Woman Abuse, Ethnicity, and Poverty: The Role of Collective Efficacy.

There has been a great deal of interest in the role of collective efficacy in mitigating crime. While most of the focus has been on the relationship between collective efficacy and street crimes, there is comparatively little information, and contradictory evidence on the role of collective efficacy in averting violence against women. In this paper I examine this relationship for a sample of ethnically heterogeneous women living in two public housing estates in a Midwest city. Of particular interest is the presence in the sample of Hmong women, a group about whom very little is known with respect to violent victimization. The paper also addresses the importance of viewing collective efficacy in ethno-cultural terms, rather than assuming that the concept has similar effects for all ethno-cultural groups. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]