Abstract:
In order to fully encapsulate the experiences of victims, we would recommend future
scholars to study IPV to interview victims themselves, instead of relying on key informants and
representatives of organizations, if their circumstances permit. While we learned so much from
those that provide direct services to the victims themselves, we are aware that, as the primary
stakeholders, victim-survivors have deep insights that will help examine the occurrence of abuse
and how it interplays with economic dependence and other social forces. Putting their
perspectives at the heart of such studies will be the most effective way to confront the problem of
VAW.
Since children are a significant factor in the decision-making process of victim-survivors,
and are inevitably collateral and sometimes even direct victims of IPV, scholars could also look
into the lived experiences of children in abusive households. As minors who are fully dependent
on their parents, they are burdened with another layer of vulnerability that deepens the trauma
and mental repercussions from the abuse. It helps to probe into their dynamics with their mothers
who are IPV victims and how these play into their coping mechanisms to survive.
We also recommend the evaluation of RA 9262–its implementation and the intricacies
victims go through when relying on the said law. As this is an introductory paper on economic
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dependence as a driver of IPV, we recommend a more detailed, more narrow analysis of the
mutually reinstating character of women’s economic insecurity.
Lastly, harking back to the words of Ms. Perez, it would substantiate the efforts of
families, networks, and communities to save a victim. More than policies, law enforcers, and
public servants, it takes a collective to protect sectors that are most vulnerable to violence, and
that is why we recommend future researchers to examine how the people themselves take the
matter of VAW into their own hands. Organized efforts of the masses against women-targeted
abuse and the effectiveness of such would provide a lens as to the agency and power of people in
mobilizing moments against oppressive structures that reinforce VAW.
