Sociocultural Barriers to Help-Seeking for Domestic Violence in Kyrgyzstan: Service Providers Perspectives

Background/Purpose: With the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5.2, the United Nations has appealed to its member countries to eliminate violence against all women and girls by 2030. Nearly one in three women worldwide experience domestic violence (DV) in their lifetime. Research on survivors of DV suggests that most do not seek supportive services from formal organizations. Understanding this barrier to seek help is critical to meaningful interventions. Little research has examined the role of cultural, structural, and legal processes in the justification and perpetuation of DV. This study explores the sociocultural barriers that prevent survivors of DV in Kyrgyzstan from seeking help from the perspectives of professionals who work directly with survivors in law enforcement, the judicial system, and social, health, and educational sectors.

Theory/Methods: The authors conducted 20 semi-structured interviews and eight focus groups with 83 professionals working with survivors of DV. Informed by grounded theory methods, data were analyzed using a multi-step strategy. The study's theoretical foundation is an ecological systems approach to DV, which conceptualizes violence as a multi-faceted phenomenon based on the interplay among personal, situational, and sociocultural factors.

Results: Results indicate that cultural norms, including patriarchal customs, the pressure put on women to save the marriage, the stigma of divorce, a low status assigned to women, wide acceptance of violence as inherent, and fear of retaliation were significant reasons perpetuating DV and preventing survivors from help-seeking. The findings pointed to insufficient sanctions for abusers, weak law enforcement, and structural barriers such as financial dependence on the abuser, a shortage of crisis centers, and a lack of women's property rights in Kyrgyzstan.

Conclusions and Implications: The descriptions of service providers' experiences can be understood within an ecological framework in which environmental demands and resources help or hinder survivors' coping behavior and decision-making. The framework incorporates a survivor's situation, household context, social environment, and cultural value system surrounding her. Examining these multiple contexts helps researchers and practitioners understand the reasons why: (1) women feel helpless when abuse has occurred, (2) most victims are reluctant to report abuse, (3) abused women withdraw registered complaints and reconcile with their abusers, and (4) the ways these actions affect the cycle of violence. The study reveals a cultural ecosystem, influenced by the norms of post-Soviet Kyrgyz society with strong social and cultural deterrents, impedes survivors' ability to escape abuse. This study shows that sociocultural, institutional, and legal factors perpetuate DV. Given that DV occurs in a complex environment, breaking the cycle of abuse will not be easy. Overcoming the multiple barriers that DV survivors face when seeking help is a challenge that will require support from professionals in education, criminal justice, social work, and public health at all levels and encompassing deep cultural shifts. The study contributes to a basis for generating culturally informed and evidence-based interventions tackling sociocultural, institutional, and legal barriers which are responsive to the goal of the SDGs to eliminate violence against women and girls.