The Ontario Rural Woman Abuse Study (ORWAS), final report
6. RESEARCH OUTCOMES AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS
- 6.1 Key Issues
- 6.2 Findings: Rural Specific
- 6.3 Contributions of Research
- 6.4 Areas for Further Research
- 6.5 Dissemination and Communications Plan
6. RESEARCH OUTCOMES AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS
At the final workshop in December 1998, the researchers met to collectively discuss the key issues identified by the research, the rural-specific findings, the contributions of the research to the area of domestic abuse, and to reflect on the research process and to discuss areas for further research. The following summarises these discussions.
6.1 Key Issues
The key issues that emerged from the research were as follows:
- Fear is ongoing - during and after leaving the relationship.
- There is a need for a co-ordinated response to woman abuse at all levels.
- Women need easier access to key information.
- Women experienced frustration with the criminal justice system at all levels.
- Shelters and workers were the lifeline for many women. In rural areas, outreach workers are key because they go to the women.
- Children were ironically often the reason women either left or remained in their abusive relationships.
- There is a need for ongoing public education at the local level that can lead to greater community action and ownership of woman abuse.
- To end abuse, more support is needed for men.
- Women lived with the constant fear and threat of firearms being used against them or their children.
Many of the issues are not unique to women experiencing violence in rural areas, however these issues may be compounded by rural conditions.
6.2 Findings: Rural Specific
Six key findings distinguished woman abuse in rural areas from woman abuse generally:
- Geography
- the physical isolation that women experience due to their location.
- Rural ethics and character
- women are reluctant to ask for help partly because of traditional values about male and female roles.
- Community complacency
- many in the community knew about the abuse but few did anything about it. Abuse was often a source of gossip.
- Limited access to services and information
- distance and lack of transportation limits women’s access to services and information.
- Lack of anonymity
- everyone knows everyone.
- Safety issues
- delayed response time, distance and location can all affect a woman’s safety.
The complexity of rural areas indicates that responses to urban abuse require a rural-specific lens.
6.3 Contributions of Research
Empowerment-based research such as ORWAS allows for a more inclusive research process that facilitates localised action, builds the local research capacity and enhances the prospects for change. The specific benefits of undertaking research such as the ORWAS study were felt to be:
- That it was an inclusive and respectful process.
- That women survivors were the experts and were the voices throughout the research process.
- That community researchers were part of the project design and were involved in the data analysis.
- That the research skills developed for ORWAS remained in the communities upon completion of the project.
- That the communities were involved in the focus groups.
- That the community reports enabled timely feedback.
- That the research process facilitated the possibility for localised action.
- That the result of the project is ongoing community responses.
- That the research process and the research findings have facilitated the creation of links between local, provincial, and federal levels of government and have contributed toward ongoing federal government initiatives and policies, such as Rural Dialogue.
6.4 Areas for Further Research
The ORWAS study identified further areas requiring research on woman abuse:
- Access to justice in rural areas.
- Public education - after 20 years of public legal education and information on the issue of woman abuse, education is still identified as inadequate and necessary. The question remains, ‘What are the best information dissemination mediums?’
- Cultural issues - Aboriginal, immigrant and minority women have specialised needs.
- Custody and access issues.
- Questions surrounding accountability. For example, what does accountability mean? What are the appropriate outcomes for someone found guilty of woman abuse?
- The extent of the threatened use of firearms in woman abuse.
- Access to legal aid.
- Utilisation of criminal injuries compensation.
- The ineffectiveness of peace bonds/restraining orders.
- The research process - specifically, what impact did the study have on all those involved: researchers, survivors, and communities?
6.5 Dissemination and Communications Plan
The dissemination of information and keeping participants informed were key issues throughout the study. All research participants vetted transcripts, had the option of keeping the interview tape, and received final copies of the community reports. Research findings have been presented in numerous public forums.
- In addition to the CAPRO conference, at the local level, most community researchers have made presentations to local organisations (e.g., Rotary club, Kiwanis, shelter annual meetings, local Women’s Institutes meetings).
- Several researchers were featured in local newspaper articles about the study.
- At the federal level, several presentations on the research were made. In October 1998, the principal researchers, the CAPRO co-ordinator, two community researchers and one of the interviewed survivors made a presentation to policymakers and academics at the federal government conference on social cohesion, entitled “Policy Research: Creating Links”.
Presentations were also made to the federal Interdepartmental Working Group on Rural Issues and several academic conferences.
Research findings pertaining to Justice Canada issues were directed toward the appropriate policy and research officers. In particular, research findings on the threat of firearms were directed to the Department of Justice Firearms Centre. These findings were built into a research project with urban and rural shelters in Alberta which will look at the use of firearms in domestic violence, including threats. As previously noted, the Department of Justice Canada also contracted with a community-based, action-oriented research centre in British Columbia to implement the ORWAS research methodology in two rural B.C. sites. Health Canada and Justice Canada have a joint project currently underway that reviews the impact of ORWAS as a community-based research project. This project was initiated and is being led by one of the community researchers.
The research methodology utilised in this study is a contribution to the development of alternative methodologies utilised in empowerment-type research. Its main objective was to start with the experiences of women and provide a space and a voice to a group of women whose involvement in the criminal justice system and other social systems is not well understood, due to their physical location. These same women are often the most personally victimised and simultaneously the most invisible in a movement that is all about violence against women.
The ORWAS process enabled some of the gaps in the literature to be addressed.
- Having the researchers located within the communities helped to ensure that the culture of a particular community would be respected and understood.
- By going directly to the women, an effort was made to rebuild women’s experiences back into the movement.
- Women’s experiences explained the course and challenges of leaving abusive relationships and accessing assistance in rural areas.
- The role that distance plays in accessing safety and delayed response times by police and authorities.
- The lack of anonymity in rural areas and the impact that traditional values and ethics of self-sufficiency impact on women accessing safety.
The nature of the research methodology enabled responses to be located, gathered and contextualised under a rural lens.
Further, ORWAS is the first research project that the Research and Statistics Division at the Department of Justice Canada has undertaken with an inclusive qualitative community-based methodology that utilises a gender-based analysis. Policy linkages emerge from three levels:
- First, at the community level, the project was able to facilitate a community process that validated the issue of woman abuse in the six sites. This reinforced the importance of locally developed strategies, supporting the local shelters, including women in the solutions and the need for an informed community direction about woman abuse.
- Second, at the provincial level, policy links impact most directly on services, e.g., policing, health and social services, education, women’s programs, etc.
- Third, from a policy perspective of the Department of Justice Canada, the research findings have enabled a dialogue to begin about woman abuse in rural areas on four levels:
- First, the research findings provide immediate information on how criminal justice policies are impacting on women in rural areas, e.g., access to justice, firearms, legal aid, and custody and access issues.
- Second, the research reinforces how criminal justice issues are embedded within broader social, political and economic issues and are thus difficult to isolate. As a result, the findings can be fed into a more practical side of public policymaking.
- Third, the research findings impact on other departments: Partnering and sharing findings across federal departments (e.g., Health Canada; Agriculture Canada) facilitates informed decision-making and policy development.
- Finally, utilising an innovative approach contributed to a broader understanding of woman abuse in rural areas more generally while also anticipating future policy implications and research issues. Overall, sharing the research experience, methodology and findings contributes to the advancement of our understanding as researchers and as social service practitioners.
In conclusion, the research methods that one chooses directly affect and impact upon the nature of one’s findings. A more structured method may result in a less flexible or amenable approach as one proceeds. However, implementing a gender-based research plan such as ORWAS encourages alternative ways of collecting information. Such a research plan “begins with women’s experiences as they see it”
and it “meets women where they are at”
. It is not an easy strategy. It requires significant time, flexibility, energy, commitment, co-ordination, and resources (quality equipment and transcribers). The pay back, however, is an inclusive, respectful process that potentially and ideally can lead to some element of community action and change.
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