Violence Against Women and Children in Chinese Societies - Essay Example

Domestic violence is one of the most critical issues in China today. The body of literature found of the is vast and there is a multitude of ways and perspectives that various researchers have taken on the subject. This essay aims to go through the variations in the results of the studies conducted due to the divergent samples, theoretical framework, and methodology and research designs adopted by the researchers. Chan, 2008, looks at the aspect of domestic violence against women and the role played by culture. Chan carries out the study by incorporating in the research a qualitative design which focused primarily on the use of interviews, surveys and an analysis of police reports in order to gather information from a stratified sample design of a total of about 2400 women from the communities based in Hong Kong and China. There are a wide range of measures which can be employed in order to research the aspect of domestic violence. Chan from the multitude of options went for the use of interviews that were conducted face to face as well as Demographic questioning. A key result for the adoption of such a technique was that the study was able to map out a number of risk factors as far as domestic violence was concerned. It shows the high dependency of domestic violence on culture and the fact that women were more likely to be victims of domestic violence. Also those prevalence rates of victimization for physical assault, injury and sexual coercion were 15.7%.However due to the adaptation of a research framework that focused on the diversity of findings as well as methodology for study by making use of surveys and criminal reports resulted in problems as far as being able to accurately deduce figures on the scope of the issue at hand was concerned. Sun et al, 2010, looks at the subject with a broader perspective and an approach that is highly based on the comparison of the Chinese culture with that of the western societies. This approach incorporates the use of a similar research design method, that is qualitative descriptive in nature, much like that of Chan’s but focuses on explaining the difference in attitudes towards domestic violence and intimate partner violence in China when a comparison is made with the West. With the incorporation of a local and non-local population, denoted by American and students from universities in Hong Kong, the theoretical framework of the study is based on addressing how attitudes in the two countries vary as far as police response to domestic violence is concerned. A total of 637 students took part in this study on voluntary basis and data was collected by means of questionnaires. The definition of variables comprised of the dependent ones being that of the respondent’s attitude towards police being proactive and reactive as far as domestic violence was concerned. The Independent variable on the other hand was that of student background characteristics, experiences, attitudes, gender roles etc. The clear difference in the use of a broader sample and stringent controls strengthens the validity of the findings in the way the comparison went to show that Chinese students were more prone to support reactive police responses to domestic violence when compared to the Americans. Melissa, Shan and Leung, 2002, conducted an analysis on the prevalence of wife abuse occurring in Hong Kong. The study was focused on analyzing the sample of adult females on voluntary basis that frequently visited the emergency departments of hospitals in Hong Kong. The design on which the study was based was slightly different from the previously mentioned ones in the way it focused on a descriptive, exploratory design with the data collection being that of reviewing the records for female trauma patients with the specified time frame being that of a two week period. A sample of 347 cases was viewed and the findings of the study suggested that the influence of the Chinese prevalent culture was a main factor which served as a barrier for female victims of domestic violence and assault from seeking help. Other identified barriers were education, awareness and identification. A weakness of this structure, much like Chan’s study, was the fact that the injury mechanism and social background of the victims as per the records was very poorly documented leading to difficulties in carrying out the analysis. There is also a line of study that focuses on looking at the aspect of domestic violence and its implications of the rate of suicide in female victims residing in rural China. Meng, 2002, aims to focus research on this aspect by looking at the perpetrating factors for frequently occurring suicidal incidents in rural china. The use of ethnographic data was critical to explore this study and the findings denoted that the perception of suicide was vastly different in Chinese context, especially when it came to the level of education, exposure, experiences and status of women within a family. As per the rural areas a significant decline in these aspects of the women facing domestic abuse and an inferior status was seen to be the main cause for the extraordinarily higher rate of suicide in rural areas when compared to the rate for males. Other studies have been focused on a descriptive qualitative framework that focus on the rural areas of Hong Kong and China to analyze the implications of domestic violence, just like Meng has aimed to do. Following a similar pattern is Huan et al, 2010, who aims to look at community studies that analyze the part played by recent life events, psychological aspects, social support and perception towards domestic violence. The study makes use of a stratified design which focuses on obtaining a sample from 300 abusive and 200 non-abusive families from the rural area Hunan. The data was collected by the researchers by using a Life Event Scale (LES) and Social Support Rating Scale for duration of 12 months. The findings of the study prove to be very relevant as far as the comparison of the two families serves to validate the hypothesis that aggressive behavior and domestic violence was more readily acceptable by members of the abusive families (81%). A lot like Huan et al’s study, Gao et al, 2011 focused their work on rural western china but used a much wider sample of women who had been victims of domestic violence. The consequence of this additional keeping constant the research methodology the findings were more conclusive. This was seen in the way the results indicated that women who had undergone physical assault were 4.2 times more likely of risk of suicidal ideation than those who had not. Younger women, low levels of education, lower self-esteem were also high risk factors. Rural suicidal rate was also found to be distinctively higher than in urban areas. Chan et al, 2010, intensified the research into domestic violence by basing a descriptive qualitative research, which is found to be a popular framework when it comes to research on this topic, by investigating the effect of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) on impending intimate partner violence when it came to relationships. The sample comprised of 1154 Chinese adults who were currently committed and data was extracted by means of interviews that looked at CSA history, experiences of early violence and witnessing domestic aggression. Suicidal ideation and self-esteem of the sample was also looked at. The results of the study showed that a majority reported some kind of suicidal ideation and that the chances of IPV were enhanced when behavior was associated with drug abuse, alcohol abuse or sex with partner. Low self-esteem also increased the chances for IPV. Wang, 1999, focused on rural areas as well but his methods were different in the way the research focused on using a case study basis and addressing the issue by the incorporation of the social learning theory. The theoretical framework aimed to look at what kinds of violence occurred in rural areas, Beijing and Suburbs, and what the victims’ attitude toward IPV was. By the use of women’s hotline data was gathered that was focusing on variables such as victim’s age, education and vocational level and their attitude. When you compare Wang’s methods with those of the several other studies addressing this issue you see the efficiency of the framework in the reliability of the results. These denote the fact that traditional feudal concepts and customs were much stronger in rural areas where the women acceptance towards violence is based on their belief that they were inferior to men. Chan and Lam, 2005, much like Wang follow a case study design, a similar sample with the basic difference being on the theoretical framework which aims to develop guidelines on the handling of battered spouse cases. The divergent routes that a comparison of these two studies indicates that the public pays very little attention to battered wives when compared to abused children because of them viewing the issue as a marital one and hence not interfering. A very divergent approach was adopted by Lee et al, 2010, who much like Wang, looked at the at Chinese and Hong Kong sample of 10 male batterers and 13 controls, by the perspective of neurology. His case study design varied in the way it looked at whether wife batterers were more hyper responsive to threatening stimuli. By assessing the brain functions and independent variables of picture stimuli and DV of brain activity, his results showed that wife batterers did indeed show higher neural hyper responsiveness to threatening stimulis which increased their aggressive responses. However a limitation of the study that needs to be highlighted is the fact that neurology tends to be a complex aspect when it comes to accurate deductions of results and the widening and diversifying of the sample might lead to different results. References Chan, 2008. Sexual Violence Against Women and Children in Chinese Societies. Trauma Violence Abuse January 2009 vol. 10 no. 1 69-85 Chan, K., Yan, Elsie, Brownridge, D., Tiwari, A and Fong, D. (2010). Childhood sexual abuse associated with dating partner violence and suicidal ideation in a representative household sample in Hong Kong. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 26(9), 1762–1784 Chan, Y. and Lam, Gladys. (2005).Unraveling the rationale for a one-stop service under the Family and Child Protection Services Units in Hong Kong. International Social Work 48(4): 419–428 Gao, Wang and Lin. (2011). Suicidal Ideation and the Prevalence of Intimate Partner Violence Against Women in Rural Western China. Violence Against Women October 2011 vol. 17 no. 10 1299-1312 Huan et al, 2010. Relationship Between Recent Life Events, Social Supports, and Attitudes to Domestic Violence Predictive Roles in Behaviors. J Interpers Violence ,May 2010, vol. 25, no. 5863-876. Lee, T, Raine,M and Chan. (2010). Attentional bias towards negative affect stimuli and reactive aggression in male batterers. Psychiatry Research 176 (2010) 246–249 Melissa, Shan and Leung, 2002, The prevalence of domestic violence among the female Chinese population in the accident and emergency department. University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong) Meng, 2002. The meaning of suicide of women in rural China. International Journal of Social Welfare,Volume 11, Issue 4, pages 300–309, October 2002 Sun, Ivan., Su, Mingyue and Wu, Yuning. (2010). Attitude toward police response to domestic violence: a comparison of Chinese and American college students. Journal of Interpersonal Violence 26, (16), 3289–3315. Wang, 1999. Why Are Beijing Women Beaten by Their Husbands? : A Case Analysis of family Violence in Beijing. 5: 1493 – 1499. Read More