Gender asymmetry and symmetry in Brazilian intimate partner violence research

Abstract

This study aims to analyze intimate partner violence from the gender symmetry and asymmetry concepts. Seventy-nine papers were selected for analysis, and most were published in the 2006-2014 period (78.5%). The fields of journals that addressed the subject were psychology (32.9%) followed by public health (27.9%) and nursing (27.6%). Of the researchers, 46.8% work with the feminist theoretical line discourse, whose gender approach is asymmetrical. They mostly produce qualitative research with a sample consisting of women only (81.1%), and 78.3% collected data from violence victims’ support services. When looking at the characteristics of the studies conducted by researchers from the theoretical line of family sociologists who advocate gender symmetry (25.3%), qualitative and quantitative approaches were used in similar proportions. Bidirectional violence was identified in 80% of this research. We noted a strong leadership of the feminist theoretical line, which was identified in the discourses of the researchers. We stress the relevance of the discussion of the data with different theoretical frameworks, since analysis in isolation, regardless of the field, runs the risk of being biased and thus weaken the results.