Violence against women is a global concern, so much so that in 1993 the United Nations issued a Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women in which they defined violence against women as “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts…” (UN: 1993). A common form of violence against women is the violence, or threat thereof, perpetrated against a woman by her domestic partner – known alternatively as violence against women, domestic violence, intimate partner violence, spousal violence, or family violence (see Rossiter, 2011 for a more in depth discussion of these definitions).
