Feminist research into gendered violence has provided many women around the world with the opportunity to share their experiences and contribute to increased understanding of its nature and impact. Drawing on the responses and narratives of the women who participated in our study, we have been able to show how intimate partner violence (IPV) casts a long shadow over women's lives in complex and interconnected ways that have not been widely appreciated until now. What is particularly distinctive about the approach we have taken is the adoption of sexual politics as our lens and citizenship as our primary concern. This has enabled us to show that gender inequalities not only produce and sustain IPV itself, but that they also shape the very nature, direction and intensity of its impact on women and their capabilities to exercise full citizenship into the long term. We have shown that women do not recover former levels of mental health, housing, work or social participation after IPV, reducing their capacities to exercise full citizenship. A sexual politics of ignorance about gendered violence and its basis in gender inequality exacerbates this impact further because it silences women about the impact of IPV and deprives many of the formal and informal support that is so crucial to the successful rebuilding of lives.

As we have argued, there has been a tendency in research, policy and practice to focus on the immediate effects of individual incidents of men's physical violence. Expanding our perspective on IPV to include coercive control, and taking a sociological approach through the foundational concepts of sexual politics and citizenship, has enabled us to take theorisation of the impact of IPV beyond a one-dimensional, linear conceptualisation of the ‘effects’ of individual men's violence on individual women.