Associations between Feminine Gender Norms and Cyber Dating Abuse in Female Adults

Abstract

Gender norms and the co-occurrence of perpetration and victimization behaviors have been examined as key factors of female dating violence in offline contexts. However, these relationships have not been analyzed in digital environments. This is why the present study had a twofold objective: (1) exploring the co-occurrence nature of cyber dating abuse by examining to what extent victimization and perpetration overlap; (2) examining the associations between conformity to feminine gender norms and cyber dating abuse among female adults who are perpetrators or victims. The sample study included 1041 female university students (mean age = 20.51) from central Spain. The results indicated that 35.8% of the sample reported being a victim and a perpetrator of cyber dating abuse at the same time. Indeed, the hierarchical regression analyses revealed a close association between perpetration and victimization behaviors in both the direct and control forms of abuse examined. Our analyses did not reveal any significant associations between conformity to female gender norms and perpetration or victimization for any cyber dating abuse form examined. Our results are discussed in the light of previous research and after considering limitations, practical implications and future research directions.

Keywords

• Cyber dating abuse
• femininity
• gender roles
• adults