Gender-based violence is one of the most pervasive human rights violations and perhaps the most socially tolerated human rights infringement. The aim of the 16 Days against Gender Violation, which began on 25th November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and ended on 10th December with the International Human Rights Day, was to mobilise NGOs, states and other stakeholders to reflect on the detrimental impact and devastating consequences of violence against women on society and consequently on the well-being of the world. The cost of gender-based violence to women and their immediate network is a significant obstacle to achieving gender equality and to meeting the Millennium Development Goals.

Domestic and sexual violence against women, which are forms of gender-based violence, are subject to high media coverage: we constantly hear and read reports of women sexually assaulted, raped and harassed in the public and private spheres. As human beings, we cannot hold ourselves from making judgments stemming from our religious convictions and cultural values. Often we tend to assign the responsibility for the abuse to the victims/survivors forgetting that women, as a broad social category, are all potential victims given that a certain amount of risk is present whatever their demographic standing and attributes. Sexual violence can occur in a wide range of relationships and locations such as within families, marriages and dating relationships and women can be subjected to various forms of sexual abuse during their life stages.

69% of women victims of violence

The United Nations Population Fund has reported in the State of the World Population published in 2005 that ??worldwide, an estimated one in five women will be victim of rape or attempted rape in her lifetime. One in three will have been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused, usually by a family member or an acquaintance. More often than not, the perpetrators go unpunished. Each year, hundreds of thousands of women and children are trafficked and enslaved; millions more are subjected to harmful practices. Violence kills and disables as many women between ages 15 and 44 as cancer. And its toll on women?s health surpasses that of traffic accidents and malaria combined?? It has long been recognized that domestic violence is by far the most common form of gender-based violence with, according to the UNFPA, 10 percent of women in some countries and 69 percent in others being subjected to domestic violence.

Human beings are born into a social unit and cultural system in which they are socialised. From birth, people relate in various degrees to social institutions, and particularly religious communities, which shape their cultural and social mores and subsequently their social interactions and relationships such as marriage, sexuality and gender relations. For the feminists, the social and cultural ideologies of male supremacy, the historically male- dominated social structures, socialisation practices and the gender specific roles in which people are socialised are the main factors that contribute to violence against women. It results from the long held subordinate position of women in all cultures. Whilst domestic violence both reflects and reinforces inequalities between men and women, it endangers the health and security of victims/survivors and impedes their dignity and autonomy.

Society is constructed on and around stereotypes, which underpin people?s actions and thoughts and consequently stereotypes dominate public discourses presenting a causal explanation for acts of violence against women. For example, we often hear men and women put the blame for the abuse on the victims/survivors using stereotypical statements such as she was not a devoted housewife so her husband had to tame her, she was adulterous so she deserved to be violated etc. Stereotypes not only validate violence against women as a means for men to assert their domination over women but also normalize violence as a customary form of gender relations. They also hold back victimised women from coming forward to report their abuse and seek help for fear of being stigmatized and blamed for their abuse. Consequently, stereotypes perpetuate the culture of silence, which traps victims/survivors in their abusive relationships, marginalising them, isolating them from social interaction and also keeping them in ignorance. Marginalisation keeps women under the domination of their abuser and in their subordinate position.

Women unwilling to take action

Violence against women hinders women?s social advancement and full development and more seriously hampers their prerogative to enjoy their human rights. No plan of action to eliminate violence against women will bring results as long as people?s deeply rooted stereotypical attitudes and outlooks (that such forms of violence are acceptable) do not change and also as long as the Protection from Domestic Violence Act deters victims/survivors from taking their abuser to court. Once given a Protection order, victimised women are unwilling to sue their husband for domestic violence. They prefer to ask for a correction, a short-term relief, thinking that, once given the order, their husband will change. Upon witnessing that the order does not discourage their husband from violating them, victims/survivors choose to divorce rather than sue their abuser.

Furthermore, although the Act provides for the protection of victims/survivors, the allocation of a Protection order and an Occupation order especially in extreme cases, in the first instance, trivialises less violent forms of everyday domestic violence, which heighten people?s perception that only horrifying forms of violence against women deserve condemnation. In the second instance, it perpetuates the long held misogynic belief that the man is the head of the house and therefore cannot be thrown out of his dwelling. With the upsurge in the number cases of domestic violence, there are no grounds for tolerance and no tolerable excuses for acts of domestic violence and other forms of violence against women going unpunished.

Sophie LE CHARTIER