The Power and Control Wheel
The power and control wheel has helped countless survivors, concerned onlookers, and perhaps some primary aggressors understand abuse. It was put together by the early Duluth program based on that part of survivor experience that seemed definitional to intimate partner violence. Naturally, it was limited by not only what those survivors knew to be abuse but what they believed would be accepted as abuse by mainstream society. That is, the wheel is not only tactic-centric, but is focused on noxious behavior that is outside mainstream social norms.
What the Wheel Seems to Capture
- Discrimination against women
- The intrusion of abuse into every sphere of life
- Inequality
- Male privilege
- Abuse is far more than 'hitting'
What the Wheel Doesn't Capture
- Leveraging social inequities (besides sexism)
- Discrimination against femininity
- How acts only have meaning in relation to goals
- Survivor violence
- The ever-present oppressive tension
- 'Nice' tactics of control
- Tactics that are socially normative