Violence against Women

Examples of Violence against Women in the following topics:

• Legislation Protecting against Discrimination

  • The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a piece of legislation in the United States that outlawed major forms of discrimination against women, as well as racial, ethnic, national, and religious minorities.
  • An employer cannot discriminate against a person because of his interracial association with another, such as by an interracial marriage.
  • The Violence Against Women Act of 1994 (VAWA) is a United States federal law that initially provided 1.6 billion dollars toward investigation and prosecution of violent crimes against women, imposed automatic and mandatory restitution on those convicted, and allowed civil redress in cases prosecutors chose to leave unprosecuted.
  • VAWA also established the Office on Violence Against Women within the Department of Justice.
  • Outline the legislative framework in the United States that actively protects employees against discrimination in the workplace

• Discrimination Based on Sex and Gender

  • Discrimination based on sex and gender contributes to harassment, unequal treatment, and violence against women, girls, and transgender and gender non-conforming people.
  • Misogyny is the hatred or dislike of women or girls.
  • According to feminist theory, misogyny can be manifested in numerous ways, including sexual discrimination, belittling of women, violence against women, and sexual objectification of women.
  • Although the exact rates are widely disputed, there is a large body of cross-cultural evidence that women are subjected to domestic violence significantly more often than men.
  • As members of several intersecting minority groups, transgender people of color—and transgender women of color in particular—are especially vulnerable to employment discrimination, poor health outcomes, harassment, and violence.

• Gender Discrimination

  • Gender stereotypes are widely held beliefs about the characteristics and behavior of women and men.
  • They can also facilitate or impede intellectual performance, such as the stereotype threat that lower women's performance on mathematics tests, due to the stereotype that women have inferior quantitative skills compared to men's, or when the same stereotype leads men to assess their own task ability higher than women performing at the same level.
  • Violence against women, including sexual assault, domestic violence, and sexual slavery, remains a serious problem around the world.
  • Many also argue that the objectification of women, such as in pornography, also constitutes a form of gender discrimination.
  • A poster depicting gender stereotypes about women drivers from the 1950s

• Spousal Abuse

  • Other sources argue that the rate of domestic violence against men is often inflated due to the practice of including self-defense as a form of domestic violence.
  • Although the exact rates are widely disputed, especially within the United States, there is a large body of cross-cultural evidence that women are subjected to domestic violence significantly more often than men.
  • Another study has demonstrated a high degree of acceptance by women of aggression against men.
  • Some researchers have found a relationship between the availability of domestic violence services, improved laws and enforcement regarding domestic violence, increased access to divorce, and higher earnings for women with declines in intimate partner homicide by women.
  • Evaluate the gender differences in domestic violence against both men and women in heterosexual and homosexual relationships

• The Women's Rights Movement

  • The women's rights movement refers to political struggles to achieve rights claimed for women and girls of many societies worldwide.
  • At a time when mainstream women were making job gains in professions, the military, the media, and sports in large part because of second-wave feminist advocacy, second-wave feminism also focused on a battle against violence with proposals for marital rape laws, establishment of rape crisis and battered women's shelters, and changes in custody and divorce law.
  • Its major effort was trying to get the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) added to the United States Constitution, an effort in which they were defeated by anti-feminists led by Phyllis Schlafly, who argued against the ERA, saying women would be drafted into the military.
  • The second wave of feminism in North America came as a delayed reaction against the renewed domesticity of women after World War II: the late 1940s post-war boom, which was an era characterized by an unprecedented economic growth, a baby boom, a move to family-oriented suburbs, and the ideal of companionate marriages.
  • However, the changing of social attitudes towards women is usually considered the greatest success of the women's movement.

• Sexual Violence

  • The most commonly discussed form of sexual violence is rape.
  • Forms of sexual violence include: rape by strangers, marital rape, date rape, war rape, unwanted sexual harassment, demanding sexual favors, sexual abuse of children, sexual abuse of disabled individuals, forced marriage, child marriage, denial of the right to use contraception, denial of the right to take measures to protect against sexually-transmitted diseases, forced abortion, genital mutilation, forced circumcision, and forced prostitution.
  • War rape is the type of sexual pillaging that occurs in the aftermath of a war, typically characterized by the male soldiers of the victorious military raping the women of the towns they have just taken over.
  • Neither vantage point is simple; some women in Africa accept the practice, while others have been vocal in speaking out against the practice.
  • Sexual violence is severly under reported.

• The Feminist Movement

  • The feminist movement (also known as the women's movement or women's liberation) refers to a series of campaigns for reforms on issues, such as women's suffrage, reproductive rights, domestic violence, maternity leave, equal pay in the workplace, maternity leave, sexual harassment, and sexual violence.
  • One of the most important organizations that formed out of the women's rights movement is the National Organization for Women (NOW).
  • For example, stay-at-home women did not agreed necessarily with women who worked steady schedules.
  • Marxist feminism argues that capitalism is the root cause of women's oppression, and that discrimination against women in domestic life and employment is an effect of capitalist ideologies.
  • Anarcha-feminists believe that class struggle and anarchy against the state.

• Aggression: Harming

  • Violence, however, is an extreme expression of anger.
  • Not all aggression leads to violence.
  • For example, people's beliefs about the acceptability of violence against Jewish people in Pakistan predicted whether they would join an extremist group.
  • In psychological research about gender, the general pattern is that women are more likely to internalize, and men are more likely to externalize. 
  • In contrast, women are more likely to be indirectly and non-physically aggressive, such as in displays of relational aggression and social rejection.

• Sexism

  • Sexism is discrimination against people based on their perceived sex or gender.
  • A good example of sexism against women is a question that has been asked in numerous surveys over the years in the US, "Would you vote for a female candidate for president?
  • In short, nearly 1/4 of cisgender Americans maintain sexist attitudes against women (trans people are not counted in the surveys).
  • Another common form of sexism is violence, especially violence toward women and trans people.
  • Similarly, recent reports show steady patterns wherein trans people suffer more gender related violence than any other social group.

• Gender and Social Movements

  • The feminist movement refers to a series of campaigns on issues pertaining to women, such as reproductive rights and women's suffrage.
  • The feminist movement refers to a series of campaigns for reforms on issues such as reproductive rights, domestic violence, maternity leave, equal pay, women's suffrage, sexual harassment and sexual violence.
  • It was also a response to the backlash against initiatives and movements created by the second-wave.
  • Since 1975 the UN has held a series of world conferences on women's issues, starting with the World Conference of the International Women's Year in Mexico City, heralding the United Nations Decade for Women (1975–1985).
  • International Women's Day rally in Dhaka, Bangladesh, organized by the National Women Workers Trade Union Centre on 8 March 2005.