Violence Is Violence ... or Is It? The Social Construction of "Wife Abuse" and Public Policy (From Images of Issues: Typifying Contemporary Social Problems, P 191-206, 1989, Joel Best, ed. -- See NCJ-124897)

• NCJ Number: 124902
• Author(s): D R Loseke
• Date Published: 1989
• Length: 16 pages
• Sale Source: Aldine de Gruyter Publishing Co
• Publication Type: Legislation/Policy Analysis
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This paper examines claims about "wife abuse" that have appeared in popular magazine articles and uses the example of police policy toward "wife abuse" to illustrate how images of social problems help shape public policy toward those problems.

Abstract

As constructed by the magazine articles reviewed, "wife abuse" is a label for extreme physical and emotional violence perpetrated by "macho" husbands against their wives. Such abuse is portrayed as a repeated victimization of innocent and helpless women by abusers who have little in common except that they are men who accept conventional "macho" values. The abused wives are portrayed by the articles as being desperate for the police to arrest their abusing husbands, but the police typically refuse to intervene in marital conflicts. Such a portrayal of insensitive police policy has led to an increase in an arrest response to wife abuse. In generalizing from this study of the media's portrayal of wife abuse, the analysis concludes that public policies are designed as solutions for the images of social problems, but these images do not reflect the complexity of social life. In the case of police response toward wife abuse, the women conforming to the images of abused wives have clearly benefited from an arrest policy; however, the abused women who do not conform to the image -- i.e., those not "severely" assaulted, those who have themselves acted abusively against their husbands, and those who do not want their abusers arrested -- are not considered in the policy response to wife abuse. 4 notes, 25 references.