Attitudes towards ‘honor’ violence and killings in collectivist cultures: Gender differences in Middle Eastern, North African, South Asian (MENASA) and Turkish populations

Abstract

This chapter reviews recent research on gender differences in attitudes towards ‘honor’ based violence and killings in collectivist cultures. A divergent pattern is emerging from these studies that do not align fully with the established attitudinal research into victim blame attributions for other forms of violence against women. While these more recent studies confirm that females are less approving of violence compared to their male counterparts, it is notable that a proportion of females endorsed the abuse and killing of women in the name of ‘honor’. The chapter concludes by discussing psychosocial explanations for these findings, including sexism and religiosity.