Women and Male Partner-dating Violence in Nigeria

In this article we address experiences, understandings of and responses to dating violence among a small sample of abused Nigerian female university students. Dating violence broadly manifested in forms such as physical hurt, sexual harassment and emotional abuse in public and private spares appears to be a mate strategy for sustaining women's place within certain culturally defined boundaries. Women's views regarding their abuse reinforce the cultural belief that men are naturally violent and that women are sometimes to lie blamed. Women's understandings of their abuse and responses to it refract the patriarchal ideologies that organise gender relations in Nigeria. Social and cultural institutions need to be repositioned to meet the challenges posed by the abuse of women by their intimate male partners.