and upper class families.
