Exploring the coping mechanism of women experiencing intimate partner violence in Malaysia

 

Siti Waringin Oon1*, Rashidah Shuib1, Siti Hawa Ali2, Noraida Endut1, Intan Osman3, Sarimah Abdullah4 and Puzziawati Abdul Ghani5

1Centre for Research on Women and Gender (KANITA), Universiti Sains MALAYSIA.

Email: waringin@usm.my, rashidahshuib@usm.my, noraidaendut@usm.my

2School of Health Sciences, Universiti Sains MALAYSIA

Email: hawali@usm.my

3Faculty of Business and Information Sciences, UCSI University

Email: intanosman@yahoo.com

4School of Medical Sciences, Universiti Sains MALAYSIA

Email: sarimah@usm.my

5Faculty of Mathematical and Computer Sciences, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam

Email: puzzi_kamel@salam.uitm.edu.my

*Corresponding author

 

Abstract

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a long standing issue that affects women worldwide. In surviving the IPV, women often need to strategise to stay alive and to seek help to end the violence.  It is important to deeply explore their strategies for survival in this type of violent relationship. Such exploration remains uninvestigated especially in Malaysia. To fill in this gap, this study aims to examine the coping mechanism of women who have experienced IPV in Malaysia. A total number of 234 women experiencing IPV were recruited for this study and the respondents were chose from all States in the Peninsular Malaysia. The study involved a household survey using a random sampling of enumeration blocks to collect the data.  The data were collected using the instrument of the WHO multi-country study. Prior to being interviewed, each respondent was given an information sheet, explaining the study, their rights to participate and withdraw from the interview, as well as the assurance of confidentiality. Results of the study indicate that about 83% (194) of the survivors attempted to seek help from individuals outside of their marriages and from the authorities. The majority of respondents informed individuals about their problem, which indicate the important role of family members and friends in providing intervention in IPV.   About 16.5% of respondents reveal their issues to and seek help from the authorities and the majority of these were satisfied with the services they received from the authorities. In conclusion, this study suggests that intervention to IPV cases may be made more effective by understanding women’s help-seeking strategies and improving on these strategies.

 

Keywords: Coping mechanism, intimate partner violence, experience, survivors, Malaysia


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CITATION: Abstracts & Proceedings of SOCIOINT 2016- 3rd International Conference on Education, Social Sciences and Humanities, 23-25 May 2016- Istanbul, Turkey

ISBN: 978-605-64453-7-8