‘When you talk to someone in a bad way or always put her under pressure, it is actually worse than beating her’: Conceptions and experiences of emotional intimate partner violence in Rwanda and South Africa

Emotional intimate partner violence (IPV) is extremely common and has significant health and social consequences, yet typically receives much less attention in research and programming than physical and sexual IPV. This limits our understanding of how women experience and understand emotional IPV in different settings, which is required to inform effective prevention and response. This paper draws on qualitative data collected in mixed-methods impact evaluations of two IPV prevention programmes conducted as part of the What Works to Prevent Violence Against Women and Girls Global Programme. In doing so, we seek to develop a more nuanced understanding of the forms, causes and consequences of emotional IPV in heterosexual relationships in two distinct African settings. We draw on two rounds of in-depth interviews conducted with 15 women in South Africa and three rounds of interviews conducted with 57 women and men in Rwanda, all of whom were participants in the programmes, around their experiences of and conceptualizations of emotional IPV. Thematic analysis around emotional IPV was conducted and compared across both data sets, informed by a cross comparative analysis approach. The analysis found that the categories or types of acts perceived as emotional IPV by women experienced were similar across settings. Women in both contexts described public humiliation, control of mobility, access to housing and silencing as important categories of actions experienced emotional IPV. These types of emotional IPV were underpinned by similar patterns of gender inequalities, with the intention for men to assert control and power over women. The specific acts through which these categories of emotional IPV manifested in the two settings arose from contextual differences related to the social structure of relationships and dominant social norms. This analysis highlights commonalities in the underlying categorial understanding of IPV in two distinct African settings, and well as the differences in specific manifestations which stem from the social context of relationships. In doing so, we highlight both broad categorical areas of IPV that may be important to address in future research and prevention programming, as well as affirming the need for information on context-specific manifestations of emotional IPV to inform local intervention programmes.