Psychology
Document Type
Article
Abstract
Background: Housing instability is highly prevalent among intimate partner violence (IPV) survivors, and the coupling consequences of structural racism, sexism, classism, and the COVID-19 pandemic, may create more barriers to safe and adequate housing, specifically for Black women IPV survivors. In particular, the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic had the potential to amplify disadvantages for Black women IPV survivors, yet very little research has acknowledged it. Therefore, the current study sought to assess the experiences of housing insecurity among Black women experiencing intimate partner violence (IPV) while navigating racism, sexism, and classism during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: From January to April 2021, we conducted in-depth interviews with 50 Black women experiencing IPV in the United States. Guided by intersectionality, a hybrid thematic and interpretive phenomenological analytic approach was used to identify sociostructural factors shaping housing insecurity. Results: Our findings demonstrate the various ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic shaped Black women IPV survivors’ ability to obtain and sustain safe housing. We derived five themes to capture factors contributing to housing experiences: challenges with separate and unequal neighborhoods; pandemic-related economic inequalities; economic abuse limitations; and strategies to maintain housing. Conclusions: Obtaining and maintaining safe housing during the COVID-19 pandemic was difficult for Black women IPV survivors who were also navigating racism, sexism, and socioeconomic position. Interventions are needed to reduce the impact of these intersecting systems of oppression and power to facilitate the resources necessary for Black women IPV survivors to identify safe housing. © The Author(s) 2024.
Publication Title
BMC Public Health
Publication Date
12-2024
Volume
24
Issue
1
ISSN
1471-2458
DOI
10.1186/s12889-024-17965-5
Keywords
Black women, COVID-19, eviction, housing, intimate partner violence
Repository Citation
Willie, Tiara C.; Linton, Sabriya L.; Whittaker, Shannon; Phillips, Karlye A.; Knight, Deja; Gray, Mya C.; Gardner, Gretta; and Overstreet, Nicole, "Housing insecurity among black women surviving intimate partner violence during the COVID-19 pandemic: an intersectional qualitative approach" (2024). Psychology. 890.
https://commons.clarku.edu/faculty_psychology/890
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Copyright Conditions
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
Publisher source must be acknowledged with citation:
Willie, Tiara C., et al. "Housing insecurity among black women surviving intimate partner violence during the COVID-19 pandemic: an intersectional qualitative approach." BMC public health 24.1 (2024): 501.
