An Explorative Integration of Factors Causing Men's Violence against Women

Despite the great progress in individual disciplines studying men’s physical violence against women, the various disciplines have developed much different approaches that by themselves are insufficient for understanding the processes that lead to men’s violence against women. Moreover, they also tend to neglect the equally important issue of understanding why some men are not violent toward women. The aim of this work is to integrate former research on socially modifiable factors and therefore does not include theories relating genetics and neurochemistry that may also play an important role. It shows how the psychological approach within criminology can be integrated with the feminist masculinity perspective. The work illustrates that it is both theoretically and methodologically possible, through an integration of previous research, to make hypotheses about under which conditions men are likely to be violent against women, as well as make hypotheses about under what conditions men are unlikely to be violent against women. This study also emphasizes methodologically important non-dichotomous forms where both enabling and reactive conditions are mixed at various levels. Despite the methodological problems, an integrated perspective on men’s violence against women is the most promising way forward today