IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v51y2000i11p1595-1610.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Candies in hell: women's experiences of violence in Nicaragua

Author

Listed:
  • Ellsberg, Mary
  • Peña, Rodolfo
  • Herrera, Andrés
  • Liljestrand, Jerker
  • Winkvist, Anna

Abstract

The aim of this study was to describe the characteristics of domestic violence against women in León, Nicaragua. A survey was carried out among a representative sample of 488 women between the ages of 15-49. The physical aggression sub-scale of the Conflict Tactics Scale was used to identify women suffering abuse. In-depth interviews with formerly battered women were performed and narratives from these interviews were analysed and compared with the survey data. Among ever-married women 52% reported having experienced physical partner abuse at some point in their lives. Median duration of abuse was 5 years. A considerable overlap was found between physical, emotional and sexual violence, with 21% of ever-married women reporting all three kinds of abuse. Thirty-one percent of abused women suffered physical violence during pregnancy. The latency period between the initiation of marriage or cohabitation and violence was short, with over 50% of the battered women reporting that the first act of violence act took place within the first 2 years of marriage. Significant, positive associations were found between partner abuse and problems among children, including physical abuse. Both the survey data and the narrative analysis pointed to extreme jealousy and control as constant features of the abusive relationship. Further, the data indicate that battered women frequently experience feelings of shame, isolation and entrapment which, together with a lack of family and community support, often contribute to women's difficulty in recognizing and disengaging from a violent relationship. These findings are consistent with theoretical conceptualisations of domestic violence developed in other countries, suggesting that, to a large degree, women's experiences of violence transcend specific cultural contexts.

Suggested Citation

  • Ellsberg, Mary & Peña, Rodolfo & Herrera, Andrés & Liljestrand, Jerker & Winkvist, Anna, 2000. "Candies in hell: women's experiences of violence in Nicaragua," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 51(11), pages 1595-1610, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:51:y:2000:i:11:p:1595-1610
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(00)00056-3
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Piperata, Barbara A. & Schmeer, Kammi K. & Rodrigues, Andres Herrera & Salazar Torres, Virgilio Mariano, 2016. "Food insecurity and maternal mental health in León, Nicaragua: Potential limitations on the moderating role of social support," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 9-17.
    2. Bott, Sarah & Morrison, Andrew & Ellsberg, Mary, 2005. "Preventing and responding to gender-based violence in middle and low-income countries : a global review and analysis," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3618, The World Bank.
    3. Juan D. Barón, 2010. "La violencia de pareja en Colombia y sus regiones," Documentos de trabajo sobre Economía Regional y Urbana 128, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
    4. Yount, Kathryn M. & DiGirolamo, Ann M. & Ramakrishnan, Usha, 2011. "Impacts of domestic violence on child growth and nutrition: A conceptual review of the pathways of influence," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 72(9), pages 1534-1554, May.
    5. Pradeep Kumar Panda, 2006. "Rights-based Strategies in the Prevention of Domestic Violence," Working Papers id:748, eSocialSciences.
    6. Alan Piper, 2019. "An Investigation into the Reported Closing of the Nicaraguan Gender Gap," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 144(3), pages 1391-1413, August.
    7. Clark, Cari Jo & Silverman, Jay G. & Shahrouri, Manal & Everson-Rose, Susan & Groce, Nora, 2010. "The role of the extended family in women's risk of intimate partner violence in Jordan," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 70(1), pages 144-151, January.
    8. Panda, Pradeep & Agarwal, Bina, 2005. "Marital violence, human development and women's property status in India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 33(5), pages 823-850, May.
    9. Kyegombe, Nambusi & Stern, Erin & Buller, Ana Maria, 2022. "“We saw that jealousy can also bring violence”: A qualitative exploration of the intersections between jealousy, infidelity and intimate partner violence in Rwanda and Uganda," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 292(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:51:y:2000:i:11:p:1595-1610. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.