Forms of Resistance : A study of understandings regarding intimate partner violence among women in Ethiopia

Abstract: Of all the countries studied in the large-scale WHO Multi-country Study on Women´s Health and Domestic Violence against Women (2005), Ethiopian women had the highest numbers of acceptance of intimate partner violence. And according to previous research on the subject, Ethiopian women have a high tolerance for and acceptance of the violence they endure. Yet when I interviewed women in Ethiopia (all of whom had been victims of violence) I discovered multiple forms of resistance to - rather than acceptance of - violence. Rather than confirming how women come to accept violence, my study uncovers many ways in which women resist violence, even in contexts where the available means of resistance are extremely limited.The aim of my inductive study is to begin to do justice to these forms of resistance, which are easily overlooked. First, as I argue in the analyses of my interviews with the women, our ability to discern forms of resistance in situations of intimate partner violence requires a more capacious notion of resistance than the one usually employed. Second, as I argue through my engagement with the previous research and the analyses of my interviews with women’s organizations in Ethiopia, the inability to discern multiple and varied forms of resistance leads one to underestimate the degree of non-acceptance and active resistance in situations of intimate partner violence. Thus, while my limited study does not permit general conclusions about violence against women in Ethiopia, I conclude by suggesting that my findings have two important implications for social work, one theoretical and one practical.