Intimate partner violence and racialized women
The content in this post is adapted from our recently updated After She Leaves Resource Manual. Click here to learn more about the manual.
Racialized women face unique challenges and barriers with respect to gender-based violence because of ongoing systemic and personal racism. Racism within systems such as policing, courts, child protection and health care can have an impact on the ability of racialized women to receive adequate services and responses if they reach out for assistance. As well, assumptions may be made by systems, service providers and others about a woman’s religion that are based on her skin colour. These assumptions may affect the manner in which systems respond to her.
Compared to non-Black women, Black women are 2.5 times more likely to be subjected to intimate partner violence and significantly more likely to be murdered by an abuser. Culturally and historically, Black women are protectors of the family and especially where there are children involved, the abuse itself and/or reporting it may be seen as a failure on her part as a woman, mother and wife. Black women may also be fearful or distrustful of authority figures due to the highly publicized, well-documented history of state-sanctioned abuse of Black people in the West and may, as a result, be very reluctant to call the police or go to the hospital.
By conservative estimates, 41 percent of Asian and Pacific Islander (API) women have been subjected to physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner; some estimates place the figure at nearly twice that. API women are often especially reluctant to report abuse due to conflicting cultural values. Because it is common within API communities for multiple generations of a family to share a roof, API women may reside with more than one abuser.
Hispanic and Latina women report similar rates of intimate partner violence as the general population. However, they are around 1.5 times more likely to be subjected to sexual assault from an intimate partner. Among Hispanic and Latina immigrants who have been subjected to woman abuse, 48 percent report that it became significantly worse after they arrived in the new country. Significant obstacles to reporting abuse or accessing services for Hispanic and Latina women include language barriers, cultural norms that sometimes normalize or encourage toxic masculinity, cultural and religious taboos around divorce, single motherhood and reporting abuse, and having larger families on average, which can make it difficult to find affordable child care after the woman leaves.
Islamaphobia has a particular impact on women who are or are perceived to be Muslim—most of whom are women of colour — because of incorrect beliefs that the religion supports and encourages violence against women in the family. Muslim women may fear being disbelieved or being judged when they share their stories of abuse and may also be reluctant to seek help from mainstream services because they do not want to see their community criticized.
When racialized women report violence by their partners, they may be treated differently because of their skin colour, ethnicity or ancestry. Women may also decide not to report abuse if their partner is racialized, out of concern that the partner may be subjected to harsher treatment. They may also fear perpetuating negative racial stereotypes and/or being viewed as a traitor to their race or community.
Cultural norms related to such issues as child-rearing may be misunderstood by workers with a lack of knowledge about cultures other than their own or who have biases against those cultures. This can make a woman who fears losing her children to the system very reluctant to report violence to the police.