Chinese women's shelters adopt face-saving approach

• Source: Global Times
• [21:51 January 18 2010]
• Comments

Recently, on a train from Nanjing to Shanghai, I watched as a father hit, slapped and yelled at his son for most of a two and a half hour train trip. The child cried so hard that he threw up.

The people around him gradually became concerned and started asking the pair questions; a subtle way to stop the father from smacking his young child. I was glad that other passengers were concerned, but I wondered what the child's life would be like in the future.

Women and children are the most common victims of domestic violence. Shelters were established in the West primarily to give women a space where they could be apart from their families for some time, or escape from abusive husbands altogether.

Even though it's most often women who use these services, several European countries, like Switzerland and the UK, have established shelters for men who are victims of domestic violence as well.

China has its share of domestic violence. In 1995, after the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, there was an effort to bring Western style women's shelters to China. The idea was copied nearly directly from the West and the Chinese shelters provided basic necessities: a room, shower and a meal.

Nanjing built its first shelter in 2000, and eventually built 20 of them throughout differ-ent sections of the city. However, there were many problems that plagued the various shelters that popped up.

Just getting into the shelter in the first place could be difficult. For instance, some shelters required consent from a woman's family to let her register at the shelter. This was a problem because the very person that the woman was trying to protect herself from had to agree to let her use the shelter.

Cultural factors were a major barrier to the shelters being adequately used because the effects of having family relationship problems known outside of the home could be a major source of embarrassment and loss of face, especially for the husband. Sometimes, this could actually make the situation much worse, with the shame that the husband felt directed against his wife.

Many families in Nanjing were unaware that their local street committees actually had a shelter for domestic violence. Even when the location was known, the purpose of the shelter was not clearly understood. It seems that more education about the use, function and location of the shelter might have been helpful.