Minoritised Ethnic Women's Experiences of Domestic Abuse and Barriers to Help-Seeking: A Summary of the Evidence

Policy Context and Background

Policy Context

The 2023 refresh of the Scottish Government's Equally Safe Strategy, (Scottish Government, 2023b) which aims to eradicate violence against women and girls (VAWG) in Scotland, provides an opportunity to take a more intersectional approach to policy making and implementation. Alongside this, the Scottish Government's publication, Using intersectionality in policymaking and analysis: summary findings (Scottish Government, 2022b) provides helpful insight into how to take an intersectional approach which it defines as "a way of identifying, understanding and tackling structural inequality in a given context that accounts for the lived experience of people with intersecting identities"(p3).

The report from the ministerial-led Women in Justice Leadership Panel, Women's Justice Leadership Panel - The Case for Gendered and Intersectional Approaches to Justice (Scottish Government, 2023a), also lends further weight to the need for more evidence on how social and structural inequalities impact on women's experiences of gender-based violence (GBV) and the justice system.

In response to the publication and scrutiny of the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018 Interim Reporting Requirement (Scottish Government, 2023c),^[7] there is a renewed commitment to improve victim-survivor experiences of the justice system. In particular, it is recognised that more evidence is needed to better understand the experiences of minoritised ethnic women and to what extent their needs are met by current legislation, policy and practice in Scotland.

The latest criminal proceedings statistics show an increasing number of prosecutions and convictions under the new domestic abuse legislation rising from 252 Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018 (DASA) prosecutions in 2019-20 to 810 in 2021-22, and from 212 convictions in 2019-20 to 689 in 2021-22^[8]. Other data published by the Scottish Government, such as the Domestic Abuse Statistics, shows that for the year 2022-23 the police recorded 61,934 incidents of domestic abuse, 39% of which included the recording of at least one crime or offence. The vast majority of victims were female (83%).

More broadly speaking, recent years have seen societal issues such as sexism, misogyny and racism brought to the fore through movements like Black Lives Matter and Me Too which have drawn attention to the prevalence of structural, racial and gender inequalities (Azad, 2021) – albeit rarely in an intersectional way. Within this context – and that of heightened media attention on GBV - institutions such as the police have examined their cultures and practices resulting in public acknowledgements of institutional racism and sexism amidst a commitment to change^[9]. This wider context of discrimination on the basis of sex and race is relevant as it impacts on minoritised ethnic communities' trust in the police for example (Aplin, 2019).

Set against this (even before the current cost crisis) austerity cuts in legal aid, housing, policing and welfare benefits in the UK have disproportionately impacted women, particularly minortised ethnic women (Siddiqui, 2018). In Scotland, poverty statistics show that people from non-white minoritised ethnic groups are more likely to experience relative poverty after housing costs compared to white ethnic groups, while other evidence shows that minoritised ethnic families are at higher risk of poverty (Scottish Government, 2023f). The Scottish Crime and Justice Survey reports that people living in the most deprived areas are more likely to experience partner abuse^[10] (since the age of 16) compared to those living in the rest of Scotland^[11]. Understanding the wider structural and sociocultural context in which abuse occurs is crucial to understanding minoritised ethnic women's experiences of domestic abuse.

Prevalence and Under-reporting

As noted, the Scottish Government publishes a range of statistics on victim experiences of domestic abuse including population victimisation estimates (in the form of the Scottish Crime and Justice Survey (SCJS)) and reports to the police (Domestic Abuse Incidents and Recorded Crime in Scotland). The SCJS 2018-20 shows that women (since the age of 16) were almost twice as likely as men to have experienced partner abuse (21.2% and 11.2% respectively).

These official data sources on experiences and reporting of domestic abuse in Scotland do not currently provide breakdowns by ethnicity. In the case of the SCJS, this information is collected in the survey but due to small sample sizes, especially amongst minoritised ethnic survey respondents, it is not possible to provide data disaggregated by ethnicity. It is therefore not currently possible to examine any statistical differences between domestic abuse estimates by ethnicity in Scotland^[12].

In England and Wales, the most recent data (at time of writing) from the Crime Survey for England Wales (CSEW) for the year ending March 2023^[13] - which includes family abuse in its definition of domestic abuse^[14] - shows that "a significantly higher proportion of people aged 16 years and over in the Mixed and White ethnic groups experienced domestic abuse in the last year compared with those in the Asian or Asian British groups", and that "almost twice as many women in the White ethnic group experienced domestic abuse in the last year (6.0%) compared with Black or Black British women (3.1%) and Asian or Asian British women (3.0%)". The previous year reported that differences between any domestic abuse estimates across different ethnic groups were found not to be significant (year ending March 2022).

However, wider evidence suggests that there is significant under-reporting and mis-recording of GBV/HBA in minoritised ethnic communities which likely influences national estimates (Femi-Ajao et al., 2020; Azad, 2021; Gill & Harrison, 2019; Gillespie et al. 2011; Gill & Anitha, 2022). Other evidence suggests that although the prevalence of domestic abuse amongst minoritised ethnic groups may be reported as similar to other ethnic groups, minoritised ethnic women are disproportionately at risk of specific forms of abuse, such as HBA, which can include domestic abuse (Imkaan, 2012; Rogers, 2020; Gill & Virdee, 2021).

Safe Lives MARACs^[15] guidance in Scotland reports that an analysis of their 'insights' data found that victims from BME communities (as was described) typically suffer abuse for 1.5 times longer before getting help than those who identify as White, British or Irish (Safe Lives, 2019). The United Nations in a 'special rapporteur' in 2014 found that women's organisations (in the UK) reported that:

"black and minority ethnic (BME) and migrant women experience a disproportionate rate of domestic homicide, and that Asian women are up to three times more likely to commit suicide than other women. Young BME women, in particular, are also more likely to experience domestic violence from multiple perpetrators, such as extended family members" (United Nations, 2014).

This analysis is reflected in wider research which cites higher rates of domestic homicide (so-called 'honour' killings) and domestic abuse-related suicide amongst minoritised ethnic women (Siddiqui, 2018). There is also longstanding evidence on the link between domestic violence, and attempted suicide and self-harm in South Asian women in the UK (Chantler et al., 2003).