IPV includes acts of beating, choking, threatening, and assaulting with a weapon among Black women in relationships: "According to the first National Family Violence Survey (NFVS) conducted in 1975, the rate of severe violence toward wives in Black families was 113 per 1,000. A decade later, the 1985 National Family Violence Resurvey (NFVR) revealed that 17% of Black wives reported at least one act of aggression during the survey year, and 7% suffered a severe act of aggression" (Lacey et al, 2016).
Black women have reported signs of abuse within their homes from their male partners: "the varying estimates in rates of IPV over time along with limited abuse research on Caribbean women provide a need for additional studies using large national Black samples that may provide more accurate estimates as well greater understanding of sociocultural factors that may be associated with IPV. The prevalence of IPV cannot be explained by a single factor. Rather, there have been several influences associated with IPV, including demographic, resource, and situational factors." (Lacey et al, 2016)
The majority of IPV cases involve younger couples. For the most part women between the ages of 18 and 24 years experience the highest rates of intimate violence, especially Black couples under the age of 30. Women who lived in impoverished areas experienced/ reported IPV more than women who lived in wealthy suburban areas. A woman’s socioeconomic status be taken into consideration for reporting intimate partner violence. Lower levels of education and occupational status threatens men's masculinity making them perpetrate IPV more. When it comes to IPV, it knows no glass ceiling or bias as Black men will target Caribbean women as well: “approximately half of the women in Barbados (50%), Jamaica (45.3%) and Trinidad and Tobago (45.2%) reported victimization by an intimate partner. In Haiti, 29% of women experienced some form of IPV in the past 12 months, with 13% having experienced at least two different forms (physical, emotional, sexual) In the first-ever IPV module within the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) conducted by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), it was found that 22.5% of women of African descent in the U.S. Virgin Islands have been victims of IPV” (Lacey et al, 2016)
Lacey, K., West, C., Matusko, N., & Jackson, J. (2016). Prevalence and Factors Associated With Severe Physical Intimate Partner Violence Among U.S. Black Women. Violence Against Women,22(6), 651-670. This page was created by Brandon Daley.