Web resource:	http://www.vichealth.vic.gov.au/~/media/ProgramsandProjects/MentalHealthandWellBeing/DiscriminationandViolence/ViolenceAgainstWomen/CAS_Paper3_CriticalLiterature.ashx
Type:	Electronic publication
Title:	The factors influencing community attitudes in relation to violence against women : a critical review of the literature
Authors:	Flood, Michael Pease, Bob
Keywords:	Community attitudes
Year:	2006
Publisher:	VicHealth
Notes:	"Paper three of the Violence Against Women Community Attitudes Project"--Cover page. General overview: This paper reviews Australian and international research into attitudes towards violence against women. It identifies the factors associated with the development of attitudes that support violence against women. Objective: The review is intended to contribute to the task of changing pro-violence attitudes, by identifying potential interventions. Discussion: The authors argue that attitudes are not stable and do not reliably predict behaviour. Rather, attitudes are socially constructed and based on shared knowledge, and by perceptions of dominant norms. Attitudes are significant because they affect the community and institutional response to violence against women, the perpetration of violence against women and women’s responses to violence. Attitudes are affected by gender (men define violence more narrowly, rate specific acts as less serious than women do, and are more likely to agree with rape supportive statements). People who subscribe to traditional gender role attitudes (for example, believing that men should be the head of the household) are more likely to hold pro-violence attitudes and to perpetrate violence. In Australia, attitudes to gender roles have liberalised since the 1970’s and are more egalitarian amongst the university-educated and those born in western countries. However, to understand the formation of violence supportive attitudes the authors suggest that specific social contexts and local cultural attitudes should be examined, rather than ethnic background or country of origin. Men who have witnessed violence against their mothers are more likely to develop attitudes condoning violence against women and to use violence against women. Young males (between 12 and 20 years old) hold more pro-violence attitudes than older males, while among women, those over 55 years have more negative attitudes than younger women. Certain institutions, such as American college fraternities, sporting teams and the military, are associated with violence-supportive attitudes. Some research has shown that religious affiliation does not affect attitudes to violence, while other research suggests that both Catholics and Protestants with more fundamentalist religious beliefs had more victim blaming responses to domestic violence. Exposure to pornography has been shown to strengthen violence supportive attitudes, as have violent and misogynist rap videos, violent electronic games, and advertisements that portray women as sexual objects. In America, media coverage of high profile incidents of violence against women (the O.J. Simpson trial, the Hill-Thomas sexual harassment hearings) increased community awareness. Community education campaigns have produced positive changes in attitudes to violence. The research regarding the impact of criminal justice policies on attitudes to violence is inconclusive. Violence against women is shaped not only by attitudes but by families, workplaces, neighbourhoods, social networks and peer groups. Other contributors include socioeconomic status and, in Australia’s Indigenous communities, colonisation and the destruction of family and community. Interventions to stop violence must do more than focus on attitudes, they must address the structural conditions that perpetuate violence. Key points for intervention include children who have witnessed violence against women, education of youth (especially young males), violence supportive organisations such as colleges, sporting clubs, workplaces and military institutions, among religious leadership, the mass media, and in Indigenous, low socioeconomic and rural communities.
URI:	https://anrows.intersearch.com.au/anrowsjspui/handle/1/21400
Physical description:	76 p.
Appears in Collections:	Online resource

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