*2.3. Patriarchy*

Women's duty to serve the collective forms part of defending and maintaining patriarchy and gender inequality. A study conducted by (Gill and Harvey 2017) found that women were pressurised to conform to socially constructed traits of femininity, including putting the family's interests above their own. Women's experiences of violence occur "in a cultural context and that di fferences of culture should not lead to a denial of civil rights" (Patel 2003a, p. 176).

Human rights are enshrined in marriage within article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, "Men and women ... are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its

dissolution" (United Nations 1948, p. 4). It follows that such rights are preserved in all intimate relationships and by the same token, the ability to leave a relationship. Feminists situate South Asian women's experiences of domestic violence within the context of gender inequality and thus human rights, and not as manifestations of culture or religion (Patel 2013; Siddiqui 2014, 2016).

South Asian women's specific experiences within patriarchal and structural constraints of marriage, divorce, and intimate relationships can be contested areas within families where patriarchal control and power determine the position of women, privilege men's status, and enforce control over women's bodies and lives (Anitha and Gill 2009; Wilson 2006). Patriarchy subjugates women in different ways and so the experience of oppression differs amongs<sup>t</sup> women (Lorde 1996), and the historical and present context of race and class oppression faced by ethnic minority women is crucial to understanding how power relations work to subjugate women (Amos and Parmar 1984).

Patriarchal practices are not wholly a binary notion in which women either comply or do not. Women may negotiate "trade-offs" to protect their own interests, for example, choosing financial security that their partner provides for themselves and their children over leaving the relationship and plunging into poverty (Walby 1990). Some feminist scholars have argued that this recognition of negotiation is not attributed to all populations of women. Western liberal feminists, for example, have not always recognised how women of other cultures also negotiate everyday patriarchy within the limits and constraints they experience. It is crucial to recognise this negotiation and agency, and avoid portraying women from certain cultures as being wholly "prisoners" or "dupes" of patriarchy (Narayan 2001, p. 418).

Patriarchal forces and gendered social norms provide the backdrop for the complex and varied ways South Asian women may exercise agency and negotiation in the process of leaving abusive relationships. Such understandings are important to show the need for a conceptual framework that explicates South Asian women's lived experiences at the intersection of gender, ethnicity, age, socio-economic status, and other inequalities, in order to gain a deeper understanding of women's experiences of gendered socialisation of honour and shame and how power relations influence their agency in forming intimate relationships.

The three factors presented here are relevant and closely linked to women of South Asian heritage living in the UK, who choose their own intimate partners. By choosing their intimate partners, the South Asian women in this study appear to be transgressing such gendered norms. Their subsequent experiences of intimate partner violence within the relationship brings to the fore the consequences of their decisions where the act of choosing a partner becomes the barrier to leaving the abusive relationship. This paradox has received little attention within scholarship on intimate partner violence and specifically why women choose to remain or leave a violent and abusive relationship.

### **3. Research Design, Methodology and Methods**

It is the knowledge gained from experiences of subjugation due to gender, age, sexuality and race that evokes critical social theory pertaining to black women. Social theories by Black Feminists reflect women's views of their lived experiences of multiple intersecting axes of oppression. Black Feminism incorporates knowledge and analysis of the ways in which structural power not only oppresses women, but also how different groups of black women are oppressed in different ways. Black Feminist Thought, as a "critical" social theory, underpins the development of "more specialized knowledge" that captures the contradictions of dominant ideologies and the lived experiences of black women (Collins 2000, p. 12). Examining women's experiences within the context of the social world they occupy, not only leads to an understanding of the power base that enforces structural inequalities on women's lives, but also an understanding of women's actions (Collins 2019). Black Feminism conceptualises the gendered structures of power and so informs the context of women's agency, but also elucidates the reasons for their actions.

A central tenet of this research is to give voice to South Asian women's experiences and thus to understand their social world. The core of Black Feminist Standpoint epistemology has been to make visible previously erased Black women's narratives and place them on a par with Black men's and White women's narratives of oppression (Cho et al. 2013). Black Feminism was employed as the qualitative research approach, to give voice to South Asian women's experiences and provide an insight into the workings of gendered control and power when women are going through the process of leaving a violent and abusive relationship in the UK (Collins 2015; Gill 2004; Siddiqui 2016). Black Feminism pursues knowledge that emphasises the importance of understanding the context of women's lives, that is reflexive in approach "so that the scope, complexities and diversity of black women's lives can be successfully captured" (Reynolds 2002, p. 604). The centring of South Asian women's lives and theorising through the multiple social locations of ethnic identity, gender, age and socio-economic status offers new knowledge. This knowledge is not only of experiences of intimate partner abuse and familial violence, but also in conjunction with the understandings of the complexities behind decisions on whether to leave the abusive relationship or not. Thus Black Feminist Standpoint lends itself to the "angle of vision" (Collins 2000, p. 12) through which South Asian women see and live their world, from their perspectives, arising from their lived experiences of transgressing social norms by choosing their own intimate partner and of intimate partner and familial violence.

The empirical data presented in this paper were collected as part of a PhD research project that examined the lived experiences of South Asian women living in the UK who "choose" their intimate partners and explored their responses to familial and intimate partner violence. The data collection was undertaken in 2016 and at the time of the research, all participants lived in the UK. All the women had grown up with social norms of marriage that included arranged marriage, and all had transgressed such cultural practices to form an intimate relationship with a partner who was then violent and abusive in that relationship. In addition, some women also experienced familial violence.

After receiving ethical approval, participants were recruited through a mixture of using Facebook and professional networks. The Facebook posting included details of the research project with an emphasis on confidentiality and anonymity. Participants were asked to use the direct message functionality to ge<sup>t</sup> in touch if they wished to engage with the research. Six participants were recruited this way. In total fifteen participants were recruited in four different ways. Figure 1 shows the breakdown.

**Figure 1.** Recruitment routes of research participants.

The initial contact was followed up with a phone call to the participant to give more details concerning the research, the method of data collection and to emphasise the ethical procedures and reflexive position of the researcher. An informed consent form and participation information sheet were sent to each respondent prior to the interview. Of the fifteen participants interviewed, eleven were interviewed in one-to-one semi-structured interviews and the remaining four were interviewed in a group setting. The interviews were carried out between January and October 2016 and took place in a number of different locations as shown in Figure 2.

**Figure 2.** Location of interviews.

Most of the interviews were held in cafes chosen by the participant in the town or city where they lived. The group interview took place in a meeting room in the domestic violence agency's o ffices, referred to in Figure 2 as "agency premises". Two of the interviews were held in the participant's own homes and university ethical and safety guidelines were followed. On both occasions, the women were alone in their homes during the interview. One interview was held using voice over internet technology, Skype, because the participant lived some distance away and on a number of occasions an interview had been arranged but the participant had to cancel. Using Skype allowed her to cancel at short notice without wasting travelling time.

With the women's permission, all interviews were audio-recorded. They were in control of the audio recording and could switch o ff the recorder at any time during the interview. The participants' identities were anonymised for their safety. The audio-recordings were transcribed verbatim (Braun and Clarke 2013). The group interview was undertaken in four di fferent languages; Punjabi, Hindi, Urdu and English. The researcher undertaking the group interview was fluent in Punjabi and English but less so in the other two and so an interpreter was commissioned to quality-check the final transcription. To stay true to the balance-of-power relations between researcher and researched (Letherby 2003), and so that the participants could participate in the final transcripts and have control over their content (Kelly 1988), the transcripts were sent to the participants and they were asked to review the content. The transcripts were coded to identify significant subject areas relevant to the research. Thematic analysis was applied. The codes were linked into identifying patterns that reflected themes such as "Relationship with parents" and linked together to produce thematic maps to visualise the codes within a theme and the di fferent levels of themes in order to produce overarching themes with sub-themes under them (Braun and Clarke 2013). Significant themes emerged illustrating the complexity of women's experiences of forming intimate relationships and their decisions to stay or leave the relationships.

The ages of the participants at the time of the interviews ranged from twenty-three to fifty-seven years. Eight of the women were of Indian heritage, six of Pakistani heritage, and one of mixed Asian and African heritage. Of the eight women of Indian heritage, four were of the Sikh faith, two were Hindu, one was Christian, and one was Buddhist. Four of the women of Pakistani heritage were Muslim, one was of no faith, and one was an anti-theist1. The participant of mixed Asian and African heritage was Muslim.

The fifteen women had twenty-two children between them; three women had three children, six women had two children, one woman had one child and five women had no children from the relationships. One woman had an abortion, forced on her by her family.

The longest period a woman remained in her intimate relationship was twenty-five years, and the shortest time was nine months. Nine women were in relationships for five years or less. Five women experienced two abusive intimate relationships. Ten women had experienced both intimate partner

<sup>1</sup> An anti-theist opposes the belief that a God exists.

violence and familial violence, which is domestic violence from parents, siblings, or extended family members. Five women participants at the time of the research were still estranged from their families on account of choosing their own partners.

The experiences of the researcher at the intersections of gender, class and ethnicity have "bearings upon the relationship between the researcher and the researched" (Bhopal 2000, p. 73). The positionality of the researcher undertaking the fieldwork, as a gendered, racialised South Asian woman researcher, researching other South Asian women, was central to giving voice to women who otherwise may not be heard. Although the participants and the researcher shared South Asian heritage, there were di fferences in socio-economic, religious and cultural backgrounds, with di ffering immigration and British residency status. This reflected the heterogeneous, complex social and political positions we occupy, as researcher and research participants and as South Asian women in the UK today. At the same time, as a Black Feminist researcher researching intimate partner violence, the lead author found the shared gender, and racial identity led participants to reveal very intimate and traumatic experiences because of her experiences as a situated knower (Collins 2000).
