Peace, Violence, and Gender
“I have often thought that if great numbers of the women of all nations were to unite and lift their voices in the cause of peace, there would develop a worldwide will for peace which could save civilization and avoid untold suffering, misery, plague, starvation, and the death of millions.”
~ Gordon B. Hinkley
“Peace and war start within one’s own home. If we really want peace for the world, let us start by loving one another within our families. Sometimes it is hard for us to smile at one another. It is often difficult for the husband to smile at his wife or for the wife to smile at her husband.”
~ Mother Teresa
The Institute’s research on peace, violence, and gender addresses ways interpersonal and structural violence against women can be decreased, and the skills and conditions put in place to establish personal peace as well as peace in the home and community. Initially, the focus of this area of research sought to reduce violence against women in the home, but has grown to include:
- Analysis of multiple aspects of women’s experiences with violence and peace;
- The structure and measurement of different types of violence and types of peace;
- Ways to break the intergenerational cycle of violence against women in the home.
Some of these studies examine the impact of witnessing interparental violence on children’s propensity to be instigators of violence in their own relationships later on in their lives. Other studies seek to identify why some and not other children are at risk of becoming violent, and the development of interventions that will reduce the probability that they will do so. These interventions are also being studied for effectiveness in reducing violence and increasing prosocial behavior in children and families in other settings within communities worldwide.
Selected Research Projects
Women’s Experience with Peace and Violence. Because both inner peace and social harmony unfold in the details of daily life, these studies examine the experiences of women around the world as expressed in their poetry. A collection of beautifully articulated poems has been published opening rich new understandings of women’s experiences with the devastation of violence and their resilient visions of peaceful relationships (Arnold, Ballif-Spanvill, & Tracey, 2002). The views of these women compliment existing male perspectives, expand constructs defining peace and violence, and provide a critical base for operationalizing the Institute’s research in this area. This book was nominated for the PCA/ACA Women’s Caucus Awards for Excellence in Feminist Work in Popular Culture and American Culture in 2003.
A Structural Model of Peaceful and Violent Behavior. This unique model includes both female and male perspectives of peaceful and violent behaviors and the complicated relationship between them. It also organizes peaceful and violent behavior into twelve levels with their accompanying determinants: values, emotions, and intentions. Based on this three-dimensional model, a variety of techniques to assess and code peaceful and violent behavior have been developed in order to investigate the origins of these behaviors, their modifiability, and their sex- and gender-specific characteristics.
Peaceful and Violent Interactions Between Female and Male 3-Year-Olds. In several innovative gender-blind studies, the effects of gender on initiating and responding to peaceful and aggressive behavior are being studied in same-sex and different sex dyads. These behaviors are also being studied between strangers and friends in terms of type and severity of conflict, resolution strategies, and active peacebuilding. Cultural differences in gender-related peaceable and violent behavior between African and American children are also under investigation.
Impact of Witnessing Spouse Abuse on Children’s Use of Violent and/or Peaceful Behavior. Because witnessing violent conflicts between parents increases a child’s likelihood of using violence in relationships with others as children and when adults, these studies are clarifying the complex factors that influence a child witness to use violence or peace in five different types of conflicts commonly found between children ages 6 to 11. By identifying the specific cognitive patterns and/or emotional associations that become distorted by witnessing violence, precise treatments can be designed to remedy the detrimental impact of such exposures.
Stopping the Intergenerational Cycle of Violence. Additional projects are studying ways to break the cycle of abuse by first identifying potentially violent children and then helping them become more peaceful through experiences with stories, music, and activities. A program entitled PEACEABILITIES has been developed, which is focused on teaching higher-order social skills involving values, emotions, and intentions that are necessary if children are to be able to develop peaceable relationships.
Basis of Violence Against Women. These analyses of empirical findings integrated with findings from the studies described above are resulting in the construction of a theoretical model incorporating male group behavior and female family affiliations to explain why violence against women is so high in many societies.
Strategies Effective in Educating for Peace. This research investigates various efforts to increase peace by documenting ideologies and strategies used to effectively establish peace in cultures throughout the world. Analyses of such projects have resulted in identifying three types of programs: violence prevention which utilizes external punishing and rewarding means to control behavior; conflict resolution which uses learned scripts of what to do and say to keep conflict from escalating into violence, and creating peace which teaches children to be forgiving and caring individuals. Of particular interest are ancient and contemporary technologies that have been and are being used to increase peaceful behavior in different societies.
The programmatic research in this area has extended the professional literature in this field in several ways:
- By expanding the definitions of peace and violence to include women’s perspectives along with traditional men’s perspectives;
- By conceptualizing new models that include peaceful behavior along with violent behavior and the interaction between the two;
- By creating innovative ways to assess and examine these behaviors;
- By designing methods that provide significantly improved data for analysis, for example, by removing the gender stimulus prior to coding behavior as either peaceful or violent, allows for interpretations free from biases resulting from gender stereotypes; and
- By connecting critical Institute studies with key bodies of existing research, a model explaining violence against women has emerged.