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

Research Aims and Considerations

This report explores what the academic literature can tell us about how minoritised ethnic women experience domestic abuse in Scotland and the UK, the barriers to help-seeking and reporting abuse, and the social and structural factors that influence their experiences.

The review aimed to address the following research questions:

• How do minoritised ethnic women experience domestic abuse?
• How do minoritised ethnic women's experiences align with mainstream understandings of domestic abuse?
• What are the barriers to help-seeking and reporting domestic abuse for minoritised ethnic women?

Whilst domestic abuse can affect any woman, the review focuses on minoritised ethnic women as they are under-represented within the domestic abuse literature and little is known about the complexity and nuance of their experiences of domestic abuse and help-seeking.

This report compliments lived experience and stakeholder engagement work undertaken by Public Health Scotland to inform the refresh of the Equally Safe strategy (PHS, 2023). It is openly acknowledged that academic research is only one form of knowledge, and therefore it is intended that the findings of this report are considered alongside other forms of evidence, including lived experience^[16].

A number of issues are raised in the research which it may be helpful to think about when considering the findings:

• Some academics raise concerns about the 'culturalisation' of GBV and the pathologising of minoritised ethnic communities, whereby a wider social problem such as GBV is framed in cultural terms (Siddiqui, 2018).^[17] This is particularly the case for so-called 'honour-based' abuse (HBA), which, it is argued, is sometimes portrayed in the public and political spheres as a predominantly 'Muslim problem' (see Chantler, 2018).This perception ignores the influence of structural inequalities such as gender and socio-economic class. Others also highlight how this contrasts with the way in which GBV is sometimes understood within white communities where it is understood at an individual rather than cultural level (e.g. where individual perpetrators are seen as 'bad apples') (see ^Chantler, ²⁰¹⁸; ^Skafida et al., 202¹; ^Davidge & ^Magnusson, ²⁰¹⁹).
• A lot of the research on minoritised ethnic women's experiences of domestic abuse and other forms of GBV in the UK has focused on the experiences of women from South Asian and Muslim communities, which may limit the transferability of findings to other minoritised ethnic groups (Ajayi et al., 2021). To address this limitation, the ethnicity of research participants is provided when describing individual studies, highlighting any research findings relevant to other ethnic communities. By taking an intersectional approach, it is intended that this review will shed light on a range of experiences and draw attention to areas where more evidence is needed, including research about other minoritised groups of society.
• Thinking about domestic abuse through an intersectional lens recognises that minoritised ethnic women's experiences are shaped by various structural inequalities and socio-cultural norms that may not affect (majority ethnic) white women, or not in the same way. For this reason, minoritised ethnic women's experiences of GBV may not be well reflected in mainstream understandings of domestic abuse.