Tensions in providing services to South Asian victims of wife abuse in Toronto.

This article examines the tensions in providing services to South Asian victims of wife abuse in Toronto, Canada. It focuses on major community-based organizations of South Asian women, particularly on the South Asian Family Support Services. These community-based organizations provide services to non-English speaking, working-class immigrant women. This study found out that the dependency towards state funds for their programs necessitates them to modify their feminist agendas and restrain their criticisms of patriarchal society. Yet, these organizations have made no attempts in looking for other ways to operate without state funding. Community-based groups have to balance the immediate needs of the women they serve against their long-term feminist goals of reducing violence by men and destabilizing the patriarchal state. Although they give importance to securing access to social services for these women, supporting them does little to reveal the systematic power relations behind wife abuse.