Agency/Autonomy of Battered Women

Learned Helplessness

In the early 1970s, Lenore Walker applied the theory of learned helplessness to battered women. This theory posited that when battered women perceive that none of their actions lead to changes in the bat-terer's behavior, they see their own actions as futile. She asserted that a battered woman became “psychologically paralyzed” as a result of learned helplessness, causing her to feel that she had no control over the experience, while taking the blame for its occurrence. Under Walker's theory, battered women were characterized as wholly compromised, weak, and passive. Thus, according to her research, battered women needed treatment and counseling, as opposed to community resources and institutional support.

Walker's theory was challenged by many researchers and activists. It was criticized for representing a single model of battered women's experience, which had an appearance of psychopathology. The learned helplessness account of battered women (and the “battered woman syndrome” that it created) failed to account for the deliberate, active help-seeking behaviors that women employed to resist, avoid, or escape the violence in their lives and the lives of their children.

Survivor Theory

In contrast, the survivor theory posits that battered women are active strategists, rather than passive, helpless victims. In their Texas shelter study, Edward Gondolf and Ellen Fisher explained that battered women seek assistance in proportion to the realization that they and their children are in more and more danger. Gondolf and Fisher found that the help-seeking behavior of battered women is diverse and extensive. They also found that battered women are more inclined to leave their abusive partners if they are provided with the material resources to do so. By observing various dimensions beyond the violence, including economic resources, children, and the batterer's other behavior, the empirical model demonstrated that context is critical to understanding the variability of women's help-seeking behavior and advocacy needs.