This article on service responses to women of African, African-Caribbean, Irish, Jewish and South Asian backgrounds facing domestic violence draws on our recently completed study based in Manchester, UK (Batsleer et al., 2002) [Batsteeler, J., Burman, E., Chantler, K., McIntosh, S.H., Pantling, K., Smailes, S., Warner, S., et al. 2002. Domestic violence minoritisation: Supporting women to indepence. Women's Studies Centre: The Manchester Metropolitan University]. We frame our analysis of domestic violence and minoritisation around the question that is frequently posed in relation to women living with domestic violence: ‘why doesn’t she leave?’ In response, we highlight the complex and intersecting connections between domestic violence, law, mental health provision, entitlement to welfare services, which function alongside constructions of ‘culture’ and cultural identifications, structures of racism, class and gendered oppression. All these contribute to maintain women, particularly minoritized women, in violent relationships. Further, we illustrate how leaving violent relationships does not necessarily guarantee the safety of women and children escaping domestic violence.
In this paper we have discussed some major structural obstacles faced by minoritized women surviving domestic violence that, we contend, play a key role in sustaining oppressive relationships, including the state-level practice of immigration legislation as well as health and social service policy and provision. Hence explanations in terms of particular cultural practices and norms relating to gender relations can be seen to commit an equivalent error of cultural pathologisation that obscures more systemic state responsibilities and collusion with violence.
In terms of legal responses, we would recommend two key changes. Firstly, that the ‘one-year rule’ should be revoked. From the evidence in our studies as well as in others (e.g. Yazdani, 1998), it is very clear that this rule intersects with domestic violence in ways that have far reaching physical and emotional consequences for women in abusive relationships. Although concessions to the one-year rule were made in 1999 to women in violent relationships, in effect these have had little impact as the evidence required to prove domestic violence has been set at a very high (and largely unattainable) threshold. We are pleased to note that this threshold was relaxed further in 2002 but in our view even these provisions still present enormous obstacles for women in violent relationships.
