"Elastic Band Strategy": Women's Lived Experience Of Dealing With Domestic Violence

The present study was conducted with the aim of qualitatively studying the contexts of domestic violence in the experience of women in Khuzestan province. Among the qualitative research methods, the interpretive phenomenology method has been used to investigate the experience of violence. 18 participants were selected through purposive sampling and criterion sampling strategy. A semi-structured interview was used to collect the data, and the Claizian method was used to analyze the data obtained from the phenomenological interviews. The main themes are "weak social support, power dynamics as a builder of romantic relationships, allocation of unaccounted credit to men, masculinity's zeal and honor, use of ineffective strategies, traditional femininity as a cultural-social structure, giving identity to male violence-causing behavior, feelings of desperation and helplessness, resilience and adaptive strategy, lack of strict laws, female poverty and power imbalance" which can be finally attributed to three "structural, intellectual and interactive" contexts. The results of this study show that violence occurs for two reasons: hermeneutic injustice and the lack of collective interpretation resources, and it is created under the influence of the structure and ideology that governs the society, the social ties of the person with the people around him, and the rewards and punishments that the person receives during his actions. Eventually this strong tension will lead to the elastic band strategy, which implies a long-term process of moving between actively resisting violence and giving in and staying in the position for a longer time, before possibly finally leaving the relationship.