“We Need to Understand the Whole Story”: A Discursive Analysis of the Responses of Informal Support Networks to Help Seeking by Women Experiencing Abuse from Men in a Small South African Town

In the responses of informal networks to women seeking help for domestic violence, discourses of privatization, minimization and blame shifting emerged as salient. In particular, the discourse of “We need to understand the whole story” was frequently used to justify violence against those women who were seen as potentially violating gendered norms. This paper explores how these discourses contribute to the continuation of women abuse and to negative help seeking experiences for women seeking help for abuse. These discourses are embedded in the cultural contexts within which women seek help and are challenging to overcome by the women themselves. Hence, it is important that these discourses are contested and new narratives that enable help-seeking and help provision are constructed.