Despite renewed interest in enacting policies and developing programs to address domestic violence against women in Australia, it remains the leading contributor of death, illness, and disability among Australian women under the age of forty-five. Australia has a high proportion of culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) people, yet in the context of domestic violence, their needs and experiences are often absent from mainstream domestic violence discourse, while simultaneously being frequently the subject of distorted and inflammatory media coverage. In this thesis, I explore the experiences of domestic violence among a small sample of women from a range of CALD backgrounds and examine how Australian media (re)constructs and shapes contemporary discourses of domestic violence.
A two-stage qualitative research design was employed, underpinned by the theoretical frameworks of intersectional feminism and post-structuralism. Stage one involved a secondary analysis of newspaper texts. Stage two comprised one-to-one interviews at two time points with five CALD women who had experienced and were victim-survivors of domestic violence. Particular attention was paid to if and how the women’s cultural identity shaped their experiences and access to, or uptake of, domestic violence support services.
All data were analysed using Foucauldian Discourse Analysis. Across the data from the two stages four dominant discourses were identified: “Domestic Violence is un-Australian”, a media narrative that racialises abuse and constructs domestic violence as foreign to Australian identity; “Why Don’t You Just Leave?”, which highlights the structural, cultural, and systemic obstacles CALD women face when attempting to leave abusive relationships; “Domestic Violence is a Private Family Issue”, which frames abuse in CALD communities as a private matter and discourages outside intervention; and “Domestic Violence Doesn’t End When the Relationship Ends”, which centres around the continuation of abuse through perpetrators’ misuse of support services.
This dataset includes 10 Word documents containing the transcripts of 10 semi-structured interviews conducted with 5 different participants (2 interviews per participant).
Access to this dataset is restricted due to ethical constraints. To discuss the research, contact Olga Soumpassakis [17971179@student.westernsydney.edu.au] [0000-0001-8462-4766].
