Domestic violence is difficult enough for women to report, but the process becomes next to impossible when the affected woman is a member of a minority group such as Travellers, Ms Ronnie Fay of Pavee Point, a Travellers' rights organisation, has said.
She was speaking at the National Conference on Racism and Violence Against Women yesterday in Dublin.
Organised by Pavee Point as part of the global campaign "16 Days of Action Against Violence Against Women", the conference featured international speakers who discussed the problems of marginalised women in Australia and England and how better serv ices could be provided for them.
A group of Traveller women performed a short drama portraying a woman who tried to find refuge from an abusive husband only to be confronted with racism at the "support centre". She returned to her husband who had promised: "If you get me arrested, I'll kill you."
Mary McDonnell, one of the performers, said the aim of the production was to "urge settled women to listen to us. They're not listening to our views."
A recent study on male domestic violence against women in the Traveller community undertaken by Pavee Point showed the women felt they ought not report violence against them out of fear of furthering racism against their community. "If they expose negative aspects of their lives as women within the Traveller community, they are often accused of undermining the image of the Traveller community as a whole," the report stated.
Ms Lena Joyce of Pavee Point said: "Service providers need to become sensitive to the needs of Traveller women at a time when we're at our most vulnerable. Violent male behaviour has no place in Traveller culture or any other culture for that matter. I call on Traveller men to support us women in challenging the unacceptable behaviour of a minority of Traveller men."
The organisation is supporting an initiative to provide better support services, including training for personnel who work with Traveller women and research into the options for Traveller women who experience violence, as well as policy changes.
"We hope that the proposed equal status legislation will provide added protection for Traveller women seeking access to services by making it illegal to discriminate against them," Ms Fay told the conference.
Ms Pragna Patel of Southall Black Sisters, a London-based organisation which promotes equality of access to social services for minority women, said the first step in solving domestic violence problems was breaking the patterns of silence. "The perception of dishonouring the community is common, especially in minority groups," she said. "We must turn the notion of shame that women often feel on to the head of the perpetrator."
Ms Patel noted that women's voices often got lost in debate. "Two of the most important issues in Europe today are the refugee problem and the mistreatment of groups such as Travellers, Roma, gypsies," she said. "There is a danger that these problems are seen as `issues' rather than as individuals experiencing oppression, and women are virtually ignored."
In the last 10 years domestic violence has come to be considered a human rights issue, Ms Hilary McCollum, an anti-domestic violence organiser, said, but even that step forward was not enough. "Women don't just need rights, they need the power to access those rights."