ABSTRACT
This paper draws on our recently completed locally based study1 of service responses to minoritized2 women surviving3 domestic violence which highlighted both general and specific ways that women from historically and currently marginalized cultural backgrounds and subject to racialized oppression within contemporary Britain are systematically disadvantaged, if not excluded, from accessing support and provision. Our particular focus on women from four minoritized communities-African and AfricanCaribbean, South Asian, Jewish, and Irish4-was prompted by concern that domestic violence, as other, services were not sufficiently accessible to women from these backgrounds, notwithstanding their presence as substantial communities within the Manchester area. The study built on our previous investigation of services responses to South Asian women presenting with issues of attempted suicide and self-harm (Burman, Chantler, & Batsleer, 2002; Chantler, Bunnan, Batsleer, & Bashir, 2001) in which domestic violence was identified as a contributory factor. Domestic violence, like attempted suicide and self-harm, crosses the public/private divide that both structures legal, health, and social service responses. While there are studies of the particular needs and experiences of women in the UK from black and South Asian communities in accessing support services around domestic violence (e.g. Choudry, 1996; Mama, 2000), to our knowledge this is the only available study that investigates across different racialized groups to explore how the structural position of minoritisation enters into the accessibility of domestic violence services.
