When globalization brings minority communities or developing world countries into abrasive contact with dominant cultures or hegemonic cultures the effect on gender roles can produce a backlash that severely impacts the status of women in these communities or countries. The focus of this paper on violence against women is two sites of ‘borderland’ cultural contact, the ghettoized North and Sub Saharan African neighborhoods and suburbs of Paris and other French cities and the Mexican border city, Ciudad Juarez. The similar issues in these border zones are conflicting sets of gender roles and inadequate or nonexistent legal protection for victims of violence.