Violence Against Women: a universal phenomenon

by Noema Chaplin

Half of humankind lives under the threat of violence, regardless of income, age, class, race, culture or ethnicity. Violence causes untold misery, harms families across generations and impoverishes communities...

It stops women from fulfilling their potential, restricts economic growth and undermines development. Efforts should be made to reach a consensus and set universal standards of behaviour through the elaboration of human rights in order to protect human life and dignity in our fast changing world

Violence is an extremely diffuse and complex phenomenon with biological, psychological, social and environmental roots, defined by the World Health Organization as “the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation."

The human cost is grief and pain, which, of course, can’t be calculated. The impact of violence: lives lost and health harmed. Many victims are too weak, scared or young to protect themselves. Much violence occurs out of sight, in homes, workplaces and even in medical and social institutions. Many acts of violence are never recorded because they do not come to the attention of authorities. Pretty often women became homeless or impoverished as the result of violence. It’s against human security and dignity.

A wide range of public health researchers in the United States and around the world have set themselves the task of understanding violence and finding ways to prevent it. Many different sectors and agencies should be involved in prevention activities and evaluation should be an integral part of all programs. Agencies should:

- Create, implement and monitor a national action plan for violence prevention;
- Enhance capacity for collecting data of violence;
- Increase collaboration and exchange of information on prevention, etc.

It is time to take these efforts to the next level. Members States can do more to implement the legal and policy frameworks to which they have committed themselves. All of us must form strong and effective partnerships with civil society, which has such a crucial role to play on this issue at every level. Together, we must work to create an environment where violence against
women is not tolerated. Let all of us -- men and women alike -- join forces in this mission.

Noema Chaplin
Board Member CCC/UN (Coordination Communication Committee)
Member of the Planning Committee of 57th, 58th, 59th DPI/NGO conference, New York
e-mail: noemachaplin[at]yahoo.com

Take pictures – not chances

by Doug Horrigan from Bakoff

Over the past few years my wife and I have become increasingly worried about the increasing frequency, nature and ferocity of assaults, particularly those against women...

My wife works in the city and occasionally has to work late or socialise with work colleagues which means that she has to travel to the station either in a cab or by foot. It’s not too much of a problem walking in the summer, but dark winter nights are a different matter, so she tends to take a cab.

Usually you can get a black cab fairly quickly and these are generally quite safe, but sometimes she would have to wait around alone on deserted streets, and would occasionally take a passing minicab.

We thought that it would be a good idea to send a photo of the driver to me but when we tried we always had problems, either the message didn’t arrive or I had to try and retrieve it from a website somewhere, so in the end we gave up.

Matters came to a head last year when the five girls were murdered in Ipswich. Its not a million miles from Ipswich to the city and it’s very easy for a maniac to jump on a train and attack girls somewhere else, so we thought it was about time someone did something about it and try to make the streets a little safer.

I came up with the idea of ‘Bakoff’, a photo messaging service to help to deter attacks and provide an opportunity for people to act proactively regarding their safety and, in the worst case, assist in identification of an attacker.

Bakoff is very quick and easy to use; you just use a camera phone to take a photo of a caller, driver or new acquaintance before you’re alone with them then send it to us. We then send you a confirmation that we’ve received it and we’ll back it up on two separate systems so we don’t lose it.

We keep the price as low as possible; we would rather have people use the service than risk an assault just for the sake of a few pence.

To use the service, just send the photo with the word bakoff as the first word in the message to 07803 851600. Calls cost 50p and you’ll have a network charge of around 25p. The message is secure and anonymous, no one gets to see it unless there’s an assault or robbery then we pass it to the Police.

For more information about what we do, visit: www.bakoff.co.uk

Responding to Virginia – Gender Matters

Posted by Helen Jones, Criminology teacher at Manchester Metropolitan University

As the world’s media retreat from Virginia, it is worth looking at how the tragedy of the campus shootings has been interpreted and how a feminist analysis can go beyond the reports of the past week.

Multiple shootings are not unknown in universities. Many know of the killings at Columbine in 1999 and at Monash University Australia in 2002. These incidents connect to a history that can be charted at least as far back as 1989 when, in Montreal Canada, 14 women were killed by a man whose suicide letter made reference to ‘the feminists who have always ruined [his] life’. In the aftermath of such events, the question that first emerges is: Why? Journalists, academics and politicians struggle for answers and as the past week has shown, the focus tends to fall on a narrow range of explanations including the culture of violence in US society, the availability of guns and the individual characteristics (and mental health) of the killer.

Few articles pay attention to gender. That the killer was a man is so obvious as to be un-noteworthy. Even though the earliest reports linked the first two killings to a possible romantic rejection of the killer, the subsequent reporting was gender neutral. When reports of the first shootings (at 7.15am in West Ambler Johnston Hall) were made to the police, they assumed it was a ‘domestic incident’ and that the gunman had left the campus. The assumption was that a man willing to kill two people over a ‘domestic’ was of no danger to the wider community. This assumption led to the deaths of another thirty people. Gender matters and it is important to make masculinity visible.

Schools and universities are important places for ‘doing’ masculinity. The construction and reproduction of masculinity is achieved in two main ways, male dominance of females and dominance by high-status males of low-status males. The killer was not a typical student and wasn’t part of the male world of frat houses and football. His was a subordinated masculinity which finally pushed back against the alpha males and the hegemonic masculinity that had subordinated him and silenced him. Raging against this, he responded by asserting his own manliness, taking up hyper-masculine poses in a video and then methodically destroying what he saw as a high-status elite who had challenged his masculine identity.

In Virginia, as in Monash, Columbine, Montreal and in many other such incidents, the violence is not gender neutral. In every case the killer is male, usually a young man who feels aggrieved by some (real or imagined) attack on his masculine identity, but we should not focus simply on individual psychopathology. The news media has argued that these men were ‘crazed’ individuals who ‘snapped’, resulting in rare and isolated events which do not require societal change. But the events are not so rare and the killers tend to put a lot of planning into their actions: they do not ‘snap’. A gendered approach takes us beyond the incomplete explanations of these shootings which do little more than blame the individual or the gun. If we can make the connections between these killings and the wider culture of violence which is part of many men’s masculine identity, we may be able to move towards effective policy responses to tackle the gendered nature of violence.

Helen Jones teaches Criminology at Manchester Metropolitan University

Female Genital Mutilation: The Power of the Clitoris

Posted by Enshrah Ahmed of FORWARD

The World Health Organisation defines Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) as “Comprising all procedures involving partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for cultural or other non-therapeutic reason.”

There are four main types of FGM, the first three are classified according to the severity of the procedures. For example FGM type one consists of the excision of the prepuce with partial of total removal of the clitoris itself while FGM type 2 consists of the removal the prepuce and the clitoris with total or partial excision of the labia minora. The most serve type of FGM is type three which consists of the excision of part or all of the external genitalia and a stitching or narrowing of the vaginal opening.

Why People Practice FGM:
Each practicing community has explanations / rationalisations of why they practice FGM. These explanations include religion, culture, hygiene, health and beauty. For example it has been documented in Mali’s oral culture that clitoris harms men’s penises during intercourse, due to this belief they carry out FGM as proactive and preventive measure. It has also been reported that some of the Yoruba people in the west African coast think the clitoris harms the baby’s head during delivery, therefore, they practice FGM on pregnant women during the second
trimester i.e. FGM is carried out before the delivery of the baby. Likewise some communities in Northern Ghana, they hold the believe that if a woman doesn’t go through FGM and touches /steps across a tree, the tree would not bear fruit.
Interestingly, in the Horn of Africa particularly Sudanese and Somali view women with their intact genitals as “wild” women. For some Muslim FGM practicing communities, the removal of the clitoris means lesser sexual desire for women which is thought to prevent them from being promiscuous.
Underpinning all these explanations is the fact that, these FGM practicing communities view the clitoris as distinctive source of women’s power .Thus for these communities to attain complete control over women, they opt for FGM. FGM like any other form of gender based violence(GBV), must be seen as an indictor of the dynamics of gender power within that community.
Throughout history societies have come up with various forms of GBV particularly violence against women to curtail women’s freedom and prevent them from the full enjoyment of their rights.

For more information on FGM please visit FORWARD’s website www.forwarduk.org.uk.

Slavery in the 21st Century

by Heather Harvey

Campaign Manager- Stop Violence Against Women Campaign

Amnesty International UK

As we are all celebrating the 200 year anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in Britain, and the UK government’s signature of the Council of Europe Convention Action Against trafficking in Human Beings, this is a good moment for reflection.

Some people believe that trafficking is the same as illegal immigration or people smuggling. It is not – in both illegal immigration and people smuggling, once the people arrive at their destination country they are free to go and take their chances. Trafficked people, firstly are not always here illegally but secondly are both tricked or forced into their situation for the express intention of exploiting them. The Convention defines trafficking “the movement of people, using violence, coercion or deception, in order to exploit their labour or services” The UN definition makes it clear that trafficking is not limited to sexual exploitation but also encompasses domestic servitude, forced marriage and labour exploitation. The UN also makes clear that trafficking is a contemporary form of slavery. Of course this does not mean it is the same as the transatlantic slave trade. The attention on trafficking is not intended to be at the expense of recognising the brutality of the transatlantic slave trade and the lasting poverty and inequality that it caused and which continues today.

Nonetheless it is estimated that some 12 million men, women and children are living in slavery today. In 2003 Home office figures estimated some 4000 men, women and children were trafficked to the UK to be exploited and abused and in a recent study by End Child Prostitution, Pornography and Trafficking (ECPAT) it was found that 32 out of 33 London Boroughs had problems with child trafficking. Amnesty’s current campaign has been drawing attention to steps that Government’s can take to help victims and the UK government in particular can do more.

“Maryam”

“Maryam”, a 13 year old girl with a twin sister from West Africa were doing well at school until their parents felt they had had enough education and it was time they were married off to some village elders in their community. To be marriageable though they first had to undergo circumcision or “female genital mutilation”. Maryam’s twin died during the procedure and Maryam did not want to go through with it or with the marriage. When she refused her parents rejected her so she ended up on the streets. Here a man offered to bring her to London for a better life and an education. Once here, she was locked in a basement and used as a child prostitute from age 13-19. At 19 her trafficker her released her and took her to Waterloo with false documents wanting her to leave the country. At Waterloo she was arrested for being in possession of false documents – she was convicted and served a 10 month prison sentence. At no time was she offered rape crisis counselling, sexual abuse counselling, sexual and medical health advice, post traumatic stress counselling or any other services that a child victim of abduction, imprisonment, physical and sexual violence would need.

It this sort of repeat victimisation and criminalisation by the state that implementing the convention would address – within the terms of the convention the first priority would be identifying and meeting the needs of the victim.

Useful Links:

Slave Britain

Unicef

Anti Slavery

Eaves 4 Women

ECPAT

Amnesty International UK