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Additional Risk Factors
Ethnicity
- Women from some minority ethnic groups face additional forms of abuse and further difficulties in escaping abusive relationships due to cultural and role expectations.
- Asian women often have to escape not only the abusive partner, but also the family and community pressures before they can seek help (Imam 1994).
- Men often use the woman's immigration status as a source of power to control and abuse them (Mama 1989).
Pregnancy
- Violence and abuse often starts, or worsens, at a time of increased threat to a man's position in the family. Thus, pregnancy is a time of high risk of violence towards the woman (Gelles 1974, Gayford 1978, Stark and Flitcraft 1996, Brookoff et al. 1997, Elhassani 1999, Mezey 2000).
- Pregnancy can leave a woman feeling emotionally and physically vulnerable and in need of incrfeased support from her partner.
- Thus for violence to begin, or worsen, when the woman is feeling vulnerable may leave the woman feeling trapped in the relationship with few alternatives.
Separation
- Separation is alsoa high-risk time for violence and abuse.
- The risk of violence starting or increasing at the time of separation has been supported by a considerable amount of research (Bergman et al. 1988, Hester and Radford 1996, Kurz 1996, Hearn 1998, Kantor and Jasinski 1998).
- Krug et al (2002: 96), in their review of studies on separation and domestic violence, found separation "usually" occurred when "the violence becomes severe enough to trigger the realisation that the partner is not going to change, or when the situation starts noticeably to affect the children".
Introduction | Impact of domestic violence on women | Impact of domestic violence on children
Implications for social work practice and assessment | Good practice examples
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