Brand - When Stories Seem Fake (original) (raw)
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International Journal for the Advancement of Counselling
Little research focuses on how counsellors experience counselling encounters concerning intimate partner violence. This study reports on narrative research conducted with eight South African non-governmental organisation counsellors. Participants spoke of creating productive and caring counselling dynamics, and providing non-directive counselling. However, they also indicated providing moral guidance, particularly in cases where pregnancy or children were involved. Success was viewed rather narrowly as the women leaving the relationship, setting up 'all-or-nothing' outcomes. Such 'success' led to counsellor happiness, whilst failure in this regard led to counsellors experiencing anger and burnout. We conclude that the conundrums evident in these data are grounded in patriarchal systems, limiting the efficacy of counselling based on a bondage and deliverance narrative. Implications for practice and training are also outlined.
Gender Issues, 2021
In the responses of informal networks to women seeking help for domestic violence, discourses of privatization, minimization and blame shifting emerged as salient. In particular, the discourse of "We need to understand the whole story" was frequently used to justify violence against those women who were seen as potentially violating gendered norms. This paper explores how these discourses contribute to the continuation of women abuse and to negative help seeking experiences for women seeking help for abuse. These discourses are embedded in the cultural contexts within which women seek help and are challenging to overcome by the women themselves. Hence, it is important that these discourses are contested and new narratives that enable help-seeking and help provision are constructed.
HELP-SEEKING BY ABUSED WOMEN IN SOUTH AFRICA
ABSTRACT Abused women are reluctant to seek help despite the existence of enabling legislation. An exploratory qualitative study was conducted with 17 abused women in shelters, to understand the personal, socio-cultural, structural and institutional factors that influenced help-seeking. Feminist standpoint theories were influential in the research design, methodology and analysis of this study because it provided participants with the power to define their experiences from within their own context. Four key themes that deterred help-seeking emerged. First, the predominance of patriarchy at the structural level emerged as an important theme that was enacted through men controlling women’s freedom of speech, association and movement. Second, at the socio-cultural level, discourses of love and the best interests of the child played a role in promoting the stability of the family above women’s safety. Third, women sought help from informal networks of support, which sent them back to abusive relationships because of their acquiescence with patriarchy and socio-cultural constructions that normalised and privatised abuse. As a consequence of the inaction of informal networks, the psychosocial or personal consequences of abuse were exacerbated and women did not consider utilising formal services. This was compounded by a lack of financial resources. Fourth, at the institutional level, when abused women presented at health settings for medical concerns, they remained undetected or who were sent back to the abusive relationship. Rarely did medical services refer women to social services. Women obtained referrals to shelters from other women and community services many years after first experiencing abuse. Abused women were positive about the role shelters played in their empowerment. vii A significant insight of this study is the way in which women attained empowerment and sought help by reconstructing the socio-cultural discourses that contributed to their oppression into the tools for agency. Women utilised legitimated socio-cultural discourses to justify seeking help, since challenging the status quo directly was too costly. Policy and practice need to target the personal, socio-cultural, institutional and structural impediments to seeking assistance, in order to prevent further violence, improve mental health outcomes and facilitate formal help-seeking.
The British Journal of Social Work, 2017
This paper explores the concept of trust in relation to social work, child protection and work on domestic abuse. Trust is a complex notion. Borrowing from the arguments of Behnia, that trust is the outcome of a process, the paper uses the talk of women who have experienced social work in the context of domestic abuse and child protection to consider the barriers to trust-building. The evidence is gathered from 3 focus groups which formed part of an evaluation of a 'Freedom Programme'. The findings highlight issues with trust-building that start with the context of living with abuse and work outwards to considerations of professional power, social work systems and wider inequality, suggesting an ecological approach to the trust-building process. The key argument is that social workers will struggle to gain trust within a system that sees domestic abuse as a hurdle that mothers must overcome, rather than a trauma through which they should be supported. The experiences of the women in this research, however, does show that trust and respect for voluntary service is achievable and that practice which builds alliances with the voluntary sector and service users could develop more trusting relationships.
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2022
The current study explores the lived experiences of female psychologists who provide psychological treatment to women survivors of sexual assault. These practitioners are a population of special interest due to the frequency of their exposure to narratives and graphic images of sexual trauma. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 female South African psychologists. The data, which were analyzed using an interpretative phenomenological approach, revealed experiences characteristic of vicarious traumatization. Participants reported having an enhanced sense of personal vulnerability to sexual assault and heightened awareness of the betrayals of trust that women experience from male figures, which has led to increased mistrust of men and hypervigilance regarding the safety of their daughters. Internalization of feelings of helplessness experienced by the victim evoked self-blame for practitioners and appraisals of being complicit in abuse. Practitioners also experienced surv...
Women Abuse under the Guise of Culture and Language Use: Women Narrate their Stories
The Oriental Anthropologist: A Bi-annual International Journal of the Science of Man
Many African proverbs that are used to define relationships between men and women, specifically the marital relationship, seem to be gender biased and focus more on women. In this study, women's narratives relating to abuse under the guise of culture and language use were explored using hermeneutic phenomenology. Language is at the core of the description and interpretation of reality to produce meanings and to understand people's lives. Therefore, societal expectations are instilled in members of a society through language as part of their socialisation process. The study sample consisted of women who had received premarital counselling and who lived in the cities of Tshwane and Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa. Five individual and eight focus-group interviews were conducted with 57 participants. Colaizzi's methods of data analysis were used and the findings revealed that vernacular proverb songs were used to reinforce the expectation that women in general and married women in particular had to play a submissive role.
Domestic abuse victims’ perceptions of abuse and support: a narrative study
Journal of Criminological Research, Policy and Practice, 2015
Whilst there is a large body of research exploring the various avenues of support for domestic abuse victims and the risk factors which put women at risk of victimization, there is little research exploring the perceptions of these women. The purpose of the study was therefore to explore the personal views of victimized women; in particular, the risk factors that they believe put them at risk for abuse and what they feel support services should offer. Twelve women were interviewed about their experiences of domestic violence. Interviews were analyzed using thematic analysis which resulted in three themes: (1) first intimate relationship;