TY - JOUR PY - 2020// TI - Understanding formal responses to intimate partner violence and women's resistance processes: a scoping review JO - Trauma, violence, and abuse A1 - Osborn, Meg A1 - Rajah, Valli SP - ePub EP - ePub VL - ePub IS - ePub N2 - Intimate partner violence (IPV) literature addresses the ways in which women oppose violent male partners through acts of "everyday resistance." There is a limited understanding, however, of the relationship between women's resistance and their formal help-seeking in the context of IPV. Our scoping review, which includes 74 articles published in English-language journals between 1994 and 2017, attempts to help fill this gap by developing systematic knowledge regarding the following research questions: (1) How are formal institutional responses discussed within the literature on resistance to IPV? (2) How does institutional help-seeking facilitate or obstruct IPV survivors' personal efforts to resist violence? We find that institutions and organizations succeed in facilitating resistance processes when they counter victim-blaming ideas and provide IPV survivors with shared community and a sense of control over their futures. However, they fall short in terms of helping survivors by expecting survivors to adhere to a rigid narrative about appropriate responses to violence, devoting insufficient attention to individual-level factors impacting survivors' vulnerability and ability to access help, and replicating abuse dynamics when interacting with survivors. Policy and practice implications are discussed.

Language: en

LA - en SN - 1524-8380 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1524838020967348 ID - ref1 ER -