ABSTRACT
The key situational factors associated with objective marital dependency are economic in nature. Systems of sex stratification typically foster women's economic and psychological dependency on marriage. The literature on wife abuse has documented the pervasive economic, legal, social, and psychological obstacles that women face in attempting to terminate abusive relationships. The relationship between subjective dependency and minor violence is essentially the same among women high and those low in objective dependency. Women's subjective dependency on marriage refers to how tied to the marital relationship a woman perceives herself to be. Wives' objective marital dependency is reinforced by factors that limit women's participation in the labor force. Eleven percent of the women interviewed reported experiencing at least some minor violence, and 4% reported severe violence. Subjective dependency has a stronger relationship to minor violence than does objective dependency. Within categories of subjective dependency, the rates of minor violence are similar whether a woman is high or low in objective marital dependency.
