Data driven review of commonalities and differences in gender and self-reported victimisation in Ugandan urban sample and Western published literature

Abstract

Although there are many theories on domestic violence and battering applicable in Europe and the USA these are often regarded as carrying little currency in the African context (Robinson & Rowlands, 2006). Many African scholars writing on domestic violence emphasize battering and domestic violence as falling under the rubric of ‘culture’ rather than offering psychological explanations. This is because most theories on domestic violence have been derived from research conducted in western countries and by professionals working with male batterers, however, such programmes are rare or absent in Africa. This is confirmed by Dutton, 1998, National Policy on Elimination of GBV in Uganda, 2019 who indicated that psychological research, for example on the notion of the ‘abusive personality’, has not been conducted in Africa and that psychology-based explanations are generally overlooked in favour of cultural explanations. The review revealed that although there are some commonalities about the domestic violence globally. However, the differences were noted mainly in over emphasis of cultural rather than psychological causes by African scholars. Thus, this review recommends that African scholars and policy makers need also to adopt an approach that views domestic violence using a psychological lens, if they must continue to use psychological interventions developed using western empirical studies to help victims and perpetrators of domestic violence in the African setting.