Shakti Women’s Aid

Shakti Women’s Aid was an organization set up in Edinburgh to provide support and refuge to Black and South Asian women and children experiencing domestic abuse. The process to establish Shakti began in February 1984 when Scottish Women’s Aid held a ‘Working with Asian Women’ day and it was agreed that a refuge for Asian women should be opened near Edinburgh. At a similar time, the Scottish Black Women’s Group began to meet and several of its members became involved with Shakti, developing it into a refuge for all Black women. (In the UK at this time, the term ‘Black’ was used to describe all racialized minority people as a way to create political solidarity between those who experienced racist oppression). Shakti Women’s Aid received funding for an office and a refuge from Edinburgh District Council in August 1986. In June 1987, the refuge itself was opened in a four-bedroom semi-detached house.

Shakti Women’s Aid was part of a group of specialist refuges that opened in the UK from the late 1970s to the 1990s. Some of these refuges were specifically for South Asian women while some sought to support all Black women. There were several reasons why there was a desire for separate safe spaces; these ranged to catering for women’s dietary requirements, for example by having vegetarian spaces in the kitchen, to ensuring that women and children did not have to encounter racism from other women staying in refuge. There was also a sense that Shakti Women’s Aid was to be a space where women could re-examine their experiences and place these in the context of the racist and misogynistic society in which they lived. The activists who founded Shakti took an intersectional approach to their analysis, and often described their experiences as double, triple or multiple oppressions.

Shakti Women’s Aid grew over time and they now offer outreach services in Dundee, Stirling and Fife as well as Edinburgh. They also act as consultants and contribute to policy changes by working with the Scottish Government and various statutory and third-sector agencies.