NCJ Number
228985
Journal
Violence Against Women Volume: 15 Issue: 12 Dated: December 2009 Pages: 1444-1457
Date Published
December 2009
Length
14 pages
Annotation
This article examines the connection between gender and coercive control.
Abstract
The author argues that to understand the gender dynamics of coercive control, researchers must examine the interactions across levels of gender, and concludes with an assessment of the prospects and pitfalls of applying the concept of coercive control to renew the feminist social movement to end domestic violence. Evan Stark proposed in his book, Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life, that coercive control is a gendered social phenomenon. He theorizes gender as a form of structural inequality that allocates unequal resources and responsibilities to women and men, arguing that this unequal allocation makes women more vulnerable than men to the strategies of coercive control. Stark assumes that gendered structural inequality increases women's vulnerability. Applying the multilevel theory of gender as identity, interaction, and social structure, the author documents the multiple ways coercive control is gendered. References