An optical study of magnetization relaxation is presented for p-doped quantum wells with magnetic ions. The magnetic anisotropy of the system is controlled by the heavy-light hole splitting, tuned by uniaxial strain. We show that a suppression of the magnetic anisotropy results in an enhancement of the observed relaxation rate by a factor of at least 20. This is explained by the fact that the decrease of the anisotropy results in the lowering of the energy barrier for the domain magnetization flip process. (© 2006 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)