Introduction: Prevention and control of violence against women in their homes and its individual and social outcomes, needs an appropriate recognition of the situation, etiology and results of the problem. The paper tried to present a realistic picture of violence against women in Iran based on results of domestic violence researches.

Method: Data of 49 Farsi and English language papers on Violence against women in Iran which have published in Iranian and non Iranian Sicientific journals between 2001 and 2008 and indexed in scientific information database, was extracted, classified and analyzed.

Findings: Prevalence of Violence against women in homes had a range of 17.5%-93.6%. The most prevalent form of violence in general population was mental abuse and the least was sexual abuse. Besides it seems that a combination of individual, situational, social and cultural factors played role in etiology of violence.

Discussion: A wide range of domestic violence against women could be basically result of variant methodologies of researches including different definitions of violence, research populations, instruments and difference in settings of data gathering.