Elsevier

Social Science & Medicine

Volume 51, Issue 11, 1 December 2000, Pages 1595-1610
Social Science & Medicine

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

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-9536(00)00056-3Get rights and content

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.

Section snippets

Background

Gender-based violence is increasingly receiving global attention as a significant public health and human rights issue (Heise, 1996). One of the most common forms of gender-based violence is domestic violence or wife abuse, which is defined in this paper as a series of coercive behaviours, including physical abuse towards adult and adolescent women, by current or former male intimate partners. It has been estimated that in most countries between 10–50% of women have experienced wife abuse (

Methods

The study was carried out in the municipality of León, Nicaragua’s second largest city, with a population of 195,000 inhabitants. A combination of quantitative and qualitative methods was used. A survey was carried out to determine the magnitude and characteristics of wife abuse on a representative sample of women, whereas interviews and discussions were used both to design the survey and to interpret its results as well as to examine the significance of violence in women’s lives.

“I don’t know why I’m still alive…”

Ana Cristina was married at the age of 15 to a man in his late thirties. Her husband was a soldier, a Sandinista, which in the early days of the revolution carried with it a romantic aura that quickly earned him the respect and approval of Ana Cristina’s mother. Shortly after the marriage, he began to beat Ana Cristina savagely and continued to do so regularly throughout the subsequent 5 years. She learned to listen for him at night and be ready to escape if necessary, with the children.

…I had

Conclusions

The results of the research indicate that wife abuse is a serious public health problem in Nicaragua, with devastating consequences for women and children. The data suggest that a significant proportion of the female population is currently experiencing severe physical violence from their intimate partners, often accompanied by emotional and sexual abuse.

The fact that children are so often witnesses to violence against their mothers is of particular concern, not only because it exposes them to

Acknowledgements

This research was carried out with financial support from Umeå University, Gruppo Voluntariado Civile (GVC) and the Swedish International Development Co-operation Agency (Sida). The authors gratefully acknowledge the valuable comments on earlier drafts of the paper by Lori Heise, Kjerstin Dahlblom, Claudia Garcia Moreno, Lennarth Nyström, Christine Bradley and Hans Stenlund.

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