Peerformance: Bystanders Enacting and Challenging Gender Norms in Community-Based Theater to Prevent Domestic Violence

Interactive and Forum Theater in Domestic Violence Prevention

Interactive theatrical practice has long been used as a tool for domestic violence prevention, and increasing evidence suggests its effectiveness (see Heard et al., 2020, for a review of recent studies), particularly for understanding and challenging social norms that sustain domestic violence in diverse community contexts (O’Connor & Colucci, 2016; Yoshihama & Tolman, 2015). This approach to prevention involves facilitated interactions among community members and actors about a theatrical piece depicting domestic violence.

Forum Theater is a type of interactive theater developed by Augusto Boal (1979) that has been used to address various types of oppression, including domestic violence. Rooted in the liberatory pedagogy of Paolo Freire (1970), Forum Theater was designed for communities to encourage analysis and change of systems of oppression via a three-step process. First, actors enact a scenario of oppression that is intentionally left unsettled. Second, audience members—called spect-actors—are invited to replace actors in the scene to change the outcome of the scenario. Typically, spect-actors are encouraged to come up, one after another, to try out different actions. Some spect-actors choose to build off of actions tried previously; others choose to try entirely new actions. Finally, a facilitator leads an interactive discussion among actors, spect-actors, and audience members about spect-actors’ actions in terms of their usefulness for addressing the conflict and bringing about change (Boal, 2002).

Boal’s original conception of Forum Theater required that spect-actors only replace the person in the scene experiencing the oppression (called the “protagonist”) to avoid the fallacy of a magical solution to oppression, in which a protagonist is “saved” by an entity outside the oppressive system. However, over time, practitioners have pushed back on this requirement, arguing that those who witness an act of oppression, such as a domestic violence incident, are in a position to intervene in helpful and even life-saving ways; therefore, a Forum Theater for bystanders is possible and needed (Mitchell & Freitag, 2011). Boal (1993, 2002) himself presented case examples where he made adaptations according to the situation at hand. Indeed, variations of Forum Theater have been used with some success in bystander programs to prevent gender-based violence in university and community settings (Ahrens et al., 2011; Christensen, 2013; McMahon et al., 2015; Mitchell & Freitag, 2011; Rodríguez et al., 2006). For example, the InterACT Sexual Assault Prevention Program found that the use of Forum Theater for bystanders increased participants’ beliefs about bystander intervention effectiveness and their likelihood of intervening in a situation involving sexual assault (Ahrens et al., 2011).

Domestic Violence Against South Asian Women in the Diaspora

South Asians are a diverse and growing population group that includes those with heritage ties to Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives. About 5.4 million South Asians live in the United States, a growth of 40% in the past decade (U.S. Census Bureau, 2017). Alongside strong activism and organizing efforts to address domestic violence in South Asian communities (Abraham, 2013), research on the prevalence and consequences of domestic violence in these communities has accumulated over the last several decades. Reported domestic violence prevalence among South Asian women varies from 21.2% to 40.8%, reflecting varying methodologies (see Yoshihama et al., 2020). Studies have documented the myriad barriers to help-seeking that South Asian women face, including sociocultural proscriptions against discussing family matters with outsiders and the value placed on saving family honor, harmony, and collective welfare (Ahmad et al., 2009; Dabby & Yoshihama, 2020; Rai et al., 2021).

Another line of research has interrogated the South Asian family system and sociocultural context, implicating patriarchal family structures, ideology, and associated norms as contributors to domestic violence (Abraham, 1998; Choudhry, 2001). In many South Asian families, upon marriage, a woman becomes part of her husband’s family and, based on gender and seniority, is placed at the bottom of the family order and expected to assume domestic chores for the family (Abraham, 2005; Das Dasgupta, 2007). In this type of patriarchal structure, violence toward wives is often justified as a means to control women when they are considered to be not conforming to their prescribed roles involving child care, cooking, and other domestic, wifely tasks (Dabby & Yoshihama, 2020; Preisser, 1999). Emphasis on family harmony and honor and the strong stigma of divorce, serve to constrain women’s life choices while also reinforcing patriarchal gender relations (Abraham, 2005; Choudhry, 2001; Dabby & Yoshihama, 2020). Religious institutions and community-based organizations also play a role in imposing gendered ideologies and expectations (Abraham, 2013).

It is important, however, not to characterize the South Asian family structure and cultural values as vastly dissimilar to those of other groups. Across almost all cultures and societies, patriarchal ideology and norms provide implicit and explicit approval and support for men’s use of violence against women, and patriarchal norms and attitudes have been found to be associated with perpetration of domestic violence in many cultures (Dabby & Yoshihama, 2020; Harris et al., 2005; Smith, 1990; Stith et al., 2004; Yoshihama, 2005). Importantly, patriarchy itself is not a static institution; it is also constantly contested, negotiated, and reformulated (Chaudhuri et al., 2014; Kandiyoti, 1998). Therefore, South Asians’ construction of and responses to patriarchy as manifested in the United States deserve to be investigated and understood contextually (Yoshihama et al., 2012).

Understanding gender relations in the South Asian diaspora requires an intersectional lens to recognize how race, ethnicity, class, legal status, and other social positionalities mutually interact with gender to produce a complex web of marginalization and disempowerment in the larger societal structure (Abraham, 1998, 2005; Espiritu, 1997). As racial minorities and immigrants, South Asians in the United States are both marginalized and characterized as a model minority—with strong family unity as well as educational and economic success—creating complex dynamics (Abraham, 2005, 2013; Das Dasgupta, 2007). Many immigrants experience downward socioeconomic standing when they arrive to the United States; for example, some are not able to find a job commensurate with their skills and experiences in their country of origin, due, in part, to racial discrimination. This downward standing can have a disempowering effect on men as a group, who enjoyed privilege and entitlement in their country of origin. Immigrant men might exert power and control over their partner in an effort to “reassert loss of status and power” (Abraham, 2005, p. 437). In romanticizing gender relations in the country of origin, immigrant men might impose rigid gender expectations (Abraham, 2005; Yoshihama, 2009).

Despite these intersectional cultural prescriptions and structural constraints, South Asian survivors are not passive; they have developed various strategies for survival and safety (Chaudhuri et al., 2014; Mehrotra, 1999). These include what Kandiyoti (1988, 1998) referred to as “patriarchal bargaining strategies” to “maximize security and optimize life options with varying potential for active or passive resistance in the face of oppression” (1988, p. 274). With limited structural and material resources, women may conform to or otherwise tolerate patriarchal and sociocultural expectations in some instances while challenging and defying them, directly or covertly, in other instances (Gerami & Lehnerer, 2001; Kandiyoti, 1998). For example, a woman may embody her secondary status in the family by ensuring that her husband eats his whole meal before she and the children eat anything, while also asserting her worth by saving and eating the best piece of meat for herself. This type of bargaining is not limited to women of a particular ethnic or national origin; women of every socioeconomic status around the globe engage in these bargaining behaviors (Moore, 1994). Patriarchal bargaining, while providing some benefits, reinforces the very oppressive system that women are resisting (Kandiyoti, 1998).

The existing scholarship reviewed above has focused on South Asian women’s experiences of victimization and the intersectional and interlocking impact of the sociocultural and structural constraints they face. This study adds to this rich scholarship the perspectives and behaviors of community members who, as bystanders, have the opportunity to make a difference, not only in a specific incident of domestic violence, but also in changing community attitudes and normative expectations around gender roles and gender relations. This study examines how community members reacted to and interacted with a domestic violence incident in a Peerformance (described below; also see Yoshihama et al., 2021) presented during a South Asian community event. The goal of this study is to understand how ordinary community members constructed gender roles and gender relations when encouraged to intervene in the scene; for example, did they impose or challenge them and, if so, how? Direct observation of community members performing actions they thought would be helpful in addressing domestic violence, we believed, would help develop socioculturally relevant bystander approaches to preventing domestic violence.

Peerformance and Peerformers

As part of an ongoing community collaboration, we created Peerformance, a peer-led theatrical program of domestic violence prevention. In 2001, concerned about the lack of programs addressing domestic violence in local Asian communities, three local women (including the first author) initiated a participatory action research project and engaged Asian community members and domestic violence programs in community assessment and organizing efforts. Per members’ suggestions, findings of the initial community assessment were presented using skits scripted and enacted by them. Over the years, our project has increasingly used various methods of theater in community education and training activities (see Yoshihama & Tolman, 2015 for detail). One such effort is Peerformance using Forum Theater (Boal, 1979) to encourage community members to be proactive bystanders when witnessing domestic violence. We call these theater-based initiatives Peerformances to foreground the central role of community members in creating and performing the pieces. Peerformance has been used to address domestic violence in local Asian communities, including the aforementioned South Asian community (Yoshihama et al., 2021).

During this time, over 30 community members have been trained as peerformers, people who help develop scripts and perform theatrical skits. The peerformers are diverse in gender, age, ethnicity, religion/faith, and generational position. Many of them hold leadership positions in local ethnic organizations and are regarded as trusted sources of information, knowledge, and advice. Training for peerformers consists of an initial intensive workshop ranging from 20 to 40 hours as well as regular, ongoing meetings that include information and skill building on the following topics: domestic violence prevention, gender justice, community engagement, and theatrical communication. Over the years, these peerformers have worked collaboratively and closely with the research team to develop skits about domestic violence—Peerformance presentations—in various community venues. Drawing on their personal experiences and/or knowledge of people and incidents they know of in the community, they contribute their ideas for specific situations, story lines, and sociocultural contexts on which to focus. They also perform in Peerformance presentations and facilitate postperformance discussions.

Study Context: Peerformance at a Walkathon With Adapted Forum Theater

This study analyzes one Peerformance that occurred during an outdoor walkathon to raise awareness about domestic violence sponsored by a local South Asian community-based organization (SACBO). This annual event was widely publicized across the local South Asian community and held in a public park, with children, parents, and friends participating together. The atmosphere was family-friendly and purposeful. In addition to displaying domestic violence brochures in the welcome tent and giving a brief introductory speech about domestic violence prevention, the SACBO included a Peerformance as part of the event as a way to encourage interactive consciousness-raising about domestic violence. Prior to the skit, we introduced ourselves as part of a university-based research team and explained the procedures including their rights not to participate and/or be videotaped. We also provided a content warning—that some content of the skit might be upsetting and that some audience members might wish to move away from the skit to a different part of the park.

As in traditional Forum Theater, a skit was performed before the walkathon began. In it, the wife asks her husband to stay home with the children so she can attend a 1-hour work meeting. The husband refuses, saying that it is her job to take care of the children and that she should stay home. The wife insists she needs to go to the work meeting, reminding her husband that she rarely asks him to take care of the children; she would not ask if it were not important. Over the duration of the short skit, the voices of the two actors become increasingly strident, and the skit ends as the husband makes a gesture as though he is going to physically strike his wife.

In a departure from traditional Forum Theater, in which the audience members are encouraged to intervene directly after the initial skit, this Peerformance was designed to be an ongoing experience throughout the walkathon. Such a departure reflects the tailoring that is frequently necessary in applied community settings such as this; the walkathon’s organizer wanted to ensure a relatively quick transition from the skit performance to walking. Thus, we made adaptions to the Forum Theater process to integrate the Peerformance into the walk itself. When the initial skit ended, a facilitator told community members to start on their walk and think about what they had just seen, adding that an opportunity to revisit the scene would occur at the end of the walk, and they would be encouraged to intervene in the scene to change the outcome. Then, as walkathon attendees walked along the route, characters from the initial skit—played by another set of peerformers—appeared one by one and spoke to the walkers, reminding them of the skit. For example, the wife approached the walkers telling them how controlling her husband was and pleading with them to help her, while the husband lamented that “My wife does not listen to me. [Please] do something.” Finally, at the end of the walkathon course, the original peerformers performed the skit again. Two other peerformers, who did not perform in the Peerformance or during the walk, and research team members (including the first author) stood near the finish line, encouraging walkers to intervene in the scene as bystanders, such as friends or family. Asking walkers to add a new character (the bystander) to the scene was also a departure from traditional Forum Theater; we developed this approach in close collaboration with peerformers, who believed community members would be more willing to engage in the scene as actors if they did not feel they were “taking over” someone else’s role.

Participants and Data Collection Procedures

Approval was obtained from the institutional review board of the authors’ university. As our research question centered on understanding how bystanders construct, reproduce, and contest gender roles, norms, and ideologies when intervening in a domestic violence scenario, it was imperative to be able to see and hear exactly what strategies were used. To do this, we set up a videorecorder at the end of the walkathon to capture the body language and words used by community members. Videorecording was transcribed for data analysis.

Of the 135 participants in the walkathon, 55 were captured by the video camera near the Peerformance scene. Of these, 23 tried some sort of intervention as bystanders to help the couple depicted in the Peerformance. So as not to disrupt the dynamic nature of the ongoing interactions, we did not collect demographic information from the bystanders; however, based on their appearance and on contextual cues, we estimated that approximately two-thirds of the participants were female and more than two-thirds were over 50 years old.

Data Analysis Approaches

We used a grounded theory approach to data analysis (Charmaz, 2014; Glaser & Strauss, 1967), supplemented by visual analysis techniques (Goodwin, 2004; Heath et al., 2010) to understand nonverbal data such as gestures and gaze. We analyzed bystanders’ behaviors as they engaged with the actors in the domestic violence scene using two sources of data: audiovisual video recordings of the bystanders’ interactions and transcriptions of the audio portions of the video recordings. To ensure that we captured and analyzed all relevant gestures, movements, and utterances, we conducted reiterative reviews of the video recordings in the three stages recommended by Heath et al. (2010): preliminary reviews, subsequent reviews, and analytical reviews.

Data Analysis Quality and Rigor

Data quality and rigor were established via member-checking, triangulation, and prolonged engagement in the field and with the data (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). As peerformers were uniquely positioned as members of both the research team and the community, they served as interlocuters in both groups, helping us to better understand data collected. Given peerformers’ lived experience as members of the community and that we had no way to follow up with the bystanders who participated in the Peerformance, we conducted member-checking with peerformers several times: directly after the walkathon ended, in a debriefing meeting focused on this Peerformance, and in subsequent regular project meetings. In these meetings, peerformers watched the video recording and commented on notable aspects of bystander actions, perceived strengths and limitations, and any socioculturally meaningful or questionable actions from their point of view. These peerformer assessments and participant observation of the walk by the first author served as points of triangulation for the analysis, contributing to analytic rigor (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). Finally, although data analyzed in this study were drawn from a specific Peerformance, we have conducted participatory domestic violence prevention programming in the focal community for over 10 years, as described above. This prolonged engagement helped support the credibility of the findings. Use of multiple coders, memoing, and regular meetings to discuss coding decisions also improved the trustworthiness of study findings (Lincoln & Guba, 1985).

Gender Roles: Caregiving

Central to most bystanders’ interventions was the assumption of women’s natural ability and familial responsibility to be primary caregivers to their children. This normative gender role was both explicitly and implicitly communicated by bystanders in various ways. For example, a male bystander (aged 65 years and older) was explicit in his assignment of child care responsibilities to the mother. He said, “Your first priority is your kid, right?” “Exactly,” the wife responded affirmatively. The bystander went on to say, “You have to take care of the kids no matter what happens, because you give them birth and they are so small.” Then he patted her on the shoulder to comfort her. The conversation continued:

In this exchange, the bystander uses his own mother’s caregiving as grounds to support his claim that a mother’s first priority should be her children. In this conceptualization, a woman’s role in the family is static, full of prescribed duties that involve taking care of and training the children, especially when they are young. His intervention also suggests that he views women’s caregiving role as a natural—rather than constructed—phenomenon, based on women’s unique experience of childbirth. In addition, by interrupting the wife when she is speaking about her business meeting, the bystander cuts off her claim to the role of professional. This dismissive attitude about the business meeting was also conveyed to the wife by different bystanders, who maintained that her primary responsibility should be to the children.

The gendered expectation that caregiving was women’s primary labor in the family was also communicated by bystanders who intervened to say that the wife should be able to go to the meeting. These bystanders suggested that the husband take care of the children “only once,” “only one time,” and “only if the husband is home [when the wife has to work].” Another bystander (female, aged 35–49 years) turned to the husband and said, “All the time, she is taking care of the kids. It’s okay for you to do it once, when she has meetings to go to.” These interventions complicated the traditional construction of the female gender role in the family, suggesting that women’s work outside the home was important, just not as important as their duties to their children. Even bystanders who intentionally spoke of the equal responsibility of parents implied that, ultimately, women should be the regular caregivers. For example, one bystander (male, aged 50–64 years) said, “It takes both of you to get the kids. Remember that. So you have enough responsibility—both of you have equal responsibility.” However, his subsequent remarks suggested that he placed the primary child care responsibilities on the wife: “He [the husband] is counting on you taking care of the kids. And if you are late, then what’s going to happen?” This bystander urged the husband “to step up and take care of the children” but he qualified his advice: “At least one day it’s not every day that she’s late, right?”

The corollary to the primary role of women as caregivers—that men are inherently not naturally inclined to be primary caregivers—was also communicated by a number of bystanders in the interactions. For example, by assuring the husband that caring for the children would be a temporary situation, bystanders assumed that the husband would not want to—or know how to—do the work of childrearing. The assumption of men as “secondary caregivers” was communicated explicitly by one bystander (female, aged 50–64 years), who pretended to be a male neighbor and took the husband aside to talk:

This bystander appeared to denigrate the wife’s position; however, after her enactment, she reported that this was her way to “join” the husband, to garner his trust and that she was not agreeing with his behavior. In her enactment, this bystander recounted the story of a friend whose wife filed for divorce and took the children with her, using this to persuade the husband. By asking the husband, “I’m sure you love your children. Don’t you?” the bystander established further tactical leverage for persuading the husband to follow the bystander’s advice. When the husband responded affirmatively, the bystander continued,

Yeah, I know you do. And the judges are so bad in U.S., man, they give time to the parents or to the husband also. You have to take care of them for the whole weekend. If you don’t want the pain, just one evening won’t hurt you. You know?

The husband replied, “I guess.” This bystander explained that under the U.S. legal system, “custody arrangements will make you work more. This is better. Believe me.”

This bystander tried to gain the husband’s trust by separating him from the wife and commiserating with him, which inadvertently reinforced his existing gendered expectations of women’s caregiving, despite saying she did not agree with these expectations. The bystander deceived the husband to make him trust her instead of directly confronting him. Her warning that a wife’s legal action could result in even more child care responsibilities for him was an additional intervention assuming the inevitability of the husband’s secondary caregiver status in the family. For this bystander, the husband’s love of his child did not translate to his willingness to take care of the child for a long period of time. Taken together, these bystander interactions reinforce the belief that mother and father gender roles are natural rather than constructed.

Shifting Gender Norms: Male Privilege and Women’s Autonomy

While most bystanders stated or implied that women should assume the primary caregiving role in the family, many defended the rights of the wife beyond the domestic sphere and separate from the husband. For example, a female bystander (aged 35–49 years) told the husband, “She has an opinion. She has a right for her opinion, too. You have no business pushing your own rights on her.” In another interaction, when the husband said to the wife, “You are the wife. You’re supposed to be here for the kids,” one bystander (male, aged 50–64 years) said “No, no, no. That’s wrong.” When the husband said, “She’s the wife. She has to listen to me,” another bystander (male, aged 50–64 years) asked in a disapproving tone, “Why?” When the husband replied, “Because I’m the husband, okay?” this bystander said, “Big deal.” In contrast to the bystander described earlier, who engaged the husband in a particular way to make him feel comfortable, these bystanders directly called out the husband’s use of male privilege as incorrect, thereby signaling considerable variation in expected gender roles.

Some bystanders reflected on the clash between traditional and shifting gender roles while in the process of enacting the scene. In one such episode, just before he intervened, a bystander (male, aged 65 years and older) told the other assembled walkers, “I just have a tremendous sympathy for [the] husband.” He then entered the scene and told the husband that his use of male privilege was not warranted, given the wife’s work responsibilities:

[When you say] “you’re the wife and you have to listen to me,” that is where we are going in the wrong direction. I think everything you said was okay, except you have to realize that she has certain [work] responsibilities. And she has to fulfill that.

While telling the husband that he did not agree with his point of view, this bystander expressed empathy for the husband as he navigated a changing society and social norms: “I think that many men are getting to that situation where we all have to learn together.” Then, shifting the focus from the husband as individual to a whole generation of men, this bystander emphasized the need for generational change: “Those days of husband being the boss are really olden days, and these were the traditions. So, it’s not really your fault, but this generation has to learn. Your generation has to learn.” Thus, in his intervention, the bystander acknowledged the loss of male privilege that evolving gender norms often bring.

Intersecting Gender Norms: Offering Support and Encouraging Help-Seeking

Many bystanders’ interventions were directed at the husband and wife together, with directives to both characters that they should work as a unit to resolve the enacted scene. Using words such as “disagreement” or “conflict” to describe what had happened, they attempted to bring the couple together to talk through a solution. Each of these interventions reinforced gender norms dictating that women remain in conflictual/violent relationships despite mistreatment, while also challenging the patriarchal ideology of men as the ultimate decision-makers. For example, a bystander (female, aged 50–64 years) urged the couple to “sit down and talk” and “air out differences.” Another bystander (male, aged 50–64 years), while looking at the husband and the wife one after the other, told them to listen to each other. A third bystander (male, aged 50–64 years) emphasized resolving the conflict peacefully: “You guys got to talk it out and resolve it. . . .You gotta resolve it peacefully.” Several bystanders’ gestures reinforced these verbal messages, for example, reaching out to and looking at both members of the couple and indicating that they should listen to each other.

In line with the focus on conflict resolution and the emphasis on the conjugal unit, most bystanders tended to recommend that both members of the couple get help together. Couples counseling by a professional and talking with “somebody you both trust” were suggested as possible ways to get help. If a specific agency was mentioned, it was SACBO, the organizer of the event. The proffered advice simultaneously reinforced and challenged existing gender norms. By approaching the couple as a unit as well as suggesting that help be sought together, these bystanders (inadvertently or not) attributed responsibility for the situation to both parties, even though the husband was the person exhibiting controlling behavior. This style of intervention reinforced existing gendered ideologies positing that women contribute to domestic violence.

In contrast to the above approaches, one bystander who intervened with the couple used the word “abuse” to describe what she had seen and recommended other help-seeking approaches. This bystander (female, aged 35–49 years) walked up to the couple and said, “Can I intervene here? He has a very good point. But this is called abuse.” Then she turned to the wife and continued, “What he is saying is absolutely prevalent, and he doesn’t understand it’s abuse, or he probably understands completely and is doing it on purpose.” Instead of suggesting that the husband and wife work together as a unit to resolve the problem, this bystander recommended that the husband and wife seek formal help separately. She told the husband, “You need counseling. You can do group counseling or you have to get it yourself.” She said to the wife, “Just do exactly what you want to do. . . . If he takes any further steps, honey, this is America. Call 911. You have a lot of support.” In her intervention, the bystander challenged existing gender roles by suggesting that it was not the wife’s responsibility to stay with her husband, whether or not he sought help. In telling the wife to do what she wants to do, the bystander encouraged the wife to make decisions based on her own preferences rather than the needs of her husband or children. We should note, however, that in her response, this bystander used language to appeal to the husband by prefacing her advice with a comment: “He has a very good point.”

This bystander’s suggestion that the wife call the police was echoed by several other bystanders in their interventions. As mentioned above, another bystander noted women’s success in filing for divorce and custody. Directing these recommendations to the wife, these bystanders named the U.S. legal system as a source of power and support for women experiencing domestic violence. Notable is their emphasis on the situated nature of this legal resource; by naming the United States as a place where women can get help from public entities, they are (presumably) contrasting the system with that of their home country. Therefore, the gendered support and protection offered by police and legal help were presented as situational and not universal.

Notably, a male bystander (aged 65 years and older) suggested to the wife, “So maybe you have to do something that he likes it and keep him happy with what he likes it. And then, go and power that one and he will come around.” Interestingly, this was the bystander who told the wife that her first priority was the children because she gave birth to them and that his mother took care of him all the time, as discussed above. This bystander discounted the importance of the wife’s work outside the home; however, he advised her of the way he believed would be effective for her to gain power in the long run.

Contradictory Messages About Gender Roles and Rights

Most bystanders chose to intervene by interacting with the couple together, interpreting the enacted scene as a conflict to be resolved between the two parties. This approach highlighted bystanders’ valuing of the conjugal unit, of the interdependence of husband and wife, possibly linked to the strong sociocultural significance of the family unit in this community. However, the act of talking to the couple as a unit communicated other latent messages. One of these messages was that both spouses were responsible for the escalating situation, even though the wife was the receiver of abuse rather than a perpetrator. Though subtle, this victim-blaming message could inadvertently cause survivors to feel responsible and/or guilty for their actions and/or cause perpetrators to feel vindicated in their feelings of anger. At the same time and in contrast, addressing the conjugal unit together was also a latent form of patriarchal subversion, challenging the ideology that men are the heads-of-household and ultimate decision-makers in a family system. Thus, these bystander interactions communicated multiple, often contradictory, messages about gender and domestic violence.

Bystanders’ interventions concerning child care also reflected both egalitarian and patriarchal values about gender roles and gender norms in the family. For example, most bystanders promoted shared child care arrangements, espousing egalitarianism between men and women. However, analysis of the latent meaning in these interactions shows that, for these bystanders, sharing did not necessarily mean equal responsibility. Bystanders urged the husband to take care of the children on a limited time basis (e.g., only once, only when the wife had to work) and/or in specific circumstances (e.g., if the husband was home anyway). While they supported the wife’s work outside home, some set limits, such as only if the work did not inconvenience the husband. These extra parameters delineating men’s and women’s gender roles had the effect, even if it was not intentional, of upholding traditional gender norms of men’s entitlement to work unaffected by child care responsibilities.

In contrast to these latent messages of dual responsibility for child care, some bystanders’ actions reflected a perception that the conflict was a reflection of a gendered power differential between the husband and wife. These bystanders confronted the husband’s claim of entitlement as the man in the relationship, expressing disapproval of his conduct, in one instance calling his behavior abuse and telling him he had “no business pushing his own rights.” These bystanders supported the wife as someone who was entitled to her own opinion and had work responsibilities to fulfill. In fact, some did not even see the conflict as a disagreement or something to resolve. The wife’s need to go to the work meeting was a matter of fundamental rights that required no negotiation or argument, as expressed in these words of a bystander to the wife: “No arguments. Just do exactly what you want to do.”

Gaining Power: Bargaining and the Legal System

Given this complicated landscape of somewhat contradictory messages about gender roles and rights, several bystanders made reference to the ways in which the wife could gain power in the relationship. One bystander suggested the wife do something that the husband liked and would keep him happy to make him come around (so that she could get what she wanted) in the long run. Previous research on patriarchal bargaining has examined how women negotiate their survival and life chances and revealed that in the process, women conform (or pretend to conform) to patriarchal norms (Chaudhuri et al., 2014; Kandiyoti, 1988, 1998). This study illustrates that such bargaining is part of the community members’ schemata and provides a glimpse of how it was encouraged: verbally, in this case, by a male member of the community. Besides explicit verbal encouragement, covert or subtle encouragement of patriarchal bargaining may be common among family and community members. Everyday practices, such as what community members do and say, may have a significant impact on attitudes and behaviors at individual and collective levels (McDonnell et al., 2011). Foucault (1979) described the disciplinary power of thoughts, language, and actions embedded within and communicated by institutions such as prisons and schools through surveillance, punishment, and reward. This discursive power can operate similarly in communities, exerting multifaceted influence on perceptions and behaviors of community members; the way these discursive tactics operate and are sustained in this community deserves further research.

Notably, some bystanders identified the U.S. legal system as a source of support and power for the wife, suggesting that she should/could call the police or file for divorce. As reported elsewhere (Yoshihama & Tolman, 2015), at a debriefing meeting, peerformers also expressed support for using the U.S. legal system as leverage to encourage the husband to change his behavior. This finding of a positive perception of the role of the U.S. legal system in supporting and, in some cases, favoring women in domestic violence cases is similar to findings from other qualitative studies of domestic violence in immigrant communities (Nguyen, 2004; Sullivan et al., 2005). However, these findings contradict existing scholarship that implicates this system as disempowering to abused immigrant women (Abraham, 2013; Huang, 2019). This disconnect should be explored in future studies.

Limitations

Several limitations are associated with the use of a theater-based research method. The first limitation pertains to the performative nature of the community members’ actions we analyzed. Since the bystander actions were enacted in response to a theatrical scene depicting domestic violence, arguably, people might act or react differently in real life than they did when they intervened during the Peerformance. In addition, videorecording provides rich data that preserve relevant details of situated action (Mondada, 2018), but the richness also presents complications and methodological challenges, such as the need to account for both verbal and nonverbal behavior, which may be incongruent (for example, a verbal statement expressing agreement accompanied by a nonverbal behavior suggesting otherwise). To encapsulate these complexities, we coded for both manifest and latent meanings in verbal and physical expression; however, it is possible that we did not capture all of the nuances with this approach.

Another limitation is that these findings are based on responses from a small sample of individuals (n = 23), which limits the generalizability of findings. However, even though the sample was nonrepresentative, the analysis elucidated some patterns, which suggest that the study captured something beyond individual idiosyncratic actions. In the words of Agosto Boal (1995),

The great, general themes are inscribed in the small personal themes and incidents. When we talk about a strictly individual case, we are also talking about the generality of similar cases and we are talking about the society in which this particular case can occur. (p. 40)

For this reason, not surprisingly, theater and performances have been slowly, but increasingly recognized as effective ethnographic methods for observing and analyzing everyday practice and lived experience (Denzin, 2003; Rossiter & Godderis, 2011). What individual community members enacted was likely embodied knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes shaped by sociocultural and structural arrangements in their particular community, which can be seen as analogues to habitus per Bourdieu (1977).

Strengths and Implications

In addition to its focus on an understudied yet fast-growing immigrant population group, this study has a number of strengths. Forum Theater creates space for the audience to “conjure other possibilities for something that they know has already happened and therefore cannot be changed” (Prendergast & Saxton, 2015, p. 282). Thus, a theatrical performance allows for event participants to enact what they think might be helpful in changing the situation, even if it might be an action very different from one they can imagine doing in “real” life. Importantly, it was peerformers, fellow community members, who not only developed the plot, script, and characters, but also performed the play. In creating the play, they drew on their situated knowledge and experience as members of the same community to which event participants belonged. According to drama theories (Kincaid, 2002), the familiarity and relatability of the storylines and actors can enhance the persuasiveness of the performance.

One important contribution of this study is its examination of community members’ perceptions and actions, adding to existing research focused on South Asian survivors’ experiences and the structural and sociocultural issues affecting them (Abraham, 1998, 2005, 2013; Choudhry, 2001; Das Dasgupta, 2007; Mahapatra, 2012). Many prevention efforts have focused on making changes at the individual level of the social ecology (Stith et al., 2004). Our study findings shed light on the dynamics of domestic violence from a different angle: how perspectives of individual community members are communicated socially, shaping collective perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors. This research points to the need for programs focused at the community and institutional levels of the social ecology to marshal the important contributions of community members in imposing, challenging, and contesting previously taken-for-granted gender roles and gender relations.

Another important contribution of this study is its explication of the complex, and at times contradictory, gender ideologies and norms expressed by community members. While community members expressed a general willingness to support the wife’s work outside of the home, their actions, inadvertently or otherwise, served (and had the potential to serve) to reinforce gendered divisions of labor, assigning the primary responsibility of child care to the wife. Bystanders’ encouragement of the couple to resolve disagreements and seek help together simultaneously emphasized and reinforced the centrality of the conjugal unit. While focusing prevention efforts on resolving disagreements within the conjugal unit shifts the focus away from approaches at other, more distal levels of the social ecology that have been found to be effective in other populations (Ellsberg et al., 2015; Heise, 2011), this approach was clearly socioculturally meaningful and relevant in this community context. As discussed elsewhere, peerformers at a debriefing meeting almost unanimously considered the bystander’s tactic of making disparaging comments about the wife to gain the husband’s trust and then using the threat of legal intervention to encourage him to compromise with his wife, to be an effective and suitable way to address domestic violence in their sociocultural context (Yoshihama & Tolman, 2015). Thus, there is a tension in this work, begging the question of what criteria to use to establish effectiveness and sociocultural relevance. Whose perspectives count? Community members enacted what they thought would work in their sociocultural context as they knew it. Although some interventions inadvertently supported or reinforced traditionally constructed gender roles, calling them “ineffective” borders on imposing a western construction of desirable gender norms on a non-western community. At the same time, endorsing an intervention just because it is claimed to be “socioculturally relevant” can be problematic as well, potentially colluding with the status quo and suppressing minority opinions and divergent voices. Claims of sociocultural relevance must be interrogated critically: From whose perspective? Who benefits? Who suffers?

As this study clearly elucidates, norms about gender vary, and competing and contradictory perspectives are frequent—the rule rather than the exception. This invalidates a one-size-fits-all approach to prevention. At the same time, as signaled by some bystanders’ actions, gender norms are not static. In the words of one bystander, “Those days of husband being the boss are really olden days. . . This generation has to learn.” Thus, it seems that one important role of research—participatory action research, in particular—is to avoid prescribing how community members should intervene, and instead create opportunities and facilitate dialogue where community members can explore what types of bystander actions are socioculturally relevant and effective, critically examining their differential impact and unintended consequences. This process takes time. With members and leaders of immigrant diaspora communities and community-based organizations, we have worked to challenge sociocultural norms that support domestic violence and to develop and promote nonviolent alternatives grounded in the frameworks and schemata of the community members themselves.