The stigma associated with gender-based violence (GBV) exacerbates its physical and
mental health impacts, as well as the chances of experiencing additional violence. We extend
understanding of this stigma and its effects by demonstrating how stigma operates as a
mechanism of social control at both interactional and structural levels to preserve the moral
order. We also further general stigma theory by clarifying the conceptualization of power
that befits understanding stigma as a mechanism of social control that has cognitive, interpersonal,
structural, and moral components. Analysis of data from 6 focus groups with
women survivors of intimate partner violence and 19 interviews with close others and key
informants in Kenya shows that the moral order, or what matters most, is maintenance of
the marital unit, to a great degree because it is the institution that maintains the economic
survival of women and children. The cultural belief that a woman experiencing spousal
abuse has violated normative gender and spousal expectations and is therefore a threat to
the moral order of the community demands that both husbands and community members
act to protect the moral order. Protection of the moral order is accomplished through discrimination
against survivors that is institutionalized through custom, law, and the family.
Thus stigma acts as a, albeit contested, community process of social control that (re)produces
gendered power geographies.