Violence perpetrated by men against women within an intimate partner relationship remains one of the more challenging social problems that transcends cultural, socio-economic and geographical boundaries and affects women from all social strata and spatial and cultural environments. A more detailed analysis of women's experiences in Slovenia testifies to the still unaddressed depths of the problem in our country, where I am referring primarily to the process of leaving a violent intimate partner relationship in connection with aspects of women's empowerment, which is discussed in this master's thesis. In the theoretical part of my master's thesis, I rely on a feminist understanding of intimate partner violence as a consequence of deeper social mechanisms, such as patriarchal power relations between the sexes, which enable and reproduce violence against women. The focus is on the period of leaving an abusive relationship, where the reasons for persisting in the relationship and the challenges that women experience in the process of leaving the relationship are discussed, and the phenomenon of returning to the relationship is also explained. The master's thesis is based on the theoretical starting points of trauma, showing the understanding of violence in intimate partner relationships as a traumatic phenomenon with the possibility of post-traumatic growth.
In the empirical part of the master's thesis, I use a qualitative research approach, namely, it includes a content analysis of 23 stories of women with intimate partner violence, which were collected and published in November 2023 in a book by Društvo SOS telefon za ženske in otroke – žrtve nasilja, entitled V njeni koži: sistem skozi oči žrtev intimnopartnerskega nasilja, which represents my source of data. The purpose of the empirical work was to show the process of leaving an abusive relationship through the perspective of survivors. The results showed that leaving a violent intimate partner relationship is an individual process that does not have a uniform or predictable course for all survivors. The research showed the existence of enabling and inhibiting factors and a special category of ambivalent factors. The research also showed that finding and using different sources of help, which contributed to emotional empowerment and encouraged women to take their own activities in the direction of gaining the control over their own lives that they previously had, was key to the empowerment of women when leaving a violent intimate partner relationship partner. The importance of non-governmental organizations and psychotherapy, redirecting to one's own emotional needs and gaining insight proved to be key elements of empowerment. The master's thesis enables a better understanding of leaving violent intimate partner relationships and, as a result, the development of more effective methods of support and the provision of greater safety to women who face this problem.
|
