Women and girls in our society have been discriminated since the beginnings of society, and although their rights are improving, they are still not equal to men. This can be defined as gender inequality, because people do not have equal opportunities – meaning having the same occasions and possibilities – and treated prejudicially just because of their gender. Men and single individuals may sometimes be discriminated due to their gender but this issue is usually more relevant to women. Females are often separated from men in different fields: health, education, political representation, labor market, etc., where their freedom of choice is reduced and their capabilities cannot improve. An important issue that women face and that is linked to gender inequality is violence. Around the world, 35% have experienced physical or sexual partner or non-partner sexual violence, meaning more than 1/3 of women. Around 133 million have suffered female genital mutilation in Africa and the Middle East, causing eventually bleeding, infections such as HIV, childbirth difficulties, infertility or death. Nonetheless, gender inequality is an issue not only in those regions, while equality should be a basic human right for girls. Inequalities can start at birth and end at death, and they may vary from violence to the privation of access to health care and balanced nutrition, caused high mortality rates. Domestic violence against women occurs in homes, where the female is abused physically, emotionally or sexually by their partners or family members.
PROBLEM
There are different forms of domestic abuse that indicated a person is experiencing some form of violence. For instance, coercive control is an act or repeated acts of threats, humiliations and attacks that intimidate and frighten the victim. A partner exerts control over the other by making them dependent on them through exploitation, lack of support and independence and deprivation of choices and rights. Examples that show a coercive control behavior are: isolation from friends or family, deprivation of basic needs such as food or medical support, taking control of all your actions, humiliating / dehumanizing the other person, insulting and intimidating you. Other common types of abuse are psychological and emotional abuse or physical and sexual abuse. However, there also exists uncommon forms of violence such as financial abuse. This is part of coercive control, as it involves reducing a person’s freedom by controlling and limiting their use of money and economic choices. At times the partner uses and takes holds completely of the other’s money through credit cards and leaves the woman without essential needs as she cannot have access to her income. Moreover, financial abuse can affect children in conflicting families, as a person can take money away from another, and put at risk the child’s health and necessities. Another type of abuse is stalking, where a person becomes obsessed with another and persists giving them unwanted attention. Examples include frequent but unwelcomed gifts, unwanted communication, ruining property, following and spying on someone, harassing them. Stalking makes the victim feels frightened, troubled, worried and threatened. It is considered as domestic violence as 71% of cases of stalking involve people who had previously been in an intimate relationship, and more than 80% of the victims are female. The last type of abuse is digital: online domestic abuse. In this case, a person controls the other through social media profiles and emails, abuses over media, shares photos or videos without consent, and uses locators and spyware to find the other. Furthermore, for 85% of the cases of digital abuse, the victims had already undergone domestic violence offline, for 50% of respondents the abuse also included direct threats from an ex-partner or person they knew, and for nearly a third of women GPS locators and spywares were used.
Domestic violence usually starts if the woman cheats the partner with another person, flirts with other people or continues annoying and complaining with the man. Besides, the partner may have a low self-esteem and feel the need to control and dominate the other in order to feel more powerful. Also, according to traditional beliefs, men have the right to control women because the female are inferior to them, and this concept is still common in certain families where children grow up with the idea that men are superior. In these families, kids might even think that violence is an effective way to solve conflict as they are surrounded by it daily.
Domestic violence is a serious issue as it affects many women of different race, age, sexual orientation and religion. Moreover, it affects numerous people as, only in the United States, 4 million people every year experience violence by their partner. Women are not only abused by their partners at their homes, but also in the workplace, where 74% of the respondents are harassed. On average, two women are killed every week by their partner or ex-partner in England and Wales, and the police receives more than 100 calls for domestic violence every hour. Around the world, 40% to 70% of female murder victims are killed by their partner, meaning that such assassinates can be considered domestic violence as well.
Usually, domestic violence has a cycle: it can be constant, nonstop or can stop and start. Often, the abuse begins with a period of tension in the couple, the actual abuse, followed by a period of calm where the abuser may deny the violence or say his actions will never occur again.
SOLUTIONS
Avoiding domestic violence starts with empowering women and encouraging them to speak up and stay safe. Women are recommended to follow the indications of S-A-F-E-T-Y: S (staying in the safe places you know with trusted people), A (asking for help and support from others), F (considering the good of family), E (escaping the relationship), T (there is no excuse for the violence received), Y (you are valuable and should care for yourself and children).
If a woman is not able to leave the relationship and end the abuse, various domestic abuse services make refuge accommodation, helplines and other forms of support available for people in need. For instance, refuge services protect 3557 women and their 3919 children across England, and community-based services have been used by 154306 women in England in 2016-17 according to “Women’s Aid”. Women can also make demands for domestic abuse services, although 60% of demands of refuge in England between 2016 and 2017 have been declined due to lack of space in the refuge. Instead, 24,3% of demands for community-based services were declined. Moreover, the fact that women are not always accepted in these services is due to lack of funding of domestic abuse services, since recent public spending cuts and savings for women’s organizations are reducing the number of women that can be welcomed in those help centers.
LINK TO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS
Because domestic violence is mainly a women’s issue, we can say that it links to the achievement of gender equality, which is Sustainable Development Goal N°5. In fact, the main targets of this aim are to eliminate discrimination against all women and girls everywhere and to end all forms of violence against all women and girls. This last target is directly connected to domestic violence, as 49 countries do not have laws to protect women from domestic violence, so this form of abuse is widely spread around the world.
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