Domestic Violence against Women: A Comparative Study of Levirat and Sororat from the Perspective of Law and Culture

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law and Political Science, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

2 M.A in Iranology and Culture, Guilan University, Guilan, Iran

Abstract

Violence is not just a legal concept, it is also a social and psychological concept that sometimes needs to be analyzed in a multi-disciplinary approach for a deeper understanding. Various social, political, and economic factors are responsible for the violence, but in some cases the violence is purely cultural. Violence against women has several types that most notably is domestic violence. Previous studies have shown that violence against women is not only influenced by individual (biological and psychological) factors, but sometimes by the cultural context. In fact, culture, which by its nature should facilitate the problems of (women) life, sometimes becomes a cause of harm or problems. For example, some behaviors that are considered violent according to legal and criminological criteria, are normal in the cultural context, and women and local society members have also accepted them as a norm. In this article, domestic violence against women was analyzed based on the factor of culture. The main question is “Does the normalization of violent behavior in a particular culture, remove the legal and criminological character of violence?” To answer this question, in a qualitative study with a case study method, the marriage patterns of the Levirat and Sororat in Guilan were analyzed. The findings showed that this pattern of marriage, which has cultural support and is commonplace by the family and members of the local community, imposes multiple harm to women. Therefore, from a legal point of view, such a cultural tradition can be an example of violence, except in cases where the parties are factual free to marry. According to the experiences of the samples, those patterns of marriage legally and criminologically are considered as a violence. Violence is not a subjective matter. Violence is violence, even if it be considered normal in the cultural context of a community. It seems when violence is created and supported in the context of culture, the most effective solution to it is to change cultural patterns that no longer have the necessary function in society.

Keywords

Main Subjects

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Comparative Law Review
Volume 10, Issue 2
Autumn & Winter
October 2019
Pages 569-596

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