Violence Against Women

1
Violence Against Women

• Definition
• Extent of Problem
• Causes
• Policy Progress
• Remaining Policy and Political Issues

2
What is Violence Against Women?

• Domestic Violence/Intimate Partner Violence
• Rape/Sexual Assault
• Sexual Harassment/Eve Teasing
• Emotional Abuse (?)
• Sex Slavery/Prostitution
• Female Genital Mutilation
• Sati

3
UN Definition (1993)

• 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 deprivations of liberty, whether
  occurring in public or private
• Note Gendered

4
Prevalence (US)

• Rape/Sexual Assault
• 18 women (nearly 1 in 5) report being raped in
  their lifetime
• More than half of all rapes occur before victim
  is 18
• Age Girls (1999) 20 of girls (14-18) reported
  sexual and physical violence by a date
• Race 88 percent of rapes, victims and
  perpetrators are of the same race

5
Prevalence cntd

• Class
• Poorer women more likely to be subject to rape,
  domestic violence
• Low Income women are 3 times more likely to be
  raped
• Household income less than 7,500 is 7 times more
  likely to be subject to sexual assault than
  35,000-50,000

6
Prevalence Women on Campus

• 3 each year an attempted or completed rape Most
  know the offenders
• 65 of these took protective action (screaming
  and fighting the perpetrator off)
• 5 of rapes reported them to police
• Most women did not think it was serious enough to
  report, were concerned about reprisals
• Only about half of these were recognized as rape
  by the victims

7
Intimate Partner Violence

• 25 of women subject to violence by partners in
  lifetime
• 1 in 7 married women is raped by her husband

8
Causes of Intimate Violence Against Women

• economic inequality between women and men
• normative acceptance of violence to settle
  conflicts
• patriarchal decisionmaking in the home
• wifes inability to obtain a divorce

9
A current debate

• Are women as violent as men?
• Common couple violence
• Patriarchal/spousal terrorism

10
Cross-Cultural Studies

• Rape-prone societies
• rape tends to be overlooked, condoned
• sexual conquest confers status on men
• men are posed as social group against women
• rituals include rape
• Rape-free societies
• sexual equality
• women and men are indispensable,valued
• interpersonal violence is rare
• values which uphold female characteristics and
  sanctity of life deter the likelihood of rape

11
VAWA (1994)

• A wide array of measures
• Mostly reactive
• Civil rights provisions struck down