Intimate Partner Violence... and Power

Women are in danger at every moment.  Prone to stalking, rape, and abuse, women are so easy to put down.  Women should be openly intimate and just give it up to men whenever they want it.  Men are physically stronger and obviously more powerful in every way... Wait a minute!  What's being said right now?  Why is it that people fall into these stereotypical beliefs?  When a relationship falls to violence, who is the intiater?  There are too many cases of gender inequality when it comes to violence, so I looked further into the outcomes of partner violence and outcomes.
There has been a lot of psychological studies on rapists and overall effects of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV).  In the study, "Gender Differences in Intimate Partner Violence Outcomes" looks into the effects of IPV in women, mostly because there are more cases of women being violently abused, whether it is physical or mental.  Men are expected to have this power over women.  As the study explains, women truly are more prone to these issues because of the stereotype but men have effects as well.  The key thing I took from this study was that "even if there were no gender difference at all in the effect of IPV on these outcomes, base rates in the general population would lead us to expect gender differences in prevalence rates in the population of people victimized by IPV—that is, twice as many women victimized by IPV would experience depression, anxiety, or posttraumatic stress as compared to men victimized by IPV."  With that being said, IPV is a gender stereotype as well, since we expect men to be the villians and women, the victims.
Violence is a building block to power for anyone.  Since men are physically stronger, they are also more apt to be violent, knowing they can overwhelm women.  Violence can be triggered by multiple things, but why do men seek this power over women?  There is one movie that stands out so much to me when it comes to gender roles and relationships, relating to violence.  Below is the opening clip of "Black and Blue"(1999). 

Right from the start this movie sums up a lot of what the relationship is like.  The husband has everything backing him up, being stronger and especially being a detective.  This halts the wife from running and open up about the victimization.  Further in the movie, she does end up building up the courage to run away with her son, but I believe her relationship with her husband is a very good example of what can cause IPV.
Violence can cause a change in power very quickly as it can instill fear and helplessness.  Victims fall weak, rather than standing up for themselves, and as they are usually women, this supports the stereotypes of genders, regarding gender power. 

Reference: Psychology of Violence. Advance online publication. Caldwell, J. E., Swan, S. C., & Woodbrown, V. D. (2011, November 14). Gender Differences in Intimate Partner Violence Outcomes. doi:10.1037/a0026296