What is Gender Based Violence?
The United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women defines gender-based violence (GBV) as, “Any act…that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual, or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or private life.” It is also broadly defined as any harm to a person due to the power disparities caused by gender inequality. Gender based violence includes childhood sexual abuse, “prenatal sex selection in favor of boys, female infanticide, dowry deaths, honors killings ,female genital mutilation, trafficking and forced prostitution, forced early marriage, sexual assault and intimate partner violence”
In order to tackle the issue of gender based violence, one must first understand the root of the issue. According to Peterson and Runyan, gender refers to the socially learned behavior and expectations that distinguish between masculinity and femininity. However, sex identity is known as the genetic and anatomical characteristics. Meanwhile, socially learned gender is an acquired identity gained through performing predetermined gender roles. Understandably, Society places different values on masculine and feminine behaviors. Gender has now become the basis for relations of inequality and is a powerful lens that we all use to experience and organize reality.
Gender has played a role in a lot of the issues that plague us globally as well as locally. It is estimated that one out of three women and girls across the world experience GBV. After research done within 10 countries, it was found that 15 to 71 percent of women have experienced physical violence, sexua...
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...P: (People against Suffering, Oppression and Poverty: http://www.passop.co.za/about-us
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Peterson, V., & Runyan, A. S. (1999). Global Gender Issues: Dilemmas in World Politics. Boulder: Westview Press.
Renzetti, C. (2005). Gender-based Violence. Lancet.
Strudwick, P. (2014, January 4). risis in South Africa: The shocking practice of 'corrective rape' - aimed at 'curing' lesbians. Retrieved from The Independent.
United Nations. (1993, December 20). Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women. Retrieved from United Nations: http://www.unhchr.ch/huridocda/huridoca.nsf/
"Violence against women-it's a men's issue." Jackson Katz:. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Apr. 2014. .
On September 5, 1995, Hillary Clinton delivered an influential speech at The Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. Clinton expresses general concern over escalating violence toward women, in other word’s gendercide. “Gendercide refers to the systematic elimination of a specific gender group, normally female. It’s most common in India, China, and other regions in Southeast Asia” (GirlsKind Foundation). Crimes, such as bride trafficking, infanticide, abandonment, and dowry related murder; often take place within private households, going unnoticed and not even acknowledged. “Tragically, women are most often the ones whose human rights are violated. Even now, in the late 20th century, the rape of women continues to be used as an instrument of armed conflict Women and children make up a large majority of the world’s refugees” (Clinton 3). By addressing her speech in Beijing, where gendercide is prevalent, Hillary expressed her objective effectively not just the United Nations, but to audiences across the world. Clinton effectively delivered her speech by portraying her purpose for women to achieve equality and better opportunities, with ethical appeals, emotional appeals, and logical appeals.
The high rate of violent deaths in women has led to the international community; through different ways and means to require the authorities to take preventive and corrective measures about it.
Tjaden, P., Thoennes, N. (2000b). Full report of the prevalence, incidence, and consequences of violence against women: Findings from the Violence Against Women Survey. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice.
... history, it is proven that gender changes along with social, political, and cultural change. Despite all, many women continue to face other kinds of discrimination. Women continue to experience sexism, the idea of traditional gender roles. Women are still thought to be more involved in taking care of their children and the household. Women often face unconscious stereotypes in the workplace as well. In some cases, women have a less change of obtaining better, and higher paying jobs. Women often don’t get promoted to higher positions in office, despite their qualifications and experiences. Female candidates running for public office experience forms of sexism as well. The variations and adaptions of society are evidence that reinforce the idea that gender is formed under social construction rather than the essence from biology alone.
National data gives us an indication of the severity of this issue. When 1 in 5-woman report being victims of severe physical violence (NISVS, 2010), we must ask ourselves if enough is being done to prevent this from occurring. From a historical point, there has always almost been a distinction from men on woman violence. Based on the disparity of cases reported, male inflicted violence on females is much higher and prevalent. When the perpetrators of DV, and IPV are predominately males, we can no longer dismissed this issue as a cultural, or
Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. "Violence Against Women." Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. 5th ed. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 2004. 263-64. Print.
Gender-based violence is made possible by the ideology of sexism in Indian traditional culture which argues that women are worth less than men in the sense of having less power, status, privilege, and access to resources that is more prevalent in middle class and low caste families.
As the realization of women as an exploited group increases, the similarity of their position to that of racial and ethnic groups becomes more apparent. Women are born into their sexual identity and are easily distinguished by physical and cultural characteristics. In addition, women now identify that they are all sufferers of an ideology (sexism) that tries to justify their inferior treatment.
Jewkes, R. (2012) Rape Perpetration: A review. Pretoria, Sexual Violence Research Initiative. Retrieved April 21, 2014 , from http://www.svri.org/RapePerpetration.pdf
It seems that hegemonic masculinity does a great deal in explaining male-perpetrated familicide, but it fails to explain female perpetrators. There is a great lack of gender symmetrical explanations of interpersonal violence. However, as the 21st century continues, and there is a continued strive for gender equality, there is good chance that there will be an increasing amount of gender based research on violence.
Loseke, D. R., & Kurz, D. (2005). Men’s violence toward women is the serious social problem. Current controversies on family violence, 2, 79-96.
Gender violence should be analyzed as a whole. Violent crimes seem to be a way of expressing gender superiority. Violence is often associated with masculinity due to pre-determined gender roles and the disproportional amount of male offenders versus female offenders. Gender violence appears to be about the offender emasculating the victim and placing themselves at the higher point of a gender hierarchy. With this hierarchy it’s easy to project a model of crime, and understand crimes against women.
Gender-based violence has been recognized as a large public health problem as well as a violation of human rights worldwide. One out of three women has been beaten, coerced into sex, or abused in another way at least once in her life (www.infoforhealth.org). The abuser is usually a member of the family, introducing the difficult problem in that the abuse usually happens behind closed doors, and is often viewed by cultural norms and legal systems as a family matter rather than a crime.
Violence against women appeared from a long time ago and happened in every country. It caused pain in both mental and physical for women. There were so many people trying to stop this problem but it was still not completely fixed. There are many reasons that lead to this issue all over the world. After many surveys and investigations, we realized that the main reason is Discrimination and Unequal power. Some legends and stories in the past made people think men’s role is more important than women’s role in society. And because men are stronger, more active than women so they can do more work. This also makes people think men deserve more rights than women. They soon forced on human’s mind that men are also...