Uso práctico de la plataforma en la Red de Bibliotecas Públicas de Andalucía

While the main aim of the program is harm minimisation and prevention of DFV by increasing women’s awareness, social networks and personal empowerment, the model of community consultation gave rise to a strong element of community ownership of the programs.

Program workers reflected on the way in which some parts of the program had, in a sense, evolved and taken on a life of their own. The Nepalese Reference Group, in particular, had grown to take leadership in the direction of the Family Harmony Initiative and program workers noted significant attitudinal change among male community members. According to program workers, the Nepalese Reference Group, made up only of men, had come to see DFV as an important issue to be tackled in their community and this had led to the group wanting to help other communities, though their conception of DFV differed from the program workers/program theory:

So when you are down the road already to talk about DV, not as the group but informally, it’s very informally. I was not surprised at all. Last Nepali event he actually went up on the stage as part of a speech saying that we would like to help other community not only being help and we work on many issues including DV, and I was like “did he actually talk about DV”?. But the fact that he actually publicly acknowledged that DV—that we, because on many things helping you know, Nepali people get jobs and stuff like that. But back to that yoga, that’s how they said that let’s work about—let’s work on anger management and stress, it’s very good because it helps us to calm down as man. So we say OK we’ll go there first and we didn’t really touch on it first and now we just let it—let that happen first and when you’re ready we’ll bring them back to the table. Then something else progress … So now I think we are ready to go in the next meeting and talk about family relationship because he mention it in front of everybody, like 200 people about the fact that we work on … issues. So in a way it’s indirectly the issue even though we know stress and anger management is not direct, it is the anger thing but it’s OK, we can work on the anger you know … So I call that the way we approach it in a different way. So I would say to sum it up, is the journey different but the destination is the same because we look at the whole family wellbeing. So if that’s the way Nepali want to go, fine, but the Bengali because we have South Asian Mothers Group. (Program worker)

As the program worker, above, describes, the male Nepalese Reference Group tended to view DFV as a result of anger and thus approached DFV prevention by addressing men’s stress through yoga and through family activities designed to bring families closer together:

I found here there are too many things toward the violence in the family but one main thing is the at home stress message, because people too busy in work and they don’t have enough time to spend their time with the family and they found that the stress when they’re apart from any stress they found that, violence and aggressive and around myself I try to teach the people don’t’ be too busy in work, find some time to spend the time with the family and enjoyment, take enough rest and they calm down. So it’s important thing to ...

make a time to get the family and most the time they spend with the family in that case. (Nepalese Reference Group member)

Members of the Mothers Group also highlighted family stress as a cause of conflict:

Then the wives are stressed and doing with the kids thing and all and the settlement and everything and the husband is also in and he doesn’t know how to properly support the wife, what happens in between then the clashes start. (Mothers group member)

There is considerable discussion in the literature about the associations between traditional ideas about the role of women in the family, the financial dependency of women on their partners and cultural norms that support beliefs about male entitlement and a greater risk of DFV (Flood & Pease, 2008; Fulu et al., 2013; Ghafournia, 2011; Hagemann-White et al., 2010; Jewkes, 2002; Poljski & Murdolo, 2011; Trijbetz, 2013; VicHealth, 2007; WHO, 2010). These are pertinent factors for CALD and immigrant communities; as one program worker explained, women in new migrant communities were often better able to secure employment, often in the community sector, while the men, though skilled, could only secure employment in menial labour or driving taxis and this was often a source of conflict within some cultural groups. The comment below, concerning income disparity, from a member of the Nepalese Reference Group provides an illustration of how these issues are perceived:

And we found out that, you know like when looking at them, we found out that you know like it was probably lack of the balance of the income, you know, when you go to the … income between us and wife right, and then the income, we found that one of the major [issues] was the income … (Nepalese Reference Group Member)

Although many of the program participants initially had a limited understanding about DFV, there were some indications that both Nepalese men and South Asian Women had over time developed broader understandings of DFV, and these changes may be attributed to their involvement in the community education program.8

For example, members of the Mothers Group and the Nepalese Reference Group demonstrated how they had over time developed a more nuanced conceptualisation of DFV, linking it to gender inequality and male dominance:

Male dominated, like male dominated terrorism right, because according to our culture like husbands do some wild things to the wife is normal you know. We need to have someone who can educate them in Australia law is different you know, like not like that, and back in our country you know, like I’ve seen the incident that one husband broke her ankle here and then she was just staying at home and just three days later they calm down and he was carrying her and taking her to the hospital you know. So here we need to educate the people from our community that OK once you link it to a domestic violence case that,

8 _{Though it should be noted that as there were no pre-participation attitudinal surveys conducted at the beginning of} the program, it is not possible to ascertain whether these views were a result of participation in the Domestic Violence Community Education Program

that … will be there forever, you know, so that is serious matter. (Nepalese Reference Group member)

The Nepalese Reference Group indicated that their role was not only to communicate the needs of their community, but also to disseminate the message that DFV was not acceptable, and was against the law in Australia. In this regard, the group indicated that there had been positive change in the community as a result of the DFV education:

So basically that’s been taking time but it has given the very positive message to our community people. So like here, people come and go, come and go, and not many people are like they will have gone long, long time right, but it’s still there consistency right, and then this is spreading around the other circle as well. So we think that it has made that impact. (Nepalese Reference Group member)