Abstract

South Asian women’s organizations (SAWOs) in the United States and Canada have reported high prevalences of intimate gendered violence in their communities for several decades now despite a lacune in both research and attention. This project takes as its starting point the following question: what factors are involved in addressing intimate violence against South Asian women in Montreal and in supporting their well-being? Research methods are based on critical ethnography, writing against culture, and feminist anthropological frameworks and include participant observation, textual analysis, and interviews with front-line workers at and with members of the South Asian Women’s Community Centre of Montreal (SAWCC). This thesis is the start of a larger work which uses the analytical tool of mapping. This mapping begins in women’s homes, household and home country, looking at the patriarchal gender norms and ideologies which women are socialized into that maintain patriarchal power which are reproduced through key institutions of the family and marriage. Next, four major taboos, i.e. divorce, sex, mental health, and violence, are discussed to provide insight into how they shape women’s experiences and responses to violence and serve to keep the status quo of patriarchal power. Finally, interventions into these factors by SAWCC are discussed as possible methods for “pulling the roots” of women’s subordination through empowering South Asian women and changing norms. Lastly, the next steps for this analysis are named which entail the mapping out of remaining topographies of key factors that intersect and compound with those named in this thesis. This research found that addressing intimate gendered violence and supporting the well-being of South Asian women requires a critical understanding of specific realities at the intersection of ideological and structural factors, the role of (mis)understandings and use of the concept of culture in ‘fields of power’, integration of anti-racism into anti-violence work and services, and the recognition of the crucial work done by community and grassroots organizations that provide key interventions.