Male Sexual Proprietariness and Violence Against Wives

There is a cross-culturally ubiq- I uitous connection between men's sexual possessiveness and men's violence.1 We have studied ac counts of uxoricides (wife killings) from a broad range of societies, and find that male sexual propri etariness?broadly construed to encompass resentment both of in fidelity and of women's efforts to leave marriages?is everywhere implicated as the dominant precip and family. In a 1993 national sur vey, Statistics Canada interviewed more than 8,000 women currently residing with male partners. In addition to answering questions about their experiences of vio lence, the women indicated whether five statements about au tonomy-limiting aspects of some men's behavior applied to their husbands. Autonomy-limiting be havior was especially likely to be attributed to those husbands who were also reported to have be haved violently, and women who had experienced relatively serious or frequent assaults were much more likely to affirm each of the five statements than were women who had experienced only lesser violence (Table l).4 These and other data suggest that unusually controlling husbands are also un usually violent husbands. Rather than being one of a set of alterna tive controlling tactics used by pro prietary men, wife assault appears to go hand in hand with other tac tics of control.