Interrogating police work spillover and intimate partner violence: experiences of female civilian survivors in Uganda

ABSTRACT

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a symptom of gender inequality. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 5), announced the call to achieve gender equality, and to have more vigorous efforts, including legal frameworks to counter deeply rooted gender-based discrimination that have caused increased cases of violence by intimate partners. The police force in Uganda is a government organ, mandated with keeping law and order. However, cases of intimate partner violence are witnessed among police families.

A qualitative study was conducted to examine the influence of police work on intimate partner violence (IPV) against female spouses. We employed An Integrated Ecological Framework to interrogate police work spillover and its influence on IPV. Findings confirm that civilian female spouses of police officers experienced IPV resulting from the nature of husbands’ work. Abrupt transfers and work overload while on deployments separated couples for long and resulted into serious but often ignored cracks in family relationships. It is this that triggered IPV. We recommend more staff recruitment to reduce officers’ work overload, review of the police standing orders, construction of more institutional houses, training officers on IPV prevention and introduction of counselling services in police barracks to mitigate of IPV.

KEYWORDS:

• Police work-spillover
• intimate partner violence
• Uganda

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the Government of Sweden (SIDA) for the financial support to the PhD program at Makerere University, from which this article is written. We are indebted to Police administration, participants in this study and the research assistants.

Declaration

We declare that there was no conflict of interest while carrying out this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the Government of Sweden (SIDA) through the Makerere-Sida Bilateral Research program.

Notes on contributors

Stedia Asiimwe

Stedia Asiimwe is a Lecturer at Kyambogo University, in the Department of Sociology and Social Administration, Kampala, Uganda. Her research interests include Gender, Women and Justice and Gender based violence.

Ruth Nsibirano

Ruth Nsibirano is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Women and Gender studies, Makerere University in Uganda. Her research interests include Gender and ICT, Gerontology and mainstreaming gender in science.

Victoria Flavia Namuggala (PhD) is a Lecturer at The School of Women and Gender studies, Makerere University. She is a member of Makerere University School of Social Science Research Ethics Committee. Her research interests are , Gender, Violence, conflict, Youths and indigenous research.

Victoria Flavia Namuggala

Victoria Flavia Namuggala (PhD) is a Lecturer at The School of Women and Gender studies, Makerere University. She is a member of Makerere University School of Social Science Research Ethics Committee. Her research interests are , Gender, Violence, conflict, Youths and indigenous research.