Power and Control in Gender-Based Violence: CSS 2020 Answer

Exam question: CSS 2020: Comment on the power and control relationship in gender-based violence.

Syllabus area: Section VIII: Gender-Based Violence of CSS Gender Studies.

Short answer

Outline for quick revision

Introduction: violence as an instrument, not an outburst
Defining power and the invisible power structure
The proof that violence follows power: the contextual test
Gender privilege: the everyday face of the power imbalance
Control: the tactics through which power is exercised
Every form of violence is a control mechanism
Power and control at the structural level
The theoretical anchors of the power-control relationship
Conclusion

1. Introduction

Gender-Based Violence is violence directed against a person on the basis of gender, and the UN DEVAW definition covers its physical, sexual and psychological forms, its threats and coercion, and the arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether in public or private life. The commonest misunderstanding of this violence is that it is a loss of control, a man “losing his temper.” The truth this answer establishes is the opposite: gender-based violence is the exercise of control, not the loss of it. It is the instrument through which an unequal power relationship between the genders is created, displayed and maintained.

2. Defining Power and the Invisible Power Structure

Power is the ability to control, access and dominate decision-making processes. Between the genders there exists an invisible power structure: the masculine gender holds power and misuses it against the feminine gender, exactly as a ruler misuses power against a powerless public. This structure cannot be seen the way a law or a wall can be seen, but it exists in every household, street and institution, and gender-based violence is its enforcement arm. The concept is central to all of Gender Studies, because every chapter of the subject, from the glass ceiling to honor killing, is ultimately a chapter about this one structure.

3. The Proof That Violence Follows Power: the Contextual Test

The decisive evidence that violence flows from power and not from anger is the contextual test: a man never slaps his female boss, because she has power over him, and one signature of hers can end his job, but he beats his wife at home, because in his mental power structure she is powerless and has nowhere to go.
The same man, with the same temper, behaves in two opposite ways in two settings, and the only variable that changed is the power gradient.
The conclusion must be stated plainly: the abuser always strikes down the gradient of power, never up it, which means the violence is a calculation, not an explosion.

4. Gender Privilege: the Everyday Face of the Power Imbalance

Male privilege is the peacetime form of the same power that violence enforces in wartime.
A man can go out at 2 a.m. without fear or questioning, while a woman’s presence outside at night is treated as her own provocation.
A man’s vices: drinking, staying out, roaming with friends, are tolerated with the words “because you are a man, nobody stops you.”
A man travels or vacations by merely informing his family, while a woman must ask permission.
Most tellingly, a man who slaps his wife may even be praised for “keeping her in line,” which shows that society does not merely tolerate the power imbalance, it rewards its enforcement.

5. Control: the Tactics Through Which Power Is Exercised

Victim blaming controls women’s movement and clothing, because asking “why was she out at that time” teaches every woman to police herself.
Moral policing of dress, photographs and behavior keeps women within the boundaries the power structure has drawn.
Surveillance: checking calls, reading chats, demanding passwords, converts the woman’s private life into monitored territory.
Isolation cuts the woman off from family and friends until the abuser is her only remaining world.
Threats: of violence, of divorce, of taking the children, extract obedience without a blow being struck, which is why the DEVAW definition explicitly includes threats as violence.
Economic control: locking away her salary or ATM card, denying her needs, snatching her inheritance, removes the resources with which she could exit.
Each tactic serves the same end, and the end should be named in one sentence: the tactics exist to keep the woman controllable, and the violence exists to punish her when she is not.

6. Every Form of Violence Is a Control Mechanism

Physical violence: the beating, the acid, the honor killing, is the rawest display of the power gradient, punishing the woman’s body for defiance.
Sexual violence is power wearing the mask of desire, which is why a jirga could order the gang rape of Mukhtaran Mai (2002) as a “settlement”: the rape was not lust but a public demonstration of which family held power.
Psychological violence: gaslighting, blame, comparison, humiliation, controls the woman’s mind so that her body needs no guarding.
Economic violence controls her exit, because a dependent victim is a captive victim, and the Marxist stance names the frame: the man exploits the woman as capital exploits labor (with Pakistan’s fixed evidence, the ILO ranks it #1 in the world for the gender pay gap).

7. Power and Control at the Structural Level

The power-control relationship does not stop at the household; it scales up into structural violence, invisible, depersonalized, with no clear perpetrator, built into structures of society which show unequal power and unequal life chances.
The Motorway rape case is the standing example: the judiciary had bailed the rapist, the CCPO blamed the victim on television, and the state answered with committees, every institution, staffed by men, exercised control over the woman’s story rather than power over the criminal.
The lesson of the structural level is that when individual men control individual women and institutions excuse them, the control has become a system.

8. The Theoretical Anchors of the Power-Control Relationship

Family Power / Resource Theory states the relationship directly: violence occurs in the family in order to maintain power, the man uses force to keep money, mobility and decisions with himself.
Operant Conditioning explains its persistence: violence is used to gain the reward of control and to punish defiance, and every success reinforces it.
Male Peer Support Theory explains its social license: friends and officials applaud the controlling man, so the power structure cheers its own enforcement.
Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics supplies the reference line: like politics, sex is power-oriented, one sex dominant and powerful, the other powerless.

9. Conclusion

The power and control relationship is the skeleton inside every act of gender-based violence. Power, the ability to control, access and dominate decision-making, is distributed unequally between the genders by an invisible structure; control is the set of tactics through which that power is exercised daily; and violence is the punishment reserved for the moment control slips. The contextual test proves it beyond argument: the man who bows to his powerful boss and beats his powerless wife is not losing his temper, he is reading the power gradient correctly and enforcing it. It follows that gender-based violence will not end by teaching men calmness; it will end by dismantling the power imbalance itself, through certain punishment, women’s economic independence, and a society that stops applauding the man who “keeps his wife in line.”

References

UN DEVAW, the definition, including threats and deprivation of liberty as violence.
Kate Millett, Sexual Politics, sex as a power relation.
ILO, Pakistan ranks #1 in the world for the gender pay gap (economic control).

More preparation: See all CSS Gender Studies past papers by topic.

Related answers:

Last updated: 2 November 2026.

Preparing for CSS 2027? Subscribe to Prep With NAJO WAVE for more Gender Studies answers.