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Jointly organised by Asia Research Institute and FASS Family, Children and Youth Cluster, National University of Singapore ABSTRACT Husband-to-wife violence is a common form of gender-based violence and is much more prevalent than many other forms of interpersonal violence in most societies. Feminist theorists asserts that the patriarchal ideology and structure in society are the root causes of wife abuse. In particular, men’s traditional gender attitudes are previously hypothesized as a risk factor of wife abuse. Nevertheless, the findings of previous research are inconclusive. This paper argues that past empirical studies often overly simplified the way how husband’s gender attitudes are related to the risk of violence. This paper argues that the combination of husband’s and wife’s gender attitudes (i.e. the interaction effect of these variables) jointly affects the risk of violence. Using data from a household survey in Hong Kong (N=871 couples, 1742 respondents), this paper shows that the effect of husband’s gender attitudes on husband-to-wife violence (psychological, physical and sexual assault against wife) is conditional to wife’s gender attitudes. The interaction of couples’ gender attitudes plays an important role in shaping the risk of husband-to-wife physical assault. Non-traditional wives with traditional husbands face the highest risk of husband-to-wife violence, controlling for other factors. This finding is consistent to the motivational theories of spousal violence that conceptualized violence as a mean to control partner and to resolve conflict. This study also provides hints to partly explain the inconclusive findings of previous studies, which ignored the interaction between husband’s and wife’s gender role attitudes. ABOUT THE SPEAKER REGISTRATION |