Women and domestic violence: the Indo-Fijian experience

Abstract

This thesis identifies and analyses the incidence of domestic violence, in particular, wife beating and battering, in the Indo-Fijian community in Fiji. It is argued that this serves as a strong source of social control for women in the Indo-Fijian community in Fiji. While domestic violence is a problem which exists across cultures and across history, the particular cultural and historical context of this violence reveals that while there are similarities in the experiences of all women who survive domestic violence, there are differences in the way the violence is interpreted and responded to in the day-to-day lives of these women. Of particular significance for Indo-Fijian women is the socialisation into traditional gender roles. The ancient and even more recent Hindu texts and traditions prescribe the 'proper roles' for an Indian woman, dictating that she must always be subordinate to men. The strict and highly influential cultural-familial ideologies also demand and stress the need and importance of female submission to male control. Indo-Fijian women in Fiji are subjected to varying degrees of violence, with both threats and actual use of violence, acting as an extremely effective method of ensuring the maintenance and reproduction of traditional gender relations among the Indo-Fijian community. The emergence of Women's Organisations, for example, the Fiji Women's Crisis Centre and the Fiji Women's Rights Movement, provide a source of resistance to these traditional gender relations, and the impetus for change in women's lives. The theoretical approach taken within this thesis is sociological and feminist, and therefore also concerned with social change. The method of investigation used is that of secondary data analysis. This method is particularly useful in that it allows the identification of trends within and across cultures.