By Nakita Singh Hans
Preventing Violence and Promoting Health: Challenges and Possibilities.
The rate of violence from an ex-partner is disturbingly high among Aboriginal women in Canada, with
sexual violence commonly reported.
A unique study examining post-separation intimate violence among women, found that nearly one in
four Aboriginal women reported post-separation violence compared to one in fifteen non-Aboriginal
women in Canada. It was mostly younger women who reported violence from an ex-partner.
“This is really quite alarming,” said Jeanette Somlak Pedersen, a former Sociology and Health Sciences
student at Simon Fraser University and now a research assistant at Vancouver Native Health Society. “To
our knowledge, no study has examined this before… This research shows that we need to spread the
message that women are not safe even when they leave their partner.”
Speaking at the Social Determinants of Health conference, Pedersen described her study demonstrating
that violence from an ex-partner was three to five times higher among Aboriginal women compared to
non-Aboriginal women in Canada.
“This led us to ask what determinants may explain the higher rates of post-separation violence among
Aboriginal women,” Pedersen said. Adopting a structural violence approach, the team examined how
theorized negative consequences of colonialism, namely increased gender inequality and socioeconomic inequalities, may explain the higher rates of post-separation violence among Aboriginal
women.
A number of factors were examined including a number of male coercive control tactics, stalking, a
woman’s education, employment, income and government assistance. The findings suggested that male
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coercive control tactics and a woman’s age played important roles in explaining the Aboriginal/nonAboriginal inequality in post-separation IPV.
“The structural violence approach really allows for the examination of the historical and social context
from a health equity perspective with the understanding that the inequalities produced by structural
violence are fundamentally unjust. Most importantly, the approach takes the blame away from the
victims,” she said.
Pedersen analysed the 2004 Canadian General Social Survey data to reach her conclusions. The sample
included both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal women over the age of 15 in the 10 provinces. Each
woman reported being previously married or in a common-law relationship and having contact with
their ex-partner in the past five years.
“Clearly action is needed. There is a need for research from a health equity perspective and we need to
discover why Aboriginal women are vulnerable to this type of violence. We must look for solutions like
prevention and intervention programs,” Pedersen said.
Violence against women is something that other diverse communities in Canada have experienced and
are attempting to move beyond.
Farah Ahmad, a professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health in University of Toronto, conducted a
study to examine resilience among South Asian immigrant women who identified themselves as
survivors of domestic violence.
Ahmad interviewed 11 women between 32 and 57 at the Brampton Multicultural Community Centre.
Interviews were audio-taped and a reflective journal was kept.
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“I told each woman to draw a timeline of their life from childhood. This helped them think back to
positive experiences and make it easier for them to look forward,” said Ahmad. “My focus was to ask
about resilience and how these women moved on from domestic abuse.”
Many women said they were influenced to move on from the psychological, physical and financial abuse
by access to professional services and social networks. They would look at their children and felt
motivated to do something.
“Their children were using the Internet and they found out information and resources available through
friends and they would pass on this information,” Ahmad said. “One woman saw resilience as a way of
training her children in a positive way. She told her son that he needs to give his future wife a lot of
love.”
Coming to Canada as an immigrant, many of the survivors of domestic violence were unsure at first as to
what was available to them, but in the end were thankful to the law and country when they discovered
their rights.
In an attempt to educate newcomers and offer them advice on Canadian law, Vinita Puri, coordinator of
the project, “If I Had Only known,” is producing a series of brochures aimed at immigrants in preventing
abuse. This scheme is the first of its kind in Canada.
The “If I Had Only Known” project at Family Service Toronto developed a community engagement model
to learn about cultural abuse in close relationships for five newcomer communities and develop cultural
and appropriate resources to prevent this type of violence happening again.
Brochures will be available in different languages including Farsi, Somali, Punjabi, Dari and Tamil to
ensure that they can be interpreted by a large number of cultures.
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“We went to different communities and had leaders gather people together. Groups met for a day, for
six-hour sessions and provided information from a newcomer perspective to tell another newcomer,”
Puri said.
This is the first time a community engagement model has included voices of the cultural communities
and has been used to develop meaningful information on family violence, from a newcomer
perspective. A lot of the information was presented in artistic forms including poetry and pictures.
Puri’s aim was to teach people that abuse can be more than physical as some cultures were unaware of
this. One way she did this was by showing the Punjabi community clips of abuse from Bollywood movies
and asked them to identify with what the women were going through.
“The increased stress during the immigration process and changing gender roles may lead to abuse,”
Puri said. “When people first come to Canada they stress about employment and often feel socially
isolated. They feel shame in going to a shelter. These brochures aim to show people what is available to
them.”
Eighteen different types of brochures will be distributed in many places including the airport which is
the point of entry for immigrants. They will be launched on March 8, to celebrate the 100th Anniversary
of International Women’s Day.
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