“inside of ME I Don't Feel Safe”: The Conditional Contexts and Features of Safety Among Women Who Experience Intimate Partner Violence

Background & Purpose: Empirical evidence and practice wisdom tells us women simultaneously endure and resist IPV in an effort to protect themselves – to be safe. But what does it mean to be safe? The majority of social work responses position physical safety, and reducing the threat of future harm, to be the primary goal of women’s help-seeking behavior, and by extension, the primary feature of what it means to be safe. However, there is no evidence indicating the elimination or minimization of direct physical harm is the primary motivation for women’s help-seeking, nor the primary feature of feeling safe. While social workers and other helping professionals have put forth enormous effort to understand and predict relationships between socio-demographic variables, help-seeking behaviors, and coping strategies, we don’t yet have evidence about the definition, features, and construction of safety, from women’s point of view. The purpose of this study was to examine 1) what makes women feel safe and 2) how a sense of safety is achieved, in order to theorize about the construct of safety.

Methods: Underpinned by intersectional and feminist theories, and guided by principles of grounded theory, 14 semi-structured interviews were conducted with women (ages 22-52) who self-identified as experiencing IPV. The sample included White (7), racialized (5), and Aboriginal (2) women. At the time of interview, half of the participants considered themselves unsafe (7), safe (6), or unsure (1). Initial participants were recruited via posted flyers and an email sent through a regional Woman Abuse Council. Interviews elicited stories and descriptions of participants’ experience of IPV, their conceptualization of safety, and ideas about how helping professionals could better imagine what being safe means for women who experience IPV. Interviews were transcribed verbatim, coded by hand and with qualitative software, and analyzed using techniques consistent with constructivist grounded theory.

Findings: Analysis reveals women who experience IPV describe the concept of safety in complicated, complex, and conditional ways. A key finding of this study reveals feeling safe goes beyond the direct, embodied harms inherent in an abusive relationship. While participants certainly described feeling safe when their abusive partner was no longer able to intimidate, violate, or enact abusive behaviors, a broader concept of safety emerged pushing past simply eliminating the threat of future harm. Participants who described feeling safe described this as feeling safe inside. The data suggest women feel safe inside when they have power to make decisions; access to information and reliable knowledge about IPV and suitable resources; time and space to heal; housing and economic self-sufficiency; and access to unconditional support.

Conclusion & Implications: These findings illustrate the construct of safety – what it means to feel safe – reaches beyond the violent interpersonal relationship and the impacts of the abusive behaviors. Working to eliminate abusive impacts should certainly remain at the core of our prevention and intervention strategies, however responding to the dynamic and ever-changing sense of safety women experience over the course of an abusive relationship must be considered in future practice with survivors.