'n Ekologiese perspektief op geweld teenoor vroue in saamwoon-en huweliksverhoudings

English: A literature study, complemented by an empirical investigation during which both quantitative questionnaires and qualitative interviews with female victims of violence are utilised, is conducted to explore and describe violence against women in cohabiting and marital relationships from an ecological perspective, in order to tune in scientifically founded social work service rendering to the phenomenon. During the investigation, there is moved away from a linear approach to violence to a more comprehensive, holistic perspective, which brings about an assessment of social problems and needs in interactional terms, namely that violence is a result of maladjustment in the person and environmental relationship. The phenomenon is approached as a symptom of disfunctioning in the ecological system and as a result of the mutually influencing interactional processes that take place between the individual system and the ecological context. A variety of multifactoral, circular causal factors are identified by analysing four levels of the ecological system, namely the individual level, the family level, social structural level and the sociocultural level, but also of the levels' mutual influence upon one another. At the individual level, an analysis takes place of psychopathologies and characteristics associated with female victims and violent males. The ways in which their families of origin influence the concerned persons' current behaviour and purport regarding their situations are analysed, whilst the role of power in violent behaviour, the relation between the use of alcohol and chemical substances and violence and factors influencing female victims' decision making about the violent relationships, are also explored and described. Two circular theoretical frameworks, namely the structural approach of Salvador Minuchin and the multigenerational approach of Murray Bowen, are utilised for an analysis of family systems disfunctioning where violence against women in cohabiting and marital relationships occur. Due to the structural approach's emphasis on the disfunctioning of the family system where symptomatic behaviour occurs and its focus on the function of the symptomatic behaviour for the maintenance of a rigid, non-progressive family systems equilibrium, a meaningful structural exploration of violence prone family systems is made possible. The application of concepts from Bowen's theory on violence prone family systems, is especially useful for the exploration of the involved persons' emotional reactivity, triangulation both inside and outside of the family system and for the multigenerational recurrence of violent behaviour through various generations. During the analysis of social structural aspects that allegedly contribute to the establishment and maintenance of violence against women in cohabiting and marital relationships, the focus is on the influence of economic realities (illiteracy, unemployment and poverty) in the unique South African context. An analysis of service rendering initiatives, structures and professions involved in the prevention and treatment of the phenomenon and how female victims of violence experience these services and structures, is also done. Sexism, sex role stereotyping, norms regarding marriage and the family, the general acceptance of violence and myths related to violence against women in cohabiting and marital relationships, are contributing and maintaining factors focused on during an analysis of the sociocultural level of the ecological system. These factors possibly contribute to a elirnate/socio culture in which females are regarded as inferior to and as the property of men and where men are allowed to rule them, while the general acceptance of violence, gives rise to community desensitisation regarding the phenomenon. Due to the comprehensive nature of the ecological perspective, it not only serves as a directionindicator to the social work profession, but also to other professions and service rendering structures for continued research and for the pro- and reactive development and implementation of preventative and treatment programmes regarding the phenomenon.