Can people's patriarchal ideology predict their beliefs about wife abuse? The case of jordanian men

A self-administered questionnaire was filled out by 349 Jordanian men to examine the correlation between their patriarchal ideology and their beliefs about wife abuse. The results revealed that high percentages of Jordanian men tended to justify wife abuse, to blame women for violence against them, and to believe that women benefit from beating. In addition, the Jordanian men expressed low levels of willingness to help battered women, and very small percentages of them tended to believe that husbands are responsible for their violent behavior and that violent husbands should be punished. The findings indicate that significant amounts of the variance in those six beliefs can be explained by the six predictors investigated in this study, which derive from patriarchal ideology, over and above the amount of variance in those beliefs about wife abuse that can be attributed to the men's sociodemographic characteristics. The implications of the results for future research and theory development are discussed.