A Patriarchal Perspective of Beliefs About Wife Beating Among Palestinian Men From the West Bank and the Gaza Strip

Abstract

Based on a patriarchal perspective, the article presents a pioneer study of Palestinian husbands' beliefs in the following areas: justifying wife beating, holding violent husbands responsible for their behavior, and blaming the battered wives for violence against them. The results revealed the following trends: (a) High percentages of respondents tend to justify wife beating under different circumstances (e.g., the wife's “sexual unfaithfulness”); (b) although the majority of respondents held violent husbands responsible for their behavior, there was a concomitant tendency to understand the husband; and (c) a high percentage of respondents blamed the wife for violence against her. Patriarchal ideology provided a conceptual framework for presentation and discussion of the findings obtained through regression and multiple regression analyses. The implications of the results for future research as well as for prevention and intervention activities are also discussed.