Intimate partner violence (IPV) is widespread. The American Journal of Preventive Medicine reports that an estimated 25.5 to 53.6% of women will experience IPV in their lives. Although same sex couples and heterosexual men are also victims, women are affected in greater numbers.
The Bureau of Justice shows that IPV is the leading cause of premature of death for African American women ages 15 to 45 and the seventh for U.S. women overall. Since African American women make up 8% of the U.S. population but account for 42% of intimate partner homicides, it requires that we look deeper at the economic and social causes of IPV.
A 2004 study found that women living in disadvantaged neighborhoods are more than twice as likely to be the victims of intimate partner violence as women in more affluent neighborhoods. The poorest communities, as communities of color and households headed by women often are, suffer from the greatest unemployment, poverty, and lack of social advancement. Research shows that it is poverty, not race, which is the greatest risk factor for IVP. Economic stress may not always lead to violence, but violence of all types, as well as IPV, run higher in impoverished areas.
Unmistakably, the economic crisis and the recession that followed, has led to an increase in violence within American families. In the first three months of 2009, there was a 40% increase in IPV related homicides. The National Domestic Violence Hotline reported that there was a 21% increase in calls in the third quarter of 2008 in relation to the same period in 2007, a majority of callers reporting a downward change in their financial status.....
....Our nation, seemingly at endless war, creates more combat veterans who are exposed to, and trained in violence on a daily basis. Returning veterans, rising unemployment and homelessness due to foreclosures are added on top of the poverty and lack of equal opportunities for working class women and people of color which is already a part of capitalism's profit driven system. And the tensions build...
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