Abstract
Through in-depth qualitative interviews conducted with 16 rural women who have survived domestic violence, as well as 17 support providers, this study gained insight into the survival strategies that rural women in the Eastern Cape draw on. The study also established the women’s perceptions of available support, as well as the cultural norms and larger ideological framework that shape and constrain their actions and responses to domestic violence. The central purpose of this thesis has been to probe how survivors of domestic violence living in the rural areas of the Eastern Cape cope with abuse in their domestic spaces, and how they engage support providers and other networks in order to resolve their dilemmas.
By utilising an African feminist theoretical lens as well as standpoint theory, the study unmasks the interplay of patriarchy with structural factors, such as poverty and culture, which come together to embed rural women’s experiences of domestic violence and the choices they make in seeking support and complying with decisions on whether to stay with or escape domestic violence. Of the diverse range of issues scrutinised and investigated, the study found that the overwhelming influence of time-honoured rural cultural norms and practices keeps women vulnerable, while promoting male violence and normalising domestic violence particularly in customary marriages. When abused women reach out to largely informal support networks, they are encouraged to stay in abusive marriages, and they are discouraged from seeking professional help. The study also found that there is an inadequacy of formal support services in rural areas of O.R. Tambo and Amatole districts which caters for the poorest part of the Eastern Cape Province. Shelters in particular are very scarce, and that formal support service providers do not play effective role as they could. The study concludes that women in rural areas stay longer than necessary in abusive marriages simply because they lack formal support to help them make substantive sense of their abuse. Going back to abusive situations is...
D.Litt. et Phil. (Sociology)