Feminist frameworks have focused on gender inequality as the fundamental explanatory factor of male violence against women in union. This paper extends the analysis to contributions produced through social research. The approaches studied consider the personal characteristics of victims and aggressors (individual focus), the male-female power relationship within the couple (dyadic focus), and structural and symbolic factors (macro-social focus). An exploration of the respective contributions of these different perspectives shows that they offer only partial, inadequate approaches, given the multidimensional complexity of the problem. The main conclusions recognize that it is necessary to develop multi-level and inter-relational analytical frameworks such as the intersectional paradigm, in order to achieve a better understanding of the connection between gender inequality and male violence against women.