By Alide Dasnoir
For some men, a dirty cup on your table or catching your wife in conversation with another man is reason enough to assault her.
But men's violence against women does not occur because men lose their temper or because they have no impulse control, says Dean Peacock of the Sonke Gender Justice network.
In a paper prepared for a Commonwealth ministers' meeting last year, he noted: "Men who use violence do so because they equate manhood with aggression, dominance over women and with sexual conquest.
"Often they are afraid that they will be viewed as less than a 'real' man if they apologise, compromise or share power.
"So instead of finding ways to resolve conflict, they resort to violence."
Men who abuse women have one thing in common, says Fatima Ismail, psychological counsellor at the Saartjie Baartman Centre for Women and Children in Athlone:
"They all want to be in control of women as they believe that men have the right to have power and control."
They come from all backgrounds; they may be rich or poor; white or black; old or young.
They may have good jobs or no jobs at all.
They can control their violence with other people but not with their partners.
"And they often blame their partners for their behaviour."
In a study for the Medical Research Council, researchers Naeemah Abrahams, Rachel Jewkes and Ria Laubsher found that conflict was mainly associated with attempts by the men "to control their women, their sexuality and their households".
"Violence is used not just to maintain control and dominance but to counter real or imagined threats to 'manhood'."
The researchers interviewed nearly 1 400 men working for local authorities in Cape Town in 1999 and found that two in five men admitted to abusing their female partners within the last 10 years.
Ninety percent of these admitted to emotional abuse as well and a third also admitted to sexual abuse.
And even among those who did not say they had abused their partners, 26 percent considered it "acceptable to hit" a woman in certain circumstances.
Men who had been involved with gangs and fights in the neighbourhood were twice as likely to have abused their partners.
Men who had seen their mothers being beaten during their childhood were 50 percent more likely than others to report abuse of their own partners, confirming that violence against women is often transmitted across generations.
Alcohol was a factor in 71 percent of cases but many men also attributed conflict to the woman's behaviour ("she sits on my head", or "she answers me back"), to disagreements about the children, to suspicion about infidelity or to arguments about household finances.
The phrase "she sits on my head" was also used by the men in a study by Abrahams and Jewkes of employees in a Cape Town factory.
Annoyance at behaviour by women who failed to recognise the men's authority and jealousy or lack of trust were recurring themes among the men questioned.
Several men in the study said arguments developed when they saw their partners "speaking to somebody I do not know", or when "you hear your wife has talked to a man".
They described how conflicts often arose over "little things" such as a "dirty cup", "not watching the pot", a "broken hair dryer" or "giving the dog food".
This would usually be when the men were "frustrated" about somehing that happened at work and "you go home with this mood" and "do something that you know will end in a fight".
Again, alcohol also played a role in conflicts.
But most of the men in the factory study used a range of strategies to avoid violence, from "ignoring" their partners, to refusing to eat food they had prepared, or leaving the house.
Some tried to talk about their problems with their partners.
And though nearly three quarters of the men in the municipal study who admitted to abusing their partners considered that hitting a woman was "acceptable" under certain circumstances, the researchers note that these men were clearly stressed during interviews and "many broke down and cried".
"This was a clear indication that abusers have a need for help," they say, quoting US researchers GT Hotaling and DB Sugarman who concluded, in a study of domestic violence in the US, that "violence is a learned behaviour and it can therefore be unlearned".