Tensions in Providing Services to South Asian Victims of Wife Abuse in Toronto

Abstract

South Asian community-based organizations provide services to non-English speaking women from their communities. Because they depend on the state to fund their programs, they have had to modify their agendas and restrain their criticisms of patriarchal society. Community-based groups have to weigh the immediate goals of the women they serve against their long-term feminist goals of reducing violence by men and destabilizing the patriarchal state. Consequently, they give priority to ensuring access to social services for non-English speaking, working-class, immigrant women. But helping women with their problems does not expose the systemic power relations underlying wife abuse and, although some political and social change does occur, it is slow and moderate.