Lesson 5 - Violence against women

Violence against women

WARNING - some of the information in this lesson may be upsetting to read

The United Nations defines violence against women as "any act of gender-based violence 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 in private life."

Violence against women includes two major categories, intimate partner violence and sexual violence. The World Health Organisation suggest that around 35% of women worldwide have been a victim of one of these kinds of violence at some point in their lives.

Intimate partner violence

This includes any behaviour by an intimate partner (i.e. boyfriend or husband) or ex-partner "that causes physical, sexual or psychological harm, including physical aggression, sexual coercion, psychological abuse and controlling behaviours."

In addition to physical violence, this can include non-physical harm such as controlling behaviour and bullying. Therefore the term domestic abuse may be more accurate than domestic violence.

The majority of violence against women is committed by intimate partners or ex-partners. Around 30% of women have suffered violence of this kind. 38% of all murders are a man killing his partner.

Sexual violence

This is "any sexual act, attempt to obtain a sexual act, or other act directed against a person’s sexuality using coercion, by any person regardless of their relationship to the victim, in any setting."

This definition goes beyond rape and groping to include any form of sexual coercion, for example a superior at work using his position to initiate a sexual encounter with a member of staff. In other words, if he tells her she will not be able to get a job or a promotion without sleeping with him.

Causes of violence against women

Although it is difficult to say exactly why one man is violent towards women, there are some clear patterns in the statistics.

Men are more likely to be violent towards women if:

• They have a low level of education (i.e. not graduated high school)
• They were abused as a child
• They saw domestic violence towards their mothers
• They have alcohol problems
• Their society has unequal gender norms (i.e. accepts violence towards women)
• They have a sense of entitlement over women (i.e. they think they have the right to treat women how they want)

Women are more likely to suffer violence from men if:

• They have a low level of education
• They were abused as a child
• They saw domestic violence towards their mothers
• They have attitudes accepting violence, male privilege or women being subordinate (i.e. "below" men in society 

These statistics lead to some ideas about how to reduce violence against women. The first is improving education. The second point is that coming from families that experienced violence against women leads to more violence in future. Therefore reducing violence in one generation can help prevent violence in future generations. Finally, the attitudes of society appear to influence the rates of violence against women. Change societal attitudes can be very difficult. However, they do change over time, and attitudes towards women are improving, if not as quickly as we would hope. However, it is important to realise that New Zealand was the first country to give women the right to vote in elections in 1893, only 125 years ago! Now the only country where women cannot vote is the Vatican.

n.b. this map lists Saudi Arabia as not allowing women the vote, but this changed in 2015.