South Asian DVA victims and their engagement with the criminal justice system and process.

Domestic violence and abuse (DVA) impacts one in three women globally and is broadly recognised as a gender-based violent act (World Health Organisation, 2021).

However, due to forms of discrimination and/or bias, the criminal justice system's (CJS) treatment of victims from differing social groups is often uneven (Van Wormer and Bartollas, 2022).

This inequality needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency and, in doing so, it is vital to understand how these biases take effect in practical settings.

Regarding DVA, criminological research has established that intersectional discrimination acts as a barrier to justice for many victims, especially for those of ethnic minority backgrounds (Siddiqui, 2018; Gill, 2004). Often, a lack of CJS support for victims of DVA - who are overwhelmingly female - represents a gendered inequity.

For ethnic minority women, though, this problem can be exacerbated by racial discrimination and/or bias. This is an important intersection to recognise, as a different scope of understanding can be uncovered.

Indeed, research shows that victims of DVA often suffer particularly severe inequalities within the CJS when they are both female and of an ethnic minority status (Strid et al, 2013).

Intersectionality theory thus provides a crucial framework through which we might understand the predicament of many DVA victims, and it proposes an analytical frame to recognise the issues women of colour face beyond gendered ideologies (Samuels & Ross-Sheriff, 2008; Crenshaw, 1989; Crenshaw, 1991; Chantler and Thiara, 2017).

Collins and Bilge (2020: 2) explain that analysing intersectionality involves investigating 'how intersecting power relations and influence social relations across diverse societies... and explaining complexity in the world, in people, and in human experiences'.