Domestic Violence against Latinas

Domestic violence in Latino communities is mostly a result of low value which is given to Latino women due to lack of education, language barrier, culture, race, women not being represented in law making, but the biggest factor is that women can’t support large families on their own they count on their husbands and have no other choice but being stuck with the abuser.

Let us see how lack of education contributes to this abuse. First of all lack of academic education prevents these women from having a good employment with enough money and becoming independent so that in case the abuse happens they can take their kids and leave their husbands. Due to lack of financial resources, if these women chose to leave their husbands they would go back to their parents in order to support the kids and this is another social issue where Latino women feel embarrassed in the community for not being able to build a family.

Second, there is lack of knowledge of community resources and representatives. Latino women may not be aware of people and institutions that can defend their rights and make abusive husbands pay for their actions. This is a result of community isolation where Latino women are just home everyday taking care of domestic work without following up with media. For Latinos who don’t have documents yet to work in USA, men chose to take a risk of working illegally and leave women and kids home.

History, culture and social way Latinos understand how a Latino family must be, play a big role to this domestic abuse. Just like in many third world countries, it takes time for Latino communities to change their way of living (changing from how their ancestors lived) and in this case people may have an excuse of keeping their culture by following their ancestor’s tradition.

In this article, we find Conflict Theory being applied where Latino men take advantages of cultural practices and other barriers faced by Latino women to keep these women in abusive life. The only person who can put an end to this abuse is Latino women by getting enough education and resources, speaking up for themselves and not being stuck with bad traditional practices. It’s always a good idea for communities to keep their culture and pass it to their kids, but we should only keep good practices not bad ones otherwise it will be passed from one generation to another.