Violence against Women
How Can Cultural Peculiarities Influence Men's Behavior?
Since people have problems, it is necessary to find out the best ways of their solution. Obviously, the best way to tackle the problem is to influence its reasons instead of dealing with consequences. Hence conducting research and analysis of different events in life, gaining knowledge to make positive changes in a society is the main task of a social scientist. Social scientific thinking as his inherent skill is one of the most effective ways to understand the reasons and rules of numerous social events. As it is known, the more common situations are found, the easier it becomes to elicit the common factors and regularities, which are helpful by finding out the most efficient methods of influence on some behavioral, social and cognitive phenomena.
Considering the biggest problems of the modern society one should point out violence in its different manifestations. Among such, violence directed on the weaker sex and children is the most perplexing. Consequently, it is necessary to analyze the global problem of violence in families against women. It is important to find out which factors should be influences in ordered to reduce the violence rate and think of an effective strategy, which should be used to dispose this problem and make numerous nations more satisfied with the levels and means of their life. Taking into consideration numerous theories of scholars and quantitative statistics of violence in different countries of the globe, it is possible to suggest that not only the male psychological disorders or individual characteristics, evolutionary and historical aspects, women's behavior, economic factors, media influence, but also cultural peculiarities, which strongly impact the individuals' upbringing, behavior in the society and, therefore, attitude to others. Therefore, it is interesting to find out how cultural peculiarities can influence men's behavior, especially the behavior in relation to women.
In order to give answer to this question, a social scientist needs to address the following research method problems: skeptically observe the problem, review the literature on the previous researches, choose the research design, collect the data about violence against women from the statistics of many countries in the internet, analyze the issue of gender violence and the statistics data applying comparative-cultural method, and, finally, find out the answer on the above mentioned scientific question and draw a conclusion.
It is already widely known that women often become the victims of psychological and physical violence all over the world. Numerous theoretical and empirical researches have proven that there is a great amount of reasons predetermining such situation (Perry, 2008). Consequently, there exist different theories, which regard the problem of violence against women from various points of view. In order to find out the possible motives of male violent behavior in the following scientific research, it is important to answer such sub questions as: what scientists and theories deal with the following issue, what cultural peculiarities can influence human behavior and morality, what evidences the quantitative data provides regarding different cultures.
One of the psychological theories considers men's disorders to be the definitive motive to abuse the weaker sex stating that "normal" person would not make such deed. Furthermore, the experiments led by Dutton have proved that large quantities of alcohol or drugs of different kinds influence the individuals' self-control and push people to behave cruelly and use violence in 10% of cases (DeKeseredi, 2011). However, the rest of 90% cases of reported violence are committed by men, who can control themselves well. In such case, it is important to consider the psychological and social setting of the individual. According to the social learning theory, such behavior can be a result of parents' behavior interpretation or, in addition, can be influenced by numerous acts of violence presented in media or other displays of cruelty in social life (DeKeseredi, 2011). Moreover, feminist theories offered by Okun, Daly and others contribute to such idea and underline the role of patriarchy in assaulting women (DeKeseredi, 2011). The main concept of the feministic theory is that men abuse women to get control of them and to maintain their male power. Some other scholars refer to the social and economic position of individuals stating that those women, who live in power, are more vulnerable and exposed to violence. An evidence for this is the fact that the position from the poor and from the developed countries is different since the number of females, who have suffered from violent treatment in the developing countries is almost twice bigger.
It is important that many psychologists and social scientists, who have studied the issue of domestic violence and its reasons, have pointed out that there are many factors, which determine the well-being of women in the society. The behavior of men is one of such factors, which is probably the most important. In addition to the facts mentioned above, cultural peculiarities can determine some traits of man's character. Therefore, the education, literature, art, religion can influence the morality formation and, consequently, teach respect or neglect women and other individuals. One of the most influential of the above mentioned spheres is religion. Hence it is important to emphasize numerous differences in Muslim and Christian beliefs. Considering the main ideas of the Islamic countries, it is essential to emphasize that the role of women has been historically neglected; the female representatives have regularly been humiliated, had no economic, political or even moral rights and were controlled by men. Such position of women was and is predetermined by Muslim religious views. Consequently, the desire to be in head of the family and the belief that a man exceeds a woman is culturally predetermined. Furthermore, social learning theory should be also considered in this situation since each male representative observes the disrespectful women treatment since childhood and almost everwhere. At the same time, the Christian doctrine describes the important mission of some female representatives like God's Mother Maria, Maria Magdalene and many others. As a result, such teaching sensitizes people to treat women with love and respect.
Among the representatives of countries with different culture and morality, which is based on two different religions, the two Christian ones are USA and Canada, the two Islamic ones are Turkey and Lebenon. Taking into account the statistics of the World Health Organization in 2011, domestic violence is a tragedy for all countries in the world. In order to analyze numerous factors, which can influence it is essential to emphasize the numbers for several countries. In USA 25% of women, in Canada - 25%, in Turkey - more than 60% of women, in Lebanon - 75% have suffered from the domestic violence. In order to analyze the statistics more deeply, it is essential to highlight that the Western countries mentioned above are not only more developed, but have mostly the Christian religion view while Turks and Lebanese are Muslims. Since the percentage rate in the Islam countries is twice higher than in Christian ones, it is possible to make a conclusion that the religious views play a great role in formation of male attitude towards women.
As a result, relying on a quantitative data and the above mentioned subordinate questions it is possible to state that the cultural peculiarities, especially those, which are determined by the religious teachings of Bible and Coran need to be considered by studies of violence manifestations. Careful observation and generalization of the theoretical facts has brought to the answer not only to the question about the cultural peculiarities influence on the violent behavior, but helped to define the main ideas of the Muslim and Christian religions and possible theories regarding the origin of violence among various individuals. To sum it up, it is possible to state that social scientific research was helpful by giving a full and evidence-based answer on the questions. The methods that were chosen for the scientific research were the historical one, which contributed to analysis of the development of cultural views and the comparative one, which was used when regarding the peculiarities of two different cultures. Considering the scientific methods as understood in the natural or physical sciences, it is significant to highlight that, although providing the online experiment and interviewing the representatives from different countries was possible, the usage of statistical analysis was chosen as more effective, precise and acknowledging the difference in numbers. Comparing the social science perspective, which must rely on the scientific methods and rationally explain the questions, with the methods of physical or natural science would, it is important to mark out the exceptional importance of observation and conduction of experiment in both cases - researching the issues of social or natural sciences (Perry, 2008). To test the hypothesis it is important to use the credible and verified data. Here one can find the biggest difference between the methods of natural and social sciences. It is essential that, although the scientific research based on scientific experiment is basic for both cases, the social experiments are not possible without human help, while the natural experiments can be controlled only by researchers.
The main aim of the sociological science is to learn the contradictions in human society and find opportunities to improve the conditions of human lives; therefore, the main problems such as violence in the society need special attention. As knowledge and analysis is regarded as the main mean to bring people to happy, satisfying and meaningful life, the scientific research described in the work is quite effective about confirming which spheres should be impacted in order to come to the final positive result and if not annihilate the violence against the weaker sex, at least decrease as it is possible. The experiment based on the statistical analysis with usage of historical and cultural comparative methods has tested and proved the hypotheses that the cultural peculiarities, namely the religious ones, are influencing male behavior greatly and, therefore, it is essential to put forces of scientist and government to find out the means to decrease the global violence rate including the aggressiveness of the Islamic religion towards female representatives, since the aim of social science is not only stating the rules and finding out the regularities, but use them for the benefit of all society members.
