Intimate partner violence: A narrative review of the feminist, social and ecological explanations for its causation

• It is often difficult to find an aggregated review of various perspectives of IPV.
• We present an integrative account of various theories of intimate partner violence.
• No single theory fully explains the phenomenon of IPV.
• Various perspectives offer important insight about IPV.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a major social and public health problem that affects populations around the world regardless of their culture, religion, and other demographic characteristics. In the last 100 years, many theories have been proposed to explain the phenomenon of IPV. Much research has been conducted using these theories as a guiding or underlying framework. However, it is difficult to find a single account that provides a succinct and up-to-date overview of these theories. As a result, a considerable effort is required to identify and retrieve relevant papers to understand the various theories, which attempt to explain IPV. This article attempts to provide a succinct and up-to-date integrative review of the feminist, social learning, and ecological explanations of IPV. These perspectives have been critically evaluated in the light of the available literature and an effort has been made to discuss the strengths and limitations of each perspective in shedding light on the causation of IPV.