Women's Use of Intimate Partner Aggression: Associations with Everyday Sexism

Abstract

Research has indicated that women engage in intimate partner aggression (IPA) at similar rates relative to men and that women's IPA negatively impacts their survivor partners. However, studies also document important differences among women's use of IPA compared to men, contributing to ongoing discourse regarding the relevance of gender to IPA. This investigation uses an intersectional feminist lens to evaluate why women's gender may be relevant to their use of IPA, specifically considering if women's experiences of oppression in the form of everyday sexism is associated with their IPA use. Prior studies have documented that experiences of heterosexism and racism are related to IPA use, raising questions about whether women's experiences of sexist discrimination are also associated with IPA. This investigation explores this novel research question among 626 women recruited online through Amazon Mechanical Turk. Study participants reported on everyday sexist experiences (i.e., sexist events, benevolent sexism, and partner-enacted sexism), emotional IPA, physical IPA, gender-based violence, recent stressful experiences, and psychological distress symptoms. Overall, the results supported the hypothesis that women's everyday sexism experiences are associated with their use of IPA. Women's experiences of sexist events, benevolent sexism, and partner-enacted sexism were all significantly and positively correlated with emotional and physical IPA use with small to medium effects. In addition, women's sexism experiences were related to IPA use both directly and indirectly through psychological distress and were associated with IPA even when controlling for recent stressful experiences and gender-based violence exposure. The findings support intersectional feminist theories of IPA by recognizing the importance of considering sociocultural context when working to conceptualize why identity factors such as gender may be relevant to IPA. They further demonstrate the need to develop gender-responsive IPA prevention and intervention efforts and the need to consider broader sociocultural changes that can reduce women's experiences of sexist discrimination.