The police tape strung up around the Sault Ste. Marie home the week before Halloween did not look out of place.
The forensic investigators in white overalls did. So did the shocked neighbours, as the story emerged about the man who murdered his three children and an adult, and injured a second adult, before killing himself. Police said the killings were the result of intimate partner violence.
Not long after that tragedy, there was another in Sudbury. A woman, said to be on a safety plan due to intimate partner violence, was found dead in a wooded area.
These stories are among the many reasons Nov. 25 has been designated by the United Nations as the international day for the elimination of violence against women.
Why a day set aside specifically to eliminate violence against women?
According to a press release from the province, women are three times more likely to experience stalking and three-and-a-half times more likely to be a victim of intimate partner violence than men. The risk is even higher for women who are Indigenous, racialized, newcomers or disabled.
Add one more risk to the list – living in a rural area.
A recent study from Western University in London, Ont. identifies a number of factors that make rural women more vulnerable than their urban sisters. Topping it is income, lack of which can drive someone back to an abusive partner.
With little or no public transit and fewer employers (and employment opportunities), rural women often have significant gaps in their employment that make it difficult to get a job or rent a home. Abusive partners often control whether their spouse works outside the home, and her paycheque if she does. Some of the women in the study reported having no credit in their own name, no money in their bank account – not even a debit or credit card.
The study focused on the isolation and economic abuse that positions women to be dependent on their partners, that prevents them from leaving a relationship or from moving forward if they do leave. And it focused on the resources needed to help them support themselves.
In addition to the expected resources – women’s shelters and social services, the study targeted jobs and a living wage as necessities for rural women trying to escape intimate partner abuse.
Call it what you will – gender-based violence, intimate partner abuse, woman abuse, or domestic violence – women as a group earn less than men, and suffer more violence in relationships than men.
The Ontario Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services states in a web page on domestic violence that women are “overwhelmingly impacted.” Seven out of 10 people who experience domestic violence are women or girls.
Those who think our society has come a long way since the event known as the Ecole Polytechnique massacre (Dec. 6, 1989), in which 14 women were murdered and 14 women and men were injured, had better think again. Women are still being killed because they are women. In this case the killer was a stranger, but far too many women are murdered by the very people they should be able to trust the most.
What we have is a situation where economic factors make it difficult for women to leave abusive partners. Those factors were exacerbated by the COVID pandemic and the subsequent economic turmoil in this country. Social services – never that easy to access in rural areas – virtually disappeared, and the financial assistance abuse survivors need to rebuild their lives has not been forthcoming.
What we, and those who make and enforce our laws, must remember is, in cases of intimate partner violence, it is not only the partner a woman is leaving – she leaves her home, her children’s home, pets, her neighbourhood, her friends, and her way of life. All too often, she trades middle-class status for poverty.
Women subjected to gender-based violence need help escaping, but they also need the education, training, jobs and financial assistance that will help them thrive.
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Pauline Kerr is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter currently working for Midwestern Newspapers. She can be reached at pkerr@midwesternnewspapers.com.
