Daughters of Men

Abstract

While domestic abuse is an all too common experience for women worldwide, how people experience the abuse and their resources to deal with the abuse differ. In this qualitative, interview-based study, we examine Saudi women's domestic safety concerns living in Saudi Arabia and the United States. Based on non-Western Islamic feminist views of agency, we identify three key practices, focused on how women resist or deal with their domestic violence. For each practice, we highlight how interwoven cultural, religious, and political contexts impact Saudi women's ability to recognize and deal with domestic abuse. We attend to technology's role in enabling or hindering women's agency. These practices include: 1) recognizing abuse, where women identify abusive situations, 2) managing abuse, where women find ways to cope with ongoing or anticipated abuse within their constraints and resources, and 3) seeking non-abusive futures, where women decide how to mitigate the abuse or leave their abuser. Given domestic violence's complicated nature, we highlight several key design recommendations based on women's values.

Educating and Coping: Women’s Co-Designed Strategies for Cultivating Supportive Online Spaces for Sexual and Reproductive Health (Preprint)

“…The second strategy was to shift focus from the problems that women face to the tactics they already use to cope and look for opportunities to support these tactics [54]. Rabaan et al [56] resonated with this strategy and emphasized the importance of understanding the interwoven complexity of the sociocultural dimensions of the problem, considering historical developments, and accepting and respecting the different choices people make while understanding why they make them. With an indepth understanding of the scarce structural support in protecting Saudi women from domestic abuse, they uncovered that resiliency was a valuable strategy for Saudi women to sustain moving forward and even to take action to end the violence.…”

“…With an indepth understanding of the scarce structural support in protecting Saudi women from domestic abuse, they uncovered that resiliency was a valuable strategy for Saudi women to sustain moving forward and even to take action to end the violence. To design for a customized interactive system that supports resiliency, Rabaan et al [56] suggested designing a screening tool to measure where a woman is at in her options, resources, needs, concerns, and what she perceives as expected or abusive.…”