Redefining love: Female university students developing resilience to intimate partner violence

abstract

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a serious global issue that mainly affects women. Power and control are among the driving forces behind IPV, and are endorsed within conservative gender regimes that constitute the social ecologies within which women live and love. Socially constructed ideals of love contribute to women’s commitment to forming and remaining in relationships, even if they are abusive. This article draws on data from a study carried out at a selected South African university campus. It highlights evidence of resilience amongst female students through their questioning and redefinition of love in the context of IPV. In this qualitative study, 15 female students were purposefully selected because they live at the campus residences. The main methods of generating data were focus group discussions and individual semi-structured interviews. The findings suggest that young women are alert to love being a gendered discourse that contributes to the prevalence of, and the maintenance of IPV. Specifically, in this study, some of the young women demonstrated resilience by rejecting commonly held disempowering notions of romantic love that many women are invested in, and instead redefined their meanings of love in a less self-sacrificing way.

keywords:

• love
• female university students
• intimate partner violence
• resilience

Acknowledgments

This work is based on research supported by the National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africa.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shakila Singh

SHAKILA SINGH is an Associate Professor in Gender Education at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Her teaching, postgraduate supervision and research are in the broad areas of: gender and sexuality; gender, sexuality and HIV and gender and sexual violence in higher education and schools. Email: [email protected]

Thembeka Myende

THEMBEKA MYENDE is an Educator at Buhlebemfundo Secondary School in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. She is currently a Masters student studying Gender Education. She has taught Sociology at the University of Free State, Qwa Qwa campus and Education Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Email: [email protected]