Attitudes and solutions toward intimate partner violence: Immigrant Nigerian women speak

Abstract

In response to the incidents of intimate partner murders of immigrant Nigerian women in the USA in recent years, a sample of immigrant Nigerian women in Houston were invited in 2013 to engage in focus group discussions of ways to tackle intimate partner violence (IPV) in the immigrant Nigerian community. Findings reveal a fundamental relationship between patriarchal ideologies and the views of immigrant women from Nigeria. Immigrant Nigerian women are likely to interpret IPV and perceive solutions to it in patriarchal ideologies and practices held in their country of origin – an approach that endorses and reinforces IPV. Based on these findings, this article recognizes the need to make patriarchy salient in studies of IPV among immigrant communities from Africa. Further, the article recognizes the absence of adequate knowledge of IPV against immigrant Nigerian women and other immigrant African women, so that IPV risk and preventive factors for these immigrant groups may not be captured sufficiently in policy and practice.

Keywords

Culture/national origin gender immigrant Nigerian women intersectionality intimate partner violence patriarchy

Introduction

From 2005 to 2008, nine immigrant Nigerian women (mostly nurses) were victims of intimate partner murder in the USA (see Kalunta-Crumpton, 2013). An additional three were murdered by their partners in the period 2010–2014. With each murder of a Nigerian immigrant woman by her Nigerian partner, the social media were inundated with blogs and commentaries by Nigerians that spoke to the incident, abhorred it vehemently, and situated it prominently in the Nigerian patriarchal gender relations in an intimate partner relationship.

Yet, relative to the extensive research on IPV among Asian and Latino immigrant women in particular (see, for example, Bui and Morash, 2008; Hancock and Siu, 2009; Kyriakakis et al., 2012; Lee and Hadeed, 2009; Raj and Silverman, 2002), not much is known about IPV against immigrant women of African origin. More specifically, there is minimal IPV research on immigrant Nigerians, who comprised the largest portion (221,000 or 14 percent) of the estimated 1.6 million African-born population in the USA in 2008–2012 (Cambino et al., 2014). The first attempt at research on IPV against immigrant Nigerian women in the USA involved secondary data analyses of internet commentaries on the causes of the aforementioned intimate partner murders, as perceived by Nigerians (see Kalunta-Crumpton, 2013; Kalunta-Crumpton and Onyeozili, 2011). With a key objective to garner the views of immigrant Nigerian women on ways to prevent or tackle IPV in their community, the focus group discussions upon which this article is based have produced the only primary data, known to this author, on IPV against immigrant Nigerian women. Thus, given the dearth of IPV research on immigrant Nigerian women, it is reasonable to situate their victimization experiences, and possible solutions to it, in findings from studies of IPV against women from similar (but significantly researched) immigrant communities.

Take, for example, the many studies of IPV against Asian and Latino immigrant women, including the challenges in dealing with their IPV situations (see, for example, Bui and Morash, 2008; Hancock and Siu, 2009; Kyriakakis et al., 2012; Lee and Hadeed, 2009; Raj and Silverman, 2002). Findings from such studies are pertinent to the immigrant Nigerian scenario to the extent that they have typically featured culture (a proxy for country of origin or national origin) as a salient concept in narratives of immigrant women’s experiences of, and responses to, IPV. Culture has been interwoven with the various overlapping issues – such as immigration, acculturation, language barriers, isolation, gender role reversal, and a lack of knowledge or unfamiliarity with victim services – that are known to precipitate and exacerbate IPV or limit practical measures to tackle IPV against immigrant women from these communities (also see, for example, Erez et al., 2009; Salcido and Adelman, 2004).

The relatively few studies of IPV against immigrant African women (Akinsulure-Smith et al., 2013; Donahue, 2010; Keller and Brennan, 2007; L’aigle, 2009; Nilsson et al., 2008; Sullivan et al., 2005; Ting, 2010; Ting and Panchanadeswaran, 2009) are particularly relevant to immigrant Nigerian women, and as will be detailed in the discussion of findings later on in this article, they have also associated culture with types of IPV risk factors exemplified above. As also observed in the studies, a crucial contributor to women’s susceptibility to IPV within the immigrant African community is the cultural obstacle to preventing the perpetuation of IPV. For example, there is a cultural obligation not to report intimate partner abuse to outside formal agencies for fear of ostracism not only within the immigrant community, but also in Africa (Akinsulure-Smith et al., 2013; Donahue, 2010; L’aigle, 2009). Thus, similar to their Asian and Latino counterparts, for instance, immigrant African women also endure IPV given that cultural factors pose a major barrier to access to victim services (Akinsulure-Smith et al., 2013; Keller and Brennan, 2007; Ting, 2010). Immigrant women tend to normalize IPV within “abuse-tolerant perspectives” held in their country of origin (Erez et al., 2009).

The relationship between abuse tolerance and country of origin is pertinent to immigrant women from African countries, who are victims of IPV in that they tolerate and endure abuse in a manner that resonates with the way victims respond to IPV in countries in Africa (L’aigle, 2009). This includes an acceptance and submission to cultural practices that are applied to situations of IPV in African countries. Normally, these take the form of family and/or community led mediation, despite that these methods are known to be unfavorable to IPV victims (Akinsulure-Smith et al., 2013; L’aigle, 2009; Ting, 2010). Yet, interventions that are in conflict with the African cultural methods of addressing IPV are unwelcome within the immigrant African community amid fears that involving outside official institutions might worsen the abuse (see Kalunta-Crumpton, 2013). This article goes further to emphasize that the normality in abuse tolerance and a reluctance to seek outside help – even if some of these situations are now tied to immigration, language barriers, and related problems – is deeply rooted in the male-made patriarchal structure, practices and ideologies that produced the culture from which immigrant women originated.

Below, the article first provides an overview of the relationship between patriarchy, gender, and IPV in Nigeria. This sets a contextual framework for alluding to immigrant Nigerian women’s responses to IPV in the USA. Second, it situates the study within the conceptual frameworks of Hunnicutt’s (2009) “varieties of patriarchy,” and intersectionality. Subsequently, it outlines the research method used, and this is followed by the research findings. A discussion of the findings will conclude the article.

Patriarchy, Gender, and IPV in Nigeria

In Nigeria, patriarchy is institutionalized. Against this background, IPV against women is merely one of the micro-level expressions of the broader patriarchal structure and ideologies that indigenous Nigerians are familiar with (see, for example, Abayomi and Olabode, 2013; Aihie, 2009; Antai and Antai, 2009; Okemgbo et al., 2002). The existing Nigerian patriarchal system is a product of colonialism, which created gender-based economic, social, and political structures that restricted women’s role to the domestic spheres of childcare and domestic chores, and shaped their economic dependence on men. Prior to colonialism, Nigeria had a structure that allowed men and women to hold complementary economic, social, and political positions (Uchendu, 1965). Unlike the colonizing nation (Britain) and other western societies such as the USA who have, over the years, developed policies to protect women against violence, Nigeria has only recently taken a legislative stance on this issue. After many years of advocacy by interest groups, the Nigerian Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Bill, which prohibits various forms of violence against women, was passed into law in late May 2015. As Nigerians await the enforcement benefits of this law amid the strong Nigerian patriarchal culture, it is worth recalling the long history of unwillingness by the Nigerian government to implement and enforce adequate laws to protect women against violence in line with international conventions (e.g. the 1981 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women) to which it was signatory.

Such laws would have been in disagreement with the cultural and religious endorsements of patriarchy enshrined in Nigeria’s customary and Islamic laws. For example, the use of corporal punishment by a husband on a wife, as a corrective measure, is permitted in the northern states of Nigeria, further illustrating the patriarchal permissiveness (in the guise of religion) of violence against women (see Chika, 2012). In accordance with the lack of political will by the male-dominated government to disturb the patriarchal structure and ideologies, the educated elite have considered laws against domestic violence “western and foreign” (Eze-Anaba, 2006: 12). Under this climate of apathy toward violence against women, IPV has been widespread across different ethnic groups¹ (Ameh and Abdul, 2004; Antai and Antai, 2009; Eze-Anaba, 2006; llika, 2005; Oyediran and Isiugo-Abanihe, 2005). Because many women, particularly rural and uneducated women of various ethnic groups, share the ideology of male domination and female subordination, they tend to tolerate and justify physical abuse (Antai and Antai, 2009; Fawole et al., 2005; Okemgbo et al., 2002; Oyediran and Isiugo-Abanihe, 2005). Among rural and uneducated women, there is the tendency to view a man’s control over his wife as his patriarchal right, and IPV as a man’s cultural prerogative in a marriage (Ilika, 2005). Some women consider IPV as a symbol of affection; some do not view forced sex as rape (Ilika, 2005).

Geographically and socio-economically, IPV knows no boundaries (Antai and Antai, 2009; Mapayi et al., 2011; Okemgbo et al., 2002). Domestic violence “functions as a means of enforcing conformity with the role of a woman within customary society. It therefore does not matter if the woman is economically dependent or not, her position, like that of children is subordinate” (Aihie, 2009: 2). Wives who failed to abide by the assigned gender roles have been known to be physically abused by their husbands’ extended family members (father, male and female relatives) and friends (Okemgbo et al., 2002). The participation of women in the perpetration of gender-based violence on other women is illustrative of the extent to which the male-established patriarchal institutions have socialized women into enforcing and reinforcing patriarchal practices (Fawole et al., 2005).

To further illustrate the deep-rooted nature of the Nigerian patriarchal culture, there has been the tendency in Nigerian studies of IPV and among Nigerian women to focus on the physical side of abuse, as if the nonphysical types are not abuse. Polygamy, male infidelity, and wife disinheritance are instances of nonphysical forms of abuse and male domination that position women in a subordinate status. Polygamy is enshrined in customary law and in the Islamic law in northern states (Chika, 2012). Related to this is male infidelity. Whereas, a husband’s infidelity is tolerated, female infidelity, and not male infidelity, is a major trigger for IPV against women (Fawole et al., 2005). Notwithstanding the prevalence and effects of nonphysical forms of violence, these types are marginalized, an outcome that is consistent with the engrained patriarchal socialization of males and females into thinking that these types are natural with men; abuse is worth considering only when it is physical.

The pervasiveness of IPV is also evident in Africa in general. In reference to war-related violence in parts of Africa, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) (2012: 3) states that “the primary threat to women in West Africa is not a man with a gun or a stranger. It is their husbands.” Like their Nigerian counterparts, victims of physical and sexual violence in countries such as Kenya and Zimbabwe are likely to justify their victimization (Hindin et al., 2008). Abuse reporting beyond family members and friends is uncommon in Africa (IRC, 2012). Typically, victims are advised by these significant others to stay in the relationship despite the abuse (IRC, 2012).

In Nigeria, it is also culturally unacceptable to seek outside formal interventions such as police assistance, or divorce. These options attract negative stigma to the woman. The police force itself is a patriarchal institution known for its disdain toward victims who report IPV (Abayomi and Olabode, 2013; Eze-Anaba, 2006; Fawole et al., 2005; llika, 2005). In parts of the country, divorce comes with humiliating experiences such as wife disinheritance whereby the woman, upon divorce, may have no right to any marital property, and full custody of the children is likely to go to the man (Chika, 2012).

Conceptual Framework: Intersecting Patriarchy with Culture/National Origin, Gender, and IPV in the USA

Two concepts are key to setting the conceptual tone for the essence of this article. One is Hunnicutt’s (2009) “varieties of patriarchy” concept, and the other is the concept of intersectionality. While the former gives rationalization for the article’s highlight on patriarchy, the latter allows for the integration of patriarchy with national origin and gender in immigrant Nigerian women’s perspectives on solutions to IPV in their community.

According to Hunnicutt (2009), there are “varieties of patriarchy.” Under this concept, there are differences in patriarchal arrangements and differences in patriarchal expressions across cultures and contexts. Hunnicutt (2009: 553) defines patriarchy as “systems of male domination and female subordination.” Because the term, patriarchy, has lost its popularity in contemporary feminist writings due to the critique that it insinuates false universalism, the concept of “varieties of patriarchy” is proposed to recognize the diversity in patriarchy, and not its one-dimensionality. The concept permits a deeper understanding of how gender and other interlocking hierarchies such as class intersect to cause, exacerbate, or determine responses to, IPV in differing patriarchal societies and in differing patriarchal expressions. It is useful for studying societies with a strong patriarchal system and immigrant communities from such societies in that it allows for an assessment of how IPV in these settings might differ in context, frequency, character, and responses relative to what Tracy (2007: 582) would describe as “soft” patriarchal societies. Unlike “traditional patriarchy” found, for example, in fundamentalist Islamic and Christian societies where the rights of women are severely limited, “soft patriarchy […] deemphasizes male authority and control, defines male ‘headship’ in terms of joint decision-making, shared parenting, and shared domestic duties” (Tracy, 2007: 582).

Regardless of its type, patriarchy illustrates itself through structure/system and ideology (Hunnicutt, 2009). However, both do not have to function symbiotically. Patriarchal ideology does not have to operate simultaneously with its “home” patriarchal structure, meaning that patriarchal ideology can function independent of its patriarchal structure. Given this, an immigrant’s country-of-origin patriarchal ideology may remain constant and be applied to IPV situations in a patriarchal structure and ideology different from that of her/his country-of-origin. Thus, in the context of a different patriarchal structure and ideology as in the case of the USA, it means that the immigrant’s country-of-origin patriarchal ideology can nevertheless influence her/his interpretations of and practices toward IPV in the USA.

In this article, patriarchy, in the form of ideologies and practices, is situated in responses to IPV among immigrant Nigerian women. In doing so, the article adopts the concept of intersectionality (see Crenshaw, 1989) to interlock patriarchy (Nigerian-type), culture (i.e. Nigerian), and gender with immigrant Nigerian women’s understanding of, and recommendations for confronting, IPV in their community. The notion of intersectionality was borne out of Black feminist concerns over the marginalization of diversity in mainstream feminism, and the espousal that Black women’s lived experiences of victimization were unique to them, not simply as women, but as Black women, and therefore cannot be fully understood from the viewpoint of mainstream feminism. While the neglect of race in narratives of gender was at the center of Black feminist critique of mainstream feminism (Zack, 2005), Black feminism also proffered that other instances of intersected identities, such as race, gender, and class, were essential to the study of Black women’s experiences.

Since the 1980s, when Crenshaw highlighted the notion of intersectionality to stress the multidimensionality of Black women’s lived situations of victimization, including their experiences of violence (Crenshaw, 1994), the concept has found favor as a powerful tool for unlocking the diversity and simultaneous identities in women’s experiences of victimization. Essentially, it has opened the door for a variety of narratives of victimization experiences among women from different racial/ethnic, socio-economic, and cultural backgrounds. It has benefitted studies of IPV, particularly IPV among non-White and immigrant women. Intersectionality, as demonstrated in several studies of immigrant women’s experiences of IPV (see, for example, Akinsulure-Smith et al., 2013; Bui and Morash, 2008; Erez et al., 2009; Kalunta-Crumpton, 2013; Ting, 2010), promotes the simultaneity of interlocking social dimensions such as gender, national origin, or culture, patriarchy, racism, and immigration in such accounts. It has served as a useful concept for identifying markers of differences in women’s vulnerabilities to IPV.

Patriarchy is an important intersectionality variable for the study of gender, culture, and IPV. Ammar et al. (2014: 1450) recognize the need to integrate patriarchy in IPV studies of immigrant groups. In their observation, patriarchy is one of the “interlocking systems of disadvantage” that is overlooked in IPV “research on immigrants (or other marginal groups)” and its tendency to blame “social problems on the culture to which they belong” (2014: 1450).

In drawing from the concepts of “varieties of patriarchy” and intersectionality, the purpose of this article is to reveal how immigrant Nigerian women tap into the patriarchal ideology of their country-of-origin (in the absence of the Nigerian patriarchal structure) to support their attitudes toward IPV in the immigrant Nigerian community, and their suggested solutions to IPV in this community.

Method and Analysis

Sample selection

Pre-focus group activities were conducted by the author. The goal was to attract a sizeable sample of 50–55 immigrant Nigerian women aged 21² and above, who were resident in the Houston metropolitan area. Houston is one of the US cities with the largest Nigerian population; its Nigerian population is diverse. Participants in the focus group discussions were selected using a non-probability purposive sampling technique. This technique did not lend itself to a representative sample of the target population of immigrant Nigerian women in Houston. However, it ensured that the selection of participants was based first on their awareness of, and interest in, IPV in immigrant Nigerian families, and second, on certain demographics: ethnicity; age; marital status; religion; and employment. The latter goal was aimed at attaining socio-demographic diversity in the composition of the sample. Therefore, the sample selection considered the various Nigerian ethnic groups, the two major religions practiced in Nigeria (Christianity and Islam), differences in marital status, age variations, and employment to include a significant number of nurses,³ a selection of women in other professions/occupations, and women who were unemployed.

Over a period of two months, from the month of August to October 2013, the author worked on sample selection. Potential participants were contacted by the author in person, and/or by phone and email, through community associations run and/or attended by Nigerian women, churches (primarily Pentecostal churches owned and/or majorly attended by Nigerians), social gatherings, snowballing, and through the author’s own contacts. Often, Nigerian associations and gatherings attract people of same ethnic group, and some churches are largely ethnic-specific. The initial contacts were accompanied by a flyer, which included information about the purpose, venue, and time of the meeting. In the first month of the sample selection process, up to 40 Nigerian women had accepted the invitation to participate in the focus group discussions. During the period of sample selection, phone or email reminders of the meeting were sent to the women who had confirmed attendance. A few days before the meeting, the author had registered the names of 61 Nigerian women who expressed interest in participating in the focus group discussions. The author allowed this number of women to register interest in order to increase the chances of meeting the target sample size. The author had hoped that out of the 61 women, 50–55 of them would actually turn up on the day of the focus group meeting.

Participants

On the scheduled day of the meeting, a total of 44 immigrant women (80–88 percent of the expected sample of 50–55 women) attended and participated in the focus group discussions. With the exception of one woman, all were Christians. Regarding ethnicity,⁴ 19 (43 percent) of the women were Igbo, nine (20.5 percent) were Yoruba, three (7 percent) were Hausa, and 13 (29.5 percent) were identified as “other” minority ethnic groups. Twenty-four (54.5 percent) were aged 50–59, 13 (29.5 percent) aged 40–49, four (9.1 percent) aged 30–39, and one (2.3 percent) aged 20–29. The majority (31; 70.5 percent) were married, nine (20.5 percent) were separated/divorced, two (4.5 percent) were widowed, and two (4.5 percent) were single. Those in full-time employment were in the majority (31; 70.5 percent), while those in part-time employment, unemployed, and self-employed comprised eight (18.1 percent), four (9.1 percent), and one (2.3 percent) respectively. These demographic data were completed on a short profile questionnaire administered to the women during the focus group meeting. Each participant received a modest stipend of $10 for their time.

Data collection and analysis

A key aim of the meeting was to gauge the views of immigrant Nigerian women on measures to tackle IPV in the immigrant Nigerian community. The women were to naturally originate solutions based purely on their own knowledge and/or experiences, with no directives from the author. With this purpose in mind, the women were separated in parallel breakout sessions of small groups of six to eight participants. In total, there were six small groups, and each group spent approximately 40 minutes respectively in discussions. In each group, the discussions were facilitated by a Nigerian woman selected by this author prior to the meeting. The facilitators were selected because of their deep familiarity and engagement with the immigrant Nigerian community, and their knowledge of IPV in this immigrant community. The facilitators guided the discussions and kept hand-written notes of the discussions.

At the end of the breakout sessions, all the women gathered in one room where each small group shared its findings, generating all-women group discussions. The all-women group exercise, which lasted up to 30 minutes, was led by this author with the assistance of a Nigerian woman who summarized discussions on easel pads. The women voiced their views, including first-hand accounts of IPV against immigrant Nigerian women. The discussions, captured in verbatim words and short statements, showed rich and highly informative accounts relevant to the purpose of the research. For the purpose of data analysis, all notes from the small group sessions and the all-women group discussions were collated. The discussions were not audio-recorded because some women preferred that they were not.

The face-to-face interactive discussions with all the women were particularly useful in the preliminary identification of commonality in themes in that the discussions laid the initial foundation for identifying and discussing, in detail, patterns in perspectives. This allowed for new insights to be revealed and discussed, and to know when data saturation was reached. The notes from the two sources – small group discussions and the all-women group discussions – were compared, coded, and analyzed manually using coding procedures described by Strauss and Corbin (1998). In the search for commonalities in themes, interrelated viewpoints expressed across the groups were clustered together to form a number of conceptual categories or themes and subthemes (see ‘Findings’) that emerged from the data. Thus, the themes and subthemes represent the common views expressed across the small group and the all-women group discussions. Although disparate, the themes and subthemes are connected to reveal the intersections of patriarchy, gender, national origin, and IPV in the women’s narratives of measures to address IPV against immigrant Nigerian women.

Despite the research, policy, and practice implications of the study findings, it is imperative to exercise caution in interpreting the women’s perspectives as a basis for substantial generalization vis-à-vis other immigrant Nigerian women in Houston, Texas and in the USA.

Findings

The study findings are reflective of the common views of the women (hereon, participants) as expressed in the small group discussions and verified and elaborated in the all-women group discussions. The discussions unveil attitudes and solutions to IPV in ways that rehearse and reinforce Nigerian patriarchal ideologies and practices. This is demonstrated in the participants’ accounts of barriers to leaving an abusive partner, and in the participants’ own lack or minimal interest in identifying with outside formal agencies as a protective solution to IPV in the immigrant Nigerian community. In these narratives, the patriarchal framework from which the abuser derives his authority to exert IPV is not under scrutiny. As it seems, this unrecognition of the connection between the abuser and the system of male dominance in the participants’ discussions mirrors the uncritical and irreproachable normality of male violence in an intimate partner relationship in a Nigerian context. From the participants’ perspectives, IPV is understood primarily from the victimization of the victim.

The findings are categorized into two interrelated key themes that draw out how patriarchal ideologies informed the views of the participants as they suggested ways to solve the problem of IPV in their community. The themes examine (1) barriers to leaving an abusive partner; and (2) ways to tackle IPV in the immigrant Nigerian community.

Barriers to leaving an abusive partner

It was voiced by participants that in Nigeria and, by extension, in the immigrant Nigerian community in the USA, married women are traditionally forbidden from leaving their marriage, even if they are abused by their husbands. Despite that many immigrant Nigerians have lived in the USA for a long time, they still retain the cultural expectation that married women, even as victims of IPV, do not leave their marriage or initiate a divorce in response to their victimization. Thus, the toleration of partner violence against women in Nigeria holds true among many immigrant Nigerians; and so is the belief that a woman who leaves her marriage brings shame to the family and to the community. The following verbatim statements voiced by participants exemplify what they viewed to reflect the typical response from Nigerian families and community toward married women who are abused by their partners: “[d]on’t leave your marriage. Our culture requires women to be submissive. Your father did more and your mother stayed […] the women receive stigma from family, friends and society. The family believes that divorce is not okay.”

According to participants, Nigerian men who perpetrate IPV or seek divorce are hardly stigmatized. Instead, the female victim who seeks separation or divorce in response to IPV receives a negative stigma given the expectation of her to make the marriage work, including tolerating and confining victimization within the private sphere of the family. Tolerance is a popular response from immigrant Nigerian women who experience IPV: “[m]any women think and accept that violence is okay. They suffer in silence until it is too late.” The reference to experiences of IPV to a point where “it is too late” was made in the context of the intimate partner murders mentioned earlier. Participants observed that the murders were the final product of long suffering and tolerance of IPV by the women. A related point raised by participants was that immigrant Nigerian women’s knowledge of what constitutes IPV is limited. Many are not aware that they are being abused: “[m]any women lack awareness of what domestic violence is. These women lack knowledge and exposure.”

For those immigrant Nigerian women who may be aware of available resources for victims of IPV, there is less likelihood of utilizing the services because they have been socialized into thinking that family matters ought to remain in the family – immediate and extended. Involving outside official agencies, particularly the police, is considered an abomination by family and community members: “[d]on’t call the police; you cannot call the police on your husband.” Should an abused wife seek resolution outside of the family, that approach is expected to be contained within the community and handled by respectable members of the community through a mediatory approach. In Nigeria, community elders, and religious pastors are examples of non-family members whom IPV victims typically consult for intervention. In the context of the USA, participants identified religious pastors as popular contact persons for intervention in situations of marital discord. However, according to participants, the normal response by religious pastors to victims of IPV is to advise the victims to be obedient to their husbands. In giving this advice, pastors make reference to the popular biblical passage in Ephesians 5 that stipulates a wife’s submission to her husband: “wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is also the head of the church […] But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything” (Lockman Foundation, 1985: 1189). It was in reference to this passage that participants stated that: “Pastors will quote Ephesians 5 to the women.”

Interestingly, participants made no mention of pastoral advice that called on “Husband” to “love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her,” also in Ephesians 5 (Lockman Foundation, 1985: 1189). The omission of this integral part of the biblical message from the participants’ discourse of how pastors respond to IPV seems to align with the deep-rooted ideological emphasis on female submission to male domination in Nigerian-type intimate partner relationships. Religious interpretations of intimate partner relationships along these lines are influential given that many women, according to participants, stay with an abusive partner because of their belief that the marriage was ordained by God: “[t]hey believe that God joined them together.”

There is also a need to stay married in concert with the Nigerian patriarchal culture. Marriage accords a woman societal recognition and respect regardless of the man’s socio-economic status and physical appearance. In other words, being married to a man – any man – is seen to privilege the woman, and not the man, who most likely sees himself as doing the woman a favor: “[m]any women tolerate domestic violence because of their desperation to stay married.”

Reference was made to financial need as a reason why immigrant Nigerian women would stay with an abusive partner. This issue was not significant in that it did not feature in most of the small group discussions, and this insignificance might resonate with the fact that immigrant Nigerian women are most likely to be in employment. However, in the all-women group discussions, participants used the term “lazy” to describe women who stay with an abusive partner due to their economic dependence on their husbands.

Tackling intimate partner violence

Findings indicate that participants showed preference for traditional methods of marital conflict resolution over formal measures, thereby echoing how conflict situations of this type are approached in Nigeria. In Nigeria, formal agencies are less likely to be utilized. Instead, informal interventions by family, community, friends, and religious leaders are favored. The informal approach is the type that endorses and reinforces Nigerian male-made solutions that are typically more favorable to men than women. In suggesting solutions to IPV, participants took into account the expectations of a Nigerian wife in the prevention of conflicts in a marriage, by proposing wife submissiveness in a marriage. As shown in the two subthemes below, their viewpoints reproduced popular approaches to marital relationships and conflicts in Nigeria.

Female submissiveness

Participants noted that although immigrant Nigerian women in the USA have acquired independence relative to their counterparts in Nigeria, they should not lose track of expectations in a Nigerian marriage. According to them, adherence to feminine roles in marriage would prevent or alleviate IPV in immigrant Nigerian families. In this regard, participants made suggestions that alluded to the normative expectations of Nigerian women in marital relationships. These include the following:

Wives should know what their roles are. Accept your husband for who he is.

Submit to your husband. Appreciate him.

Community involvement

The need to involve the immigrant Nigerian community in situations of IPV or in preventative initiatives ranked highly in participants’ suggestions. They recognized the existence of diverse ethnic groups of Nigerians in the USA. Hence, they expressed a need for ethnic groups to also engage their specific communities in efforts to prevent or tackle IPV. Community, in the realm of the discussions, denoted informal groups of Nigerians, who in their differing capacities could adopt an interventionist or preventative approach to IPV. In this context, community-oriented approaches to addressing IPV are exemplified in the following statements:

Form support groups for women who are victims of domestic violence including building self-esteem for the women. They will listen to women who have already gone through domestic violence.

Create mentoring groups across ethnic groups to mentor couples on quality family time, a harmonious marriage, and good communication skills between spouses. Culturally, the older women should mentor the younger ones in marriage to resolve marital conflicts.

Involve elderly Nigerian men and educated men to advise and mentor other men in marriage to resolve marital conflicts.

Involve Nigerian women’s organizations […] in efforts to tackle domestic violence.

Form youth groups and educate young people on how to pick a partner.

Involve church leaders. Create prayer groups.

In conjunction with these informal strategies was a proposal for IPV awareness outreach in the immigrant Nigerian community. There was a call to “[c]reate awareness on domestic violence for men and women, and a special one for nurses.” Participants believed that many immigrant Nigerians were unaware of what embodied IPV and factors that could prevent IPV in marriage. As exemplified in the following statements, a community outreach should aim to:

Teach women to avoid too much age gap in their choice of men to marry, recognize religious differences, the importance of courtship before marriage (using Facebook, Skype), and pre-marriage counseling to ensure that couples actually love each other before getting married.

Define abuse and teach how to recognize abuse, look out for signs of abuse, speak up and seek help, and know to whom to report.

Teach about resources available to domestic violence victims.

Although participants alluded to the need for victims of IPV to “seek help, and know to whom to report,” and to the need to inform immigrant women of “resources available to domestic violence victims,” it was noted that these options, which might require the involvement of outside official agencies, should be utilized only as a last resort.

As further indications of their reservations in involving outside agencies, participants proposed community–agency partnerships. In this framework, immigrant Nigerian community organizations would collaborate informally with official agencies in identifying and addressing issues of IPV in the immigrant Nigerian community: “[f]orm alliance and work with hospitals, the police, victim support agencies […] and educate them about domestic violence in Nigerian communities.” Community-based efforts beyond the USA were also suggested. In order to address IPV in the immigrant Nigerian community, outreach needs to be extended to Nigeria from where the ideologies and practices that create and reproduce IPV originate:

Create awareness in Nigeria through community organizations and in particular women’s organizations and groups, churches, youth groups, and nursing schools.

Teach women how to recognize abuse so that mothers in the community will know. Go to villages and teach the women about abuse.

Also create awareness in Nigeria about IPV in Nigerian families in the USA.

Discussion and Conclusion

Depicted in the views of the participants are attitudes toward IPV from a perspective that mirrors a patriarchal cultural origin into which they were socialized. Despite that this culture endorses tolerance for IPV, participants were nevertheless guided by the same culture in offering solutions to IPV. The findings in general bear resemblance to the many studies (several cited earlier) that have intersected national origin with IPV. While this study gives credence to such studies, it nevertheless draws attention to the common omission of an important interlocking factor, patriarchy, from the equation, and invariably, the neglect of the fundamental role of patriarchy in creating and shaping the culture that endorses and reproduces IPV among immigrants from patriarchal societies.

As seen in the findings of this study, immigrant Nigerian women’s experiences of IPV in gender relations are governed by patriarchal ideologies and practices. It is no wonder, as Bowman (2003) argues, that feminist accounts are evidently common in African-based literature on domestic violence, given that the salience of feminism best explains the gender inequality in this continent. As Bowman (2003: 852) further states:

Indeed, it is difficult to avoid interpreting domestic violence in Africa in terms of pervasive gender inequality. Almost every traditional African society was patriarchal, and a woman’s place within this scheme was decidedly subordinate. Institutionalization of this inequality remains common in African customary law. For example, under most African systems of customary law, women have no right to inherit from their husbands, are not regarded as sharing ownership of marital property, are excluded from ownership of land, and are almost without remedy upon divorce.

Some of these instances through which male domination is expressed in Africa may not be familiar to other non-African patriarchal societies. This variation gives legitimacy to Hunnicutt’s (2009: 559) concept of “varieties of patriarchy” given its “potential to illuminate different forms of male domination” and to explain why women’s experiences of IPV would differ in various ways according to levels of patriarchal ideology and structure. Societies with stronger ideologies of male domination show the potency of patriarchy across influential institutions such as family, religion, criminal justice, politics, economy, and education; IPV is more apparent in such societies (Jewkes, 2002).

The fundamental influence of African patriarchal culture is reflected in the accounts of participants whose discussions of why immigrant Nigerian women stay in relationships where they are abused by men align significantly with their proposed solutions to IPV. For example, the tendency not to leave an abusive partner or involve the police because of the negative stigma that such actions would attract from family members and the community is consistent with the largely community-oriented or familial solutions offered by participants. As an instance, participants acknowledged a cultural obligation in the statement “you cannot call the police on your husband,” and as such, recommended a culturally friendly solution to IPV, such as “involve elderly Nigerian men and educated men to advise and mentor other men in marriage to resolve marital conflicts.”

This scenario is portrayed in the few studies of IPV in immigrant African communities in the USA. Physical IPV, including rape and sexual assault, is significant in immigrant African marriages. However, the typical victim response is to endure the abuse as she would in Africa (Donahue, 2010; L’aigle, 2009). Women in Africa suffer the consequences for reporting abuse to an outside agency, and in the USA, immigrant African women are not exempt from such consequences. Banishment of IPV victims from the wider immigrant community, and assault on the victims’ extended family in Africa, are some of the repercussions faced by immigrant victims who adopt non-patriarchal methods of marital conflict resolution (L’aigle, 2009). Thus, the informal community-based or in-house mediatory approach to IPV, largely preferred by participants, is endorsed in immigrant African communities in the USA.

According to Akinsulure-Smith et al. (2013), seeking advice and intervention from the extended family, and from community elders or from religious leaders, in this order, are the first steps taken to resolve intimate partner conflicts in the immigrant West African community. And where all fail, outside resources are accessed. This trajectory of solutions, from an informal to a formal approach, was considered by participants in their suggestions of ways of tackling IPV. In recommending that women “be assertive from the beginning and try to make things work” the participants alluded to the importance of setting boundaries for acceptable and unacceptable behavior from the outset in order to set the tone for the prevention or control of IPV by men. Where these efforts fail, the participants added, the victim should “go for help.” This “assertive” approach restricts the problem to individual men whose individual personalities, behavioral, and relational characteristics may change under set boundaries. Thus, the ideological role of patriarchy in the actions of immigrant Nigerian men who perpetrate IPV is excluded from this perspective.

Unlike men, women are less likely to be satisfied with the familial and community-based mediatory structures because they tend to be the recipients of blame for the conflict, are put under pressure to stay with an abusive partner, and are subjected to gossip and ostracism within their community in the USA and in their homeland. L’aigle (2009: 4) has observed that immigrant African perpetrators of IPV do not receive negative repercussions for their behavior other than a rebuke, thus highlighting the acceptability of male violence as a form of control of women in intimate partner relationships. While participants recognized this line of double standards in the cultural approach to IPV, particularly in reference to the cultural tolerance of male violence, these issues were not understood within the macro-level patriarchal structure and ideology of male violence.

Religious leaders have been known to uphold patriarchal ideologies (L’aigle, 2009). Participants held a similar view of religious pastors (see the earlier reference to Ephesians 5). Nonetheless, the involvement of religious leaders in marital relations and conflicts in Nigeria and in the Nigerian Diaspora seems inevitable, and this has to do with how religion is integrated within Nigerian patriarchal culture and gender-based violence. As Igbelina-Igbokwe’s (2013: 6) notes, “[r]eligion is a critical weapon to enforce subordination given the high spirituality and connectivity that Nigerians, especially Nigerian women, attach to religion.” This is illustrated in the participants’ recommendation for the creation of prayer groups as a protective factor against IPV. Likewise, among immigrant African women victims or survivors of IPV, reliance on faith in God and prayers is common as a coping strategy or as a plea to God for positive change in the marriage (Akinsulure-Smith et al., 2013; Ting, 2010).

Considering these barriers, divorce is typically not an option among immigrant Nigerian and other African women who are abused by their partners. Despite the relative protection against IPV available to immigrant African women in the USA, there are strict legal practices attached to divorce and child custody concessions that are daunting to victims of IPV, and also intermingle with patriarchal cultural factors to inhibit divorce (L’aigle, 2009). This does not mean that divorce is legally prohibited in Africa. In Nigeria, divorce is permitted under statutory law, and in the USA this option is legally permissible. Some Nigerian women have opted for divorce in situations of abuse in the USA. However, Nigerian marriages, as with African marriages in general, are guided more by the longstanding patriarchal customary ideologies and practices, which are condemnatory of divorce, but are supportive of informal social control measures such as mediation, as a way to stop the woman from leaving the marriage. This understanding informed the participants’ attitude toward divorce in that it was not an option that they propagated. Instead, the participants spoke more to patriarchal methods of conflict resolution in marital relationships. In this formula, wives are also expected to prevent or control IPV by conforming to their cultural role as a wife, submissive to their husbands. Participants’ statements such as “submit to your husband,” and “wives should know what their roles are” depict the gender role expectations of female submission to the traditional head of the household: the husband.

In Nigeria, this expectation is also demonstrated in the role that women play in reinforcing the male domination–female subordination nexus in marriage (Fawole et al., 2005). Younger wives, new to marriage, are coached by older ones to practice submissiveness; un-submissive wives are reproached by other married women. Participants suggested the mentoring of newly married wives by “older” married women as a solution to tackling IPV, for example, in the statement: “culturally, the older women should mentor the younger ones in marriage to resolve conflicts.”

A bride’s submission in her marriage is advocated by her parents during traditional marriage ceremonies, thus making the success of the marriage the responsibility of the bride (Igbelina-Igbokwe, 2013). These expectations are also pronounced by influential members of the community such as elders and religious leaders, so that the need to stay married in order to retain the male-ascribed “prestige” attached to this status intermingles with women’s fear of patriarchal disdain of divorce or singlehood (see Ntoimo and Isiugo-Abanihe, 2014). These scenarios were captured in the participants’ accounts of the contributory role of the family and the community in sustaining IPV, for example, through reminders that “your father did more and your mother stayed.” And because of the “desperation to stay married,” the participants added, many women tend to endure abuse.

As the findings show, participants recognized the limitations of community and familial approaches in protecting immigrant Nigerian women against IPV. At the same time, their suggested solutions prioritized these types of measures. This unveils a kind of contradiction that research needs to engage with for the purpose of drawing out particularities in immigrant African women’s experiences of IPV. Through a variety of suggestions by participants, including mentoring initiatives for men, women, and young people, and outreach and awareness projects in the USA and in Nigeria, the solutions to IPV are reduced to a matter that is best handled within, despite indications that elements of the within strategy tend to disadvantage women. Even where outside agencies are considered, the foremost option is informal community–agency collaboration.

The other option of seeking formal agency interventions, such as the police and victim services, is considered as a last resort by participants. Like their Nigerian counterparts, immigrant African women would seek the option of involving the police, utilizing a protection order, or seeking refuge at a domestic violence shelter as a last remedy (Akinsulure-Smith et al., 2013). Besides fears of facing ostracism, other reasons for avoiding these options have merged conformity to patriarchal cultural demands with immigration-related concerns. These include fear of deportation and losing child custody, both of which are threats presented by IPV perpetrators and the community in order to stop victims from accessing outside support (Akinsulure-Smith et al., 2013; Donahue, 2010; L’aigle, 2009). Immigration was not raised nor associated with IPV by participants in regard to immigrant Nigerians. This finding raises critical questions for the several studies that have featured immigration as an interlocking factor in immigrant women’s experiences of IPV. This observation in itself might introduce variations in attitudes toward IPV among immigrant Nigerian women and similar immigrant women from sub-Saharan Africa relative to the much-studied Asian and Latino groups.

Also, while the language barrier is not an issue for immigrant Nigerian women, many, according to participants, are not aware of the resources and legal protections available to them; many are not conversant with what constitutes IPV. Akinsulure-Smith et al. (2013) make similar observation in regard to immigrant West African women, many of whom are unaware of non-law enforcement resources such as counseling and hospital services that are available to victims of IPV. Some of the obstacles, such as lack of fluency in English, which arguably intersect with national origin to keep immigrant women under abusive partners or preclude them from seeking help may not apply to immigrant women from Nigeria and similar English-speaking countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Yet, these women tend to be loyal to a patriarchy-fueled culture that defines how women should interpret and respond to IPV within and outside of their country-of-origin. But, relative to other immigrant counterparts such as Asians and Latinos, immigrant African communities, collectively or individually as in the case of Nigerian immigrants, are severely under-researched. Consequently, specifics about them that might enhance intersectionality analysis of national origin, gender, and IPV, and add to our knowledge of their policy and practice needs, are not captured at all or adequately.

This article has located one of such specifics in the concept of patriarchy, and in so doing draws attention to the need to not only increase IPV research on immigrant African women, but also to give significance to the influence of patriarchy in shaping the culture that women utilize to interpret and respond to IPV. A simple culturalization of immigrant women’s IPV experiences limits the victims’ own awareness of the dynamics of patriarchy, and their knowledge of how to address patriarchy without reproducing it.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by a grant awarded by Feminist Review Trust in 2013.

Notes

Author biography

Anita Kalunta-Crumpton is Professor of Administration of Justice at Texas Southern University, USA. She received her PhD from Brunel University London, UK. She has taught at a number of universities in England, UK. Her research interests include race and criminal justice; drug use and trafficking; and violence against women.

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