When Age Matters: Victimization Trajectories of Intimate Partner Violence against Women

Lorenzo Belli, Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Jorge Rodríguez Menés, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Previous literature shows that the risks of intimate partner violence (IPV) and the factors explaining them differ across various types of women over the life course. However, few studies have empirically identified such clusters of women. The objectives of this paper are to identify and describe groups of women based on their lifetime trajectories of IPV victimization, and to estimate the socio-demographic characteristics of both survivors and aggressors. We apply group-based trajectory modeling to a unique longitudinal dataset comprising a full cohort of male aggressors convicted of at least one IPV crime between 2010-2015 (about 7,000) in Catalonia (Spain) and women survivors of such crimes if they were granted a protection order at any point in their lives (about 4,000). The data covers the entire criminal and victimological path of aggressors and survivors respectively, from their earliest experiences until March 31, 2019, along with some basic socio-demographic characteristics. The results identify four distinct trajectories of lifetime IPV victimization: a first and a second group victimized mostly at early ages, a third group more likely to have been victimized after forming cohabiting unions, and a fourth group characterized by a sustained pattern of victimization over the life course.

Keywords: Gender Dynamics, Longitudinal studies , Families, Unions and Households

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