Towards an integrated approach to violence against women: persistence, specificity and complexity

ABSTRACT This essay deals with the topic of violence against women in a cross-national, transdisciplinary perspective. Through the investigation of a vast empirical, theoretical literature and critical thinking on the directions taken by research, the distinctive features and the complexity of violence against women are pointed out. Variable in terms of impact and form, violence against women is a feature not only present in widely-differing geo-cultural realities but also persistent and showing a polymorphic, transverse character related to male dominance which enables it (until now) to survive many social and legislative changes. As well as identifying the particular features and changing forms of this type of violence, quite unlike any other, the essay stresses the adaptive, endemic and persistent character of this phenomenon and highlights above all its intimate and political matrix.