Search for Articles:
Title / Keyword
Author / Affiliation / Email
Journal
Article Type
 
 
Advanced Search
 
Section
Special Issue
Volume
Issue
Number
Page
 
3.5
1.7
Journals
Social Sciences
Special Issues
Gender-Based Violence and the Lived Experiences of Survivors
share announcement

Gender-Based Violence and the Lived Experiences of Survivors

A special issue of Social Sciences (ISSN 2076-0760). This special issue belongs to the section "Gender Studies".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 September 2026 | Viewed by 1069

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Johanna Thomas

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Social Work, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR 72701, USA
Interests: early childhood truancy prevention and intervention; school social work; prevention and intervention with students with high need disabilities; specifically autism; gun violence prevention; political advocacy and policy implementation and evaluation
Dr. December R. Maxwell

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Anne and Henry Zarrow School of Social Work, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019, USA
Interests: becoming a mother; maternal mental health; impacts of birthing environment of maternal mental health; trauma-informed perinatal care and maternal mental health care; culturally informed perinatal care interventions and postpartum care; qualitative community engaged research
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Sarah Leat

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Social Work, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN 38152, USA
Interests: women experiencing intimate partner violence; victims of crime; survivors
Prof. Dr. Shaun Thomas

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Sociology and Criminology, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR 72701, USA
Interests: violence; public health; health disparitoes; inequality and crime; spatial temporal analyses; communities and crime; institutions of social control; juvenile justice; institutionally isolated youth; the nature of violence; social justice; deviant behavior; rural and urban studies

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue of Social Sciences invites original research articles, reviews, and conceptual papers that contribute to a deeper understanding of gender-based violence (GBV) through the perspectives and lived experiences of survivors. We welcome interdisciplinary submissions from the social sciences, public health, law, and related fields that examine GBV in its many forms, including intimate partner violence, sexual assault, harassment, trafficking, reproductive coercion, and structural or institutional violence.

Manuscripts may employ quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-method approaches, and are encouraged to engage critically with frameworks of intersectionality, power, and inequality. Studies that foreground survivor voices, agency, and resilience, as well as those that explore culturally grounded or community-driven responses to violence, are of particular interest.

This Special Issue seeks to advance theory, research, and practice by highlighting innovative methodologies, ethical considerations, and evidence-based interventions that promote healing, justice, and social change. In particular, we encourage contributions addressing underrepresented populations, global perspectives, and survivor-centered policy implications.

Dr. Johanna Thomas
Dr. December R. Maxwell
Dr. Sarah Leat
Prof. Dr. Shaun Thomas
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Social Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • gender-based violence
  • lived experience
  • survivors
  • intersectionality
  • trauma
  • resilience
  • qualitative research
  • social justice

Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue

  • Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
  • Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
  • Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
  • External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
  • Reprint: MDPI Books provides the opportunity to republish successful Special Issues in book format, both online and in print.

Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.

Published Papers (1 paper)

Order results
Result details
Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

24 pages, 1169 KB  
Article
A Distorted Process of Care Framework: Why Do South African Women Stay in Abusive Relationships?
by Nicolette V. Roman, Chanté Johannes and Shenaaz Wareley
Soc. Sci. 2026, 15(5), 313; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci15050313 - 12 May 2026
Viewed by 440
Abstract
Abusive relationships are too often explained solely in terms of individual behaviour, as if a woman’s decision to stay were simply a matter of psychology or poor judgement. In South African communities, however, the reality is considerably more complex. The reasons women remain [...] Read more.
Abusive relationships are too often explained solely in terms of individual behaviour, as if a woman’s decision to stay were simply a matter of psychology or poor judgement. In South African communities, however, the reality is considerably more complex. The reasons women remain are situated within what can be described as a distorted process of care: a network of relational, material, and structural forces that alter the very meaning of care itself. This study aimed to explore these interconnections. Guided by an ethics of care framework, we employed multimodal qualitative methods to engage participants from four South African communities between August 2024 and July 2025. Participants (n = 262) were recruited through snowball, purposive, and convenience sampling. Data were coded using ATLAS.ti V8 and analysed thematically. Five interconnected themes shaped the framework. Distorted care described how caregiving could become coercive, shaped by fear, rigid gender roles, intergenerational abuse, and substance misuse. Care under constraint highlighted the material limitations, financial dependency, daily survival challenges, and self-sacrificing caregiving, that left women depleted. The silence of care captured emotional withdrawal, isolation, and the disabling effect of shame on help-seeking. Reclaiming care traced the tentative routes towards healing through ethical self-care, faith, forgiveness, and a conscious effort to disrupt harmful patterns. Woven throughout was structural failure, including absent family networks, the moral decline of communities, and institutional systems that consistently failed women. Remaining in an abusive relationship is not a sign of weakness. It is a negotiation, profoundly constrained, within systems of care that have been fundamentally distorted. Effective intervention should move beyond framing gender-based violence as an individual problem and address it as a collective one, restoring care as a shared social and political responsibility. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Gender-Based Violence and the Lived Experiences of Survivors)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:
 
Displaying articles 1-1
Back to TopTop