Adult Partner Violence and Previous Violence Experiences: Retrospective Study with Women Victims of Gender-based Violence

Gender-based violence or violence against women which takes place in the context of intimate partner relationships, despite stimulating social rejection, still persists. A psychosocial glance could provide a theoretical model which explained the phenomenon that, being multicausal, seems to be strongly influenced by the vicarious learning which occurs in different social settings and contexts in which affective intimate relationships are present. This study tries to compare the violence experiences that women registered as gender-based violence victims have had throughout their lives in comparison to those women who have not been abused. In addition, the study attempts to analyse the risk probability that the previous violence experiences in the different contents add to the psychological and physical gender-based violence. The present work consists on a retrospective study with a group of 80 women (Average Age = 47.61 years; SD = 12.53), half of whom were proven to be gender-based violence victims. The results showed significant differences in the exposure to previous violence contexts (childhood and adolescence) among women who were victims of gender-based violence and women who were not, being these experiences a decisive variable in the current abuse. In fact, the experience which seems to be more impressive is the adolescent violence experience within the framework of youth dating. We discuss the results regarding an ecological and developmental-psychology theoretical approach.