A Black Experience-Based Approach to Gender-Based Violence

Gender-based violence (GBV) affects women across race, ethnicity, age, socioeconomic status, religion, sexual orientation, and geographic boundaries. No segments of society are immune from the vestiges of this problem. Yet GBV has been particularly harmful within communities of African ancestry African American communities suffer with greater lethality and more severe injuries than other racial and ethnic groups as a result of GBV. Despite this, there are limited culturally based services available to assist this population. The black experience-based social work (BEBSW) perspective, developed by Elmer andJoanne Martin, offers a framework that can be applied with black communities to address GBV. The central themes of BEBSW, which are separation and loss, are applied to considering strategies to address GBV within the African American community.