One in Three Women

It will require a mass willingness to discuss this scourge. The shame that is inherently a part of being violated often forces the act and its outcomes into the shadows. No one wants to talk about something that isn't supposed to be happening. But we have to.

We need to talk about this openly and frankly in classrooms, before children are teenaged. Parents need to pass on the stories they know to their children. This topic can no longer be treated as taboo.

I have explained to my 11-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son that I was sexually abused when I was 4 years old. I found it exceptionally painful to tell them, but I wanted them to know this is happening to women they know, women they care about. Our children need to realize that violence toward women isn't an abstract concept.

At some level, this seems like such a simple question - that we even have to be asking it. But once you really start getting into it, it becomes more complex because of all the behaviors and attitudes that support men's violence against women.

Our crisis work with victims is very important, but we also need the opportunity to do the type of prevention work that will have large scale impact. Prevention work that entails breaking down beliefs that create attitudes that reinforce objectification, dehumanizing, minimizing, etc to females. So, to actually implement strategies that do this requires dealing with priviliged people and doing that can be very difficult. But, it is as easy as saying - we need to value our girls and women in this world.

Two cultural values will need to be
changed in each society: the cultural
valuing and promoting of violence, and
the cultural de-valuing of women.
In North America, we can raise girls to
value themselves, demand respect, and not
put up with violence, and we can raise boys
to direct their physical actions construct
ively (building, sports, search & rescue,
etc.)and to respect girls and women and all
people. This will be an on-going effort
over the current century - we have to keep
at it, persist, and teach our girls to
carry the torch for women's equality.

I would agree with Maida and others here, but particularly agree with the changing and shifting social norms around the value of violence particularly that of male violence and the de-valuing of women. In order to achieve this end, non-violent men need to be engaged in a number of prevention strategies as partners with women in a shared framework and paradigm of prevention. There are multiple strategies currently in various forms of implementation, but no universal framework of VAW prevention. This will require a paradigm shift within the movement of violence against women advocates, activists and educators to begin to come together with other unlikely partners (such as responsible fatherhood programs, male anti-violence activists, etc.) to craft a framework that we can begin to work from universally. In the Men's Network Against D.V. here in Seattle, we believe that in order to be successful at long term social norms change we need to change and transform dominate masculinity by engaging partners that heretofor have been left out of the dialogue and certainly not engaged as partners. Beginning with the "well-meaning man" at the point where they currently are engaged. Coaches, teachers, male mentors, etc. are all partners that have yet to be successfully engaged as partners in ending violence against women. But hit and miss, unorganized efforts will only get us so far. We need a Beiging type conference on VAW prevention.

It starts by educating our children. Not
just talking the talk but walking the walk.
Start teaching our girls to respect themselves
and to have a voice, teaching our boys to
respect the girls, that no means no, and it starts in the home. Going into the daycares, Elementary, Jr. High, High Schools, Colleges and Universities. Start teaching the children as young as possible. I think harder punishments for the abuser and mandaitory counseling would also help. I'm talking about intensive counseling not just 2 or 3 sessions but nothing less than 2 years.

What will it take to end global men's violence against women? Well, to start, it will take the changing the dominant way of thinking about women--that we are not important, that we are "less than," that our work is not valued, that our bodies are there to be raped and abused, that we are not allowed to have control over our own bodies.

What will it take to end global men's violence against women? If we hope to end men's violence against women, we have to also actively work to end racism, classism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, heteronormism, discrimination based on religion, and discrimination based on immigrant status, in addition to all the other fomrs of oppression that intersect and feed into and strengthen one another. If we don't recognize and understand how all forms of oppression intersect and contribute to men's violence against women, and if we don't actively work to end all forms of oppression, then we cannot hope to end men's violence against women.

As a community based agency providing professional counselling and support for sexually abused children, youth and adults we have moved to addressing the issue of violence as not merely an issue of gender. This does not mean we do not acknowledge that the majority of victims are female however a good number are also male and it has proven unhelpful to polarise support. The fact is that the violence is the problem not the gender. So lets teach all people that violence as a problem solving method in interpersonal relationships is ultimately unproductive.

I appreciate that you keep this blog going and allow comments. To me feedback is an interesting part of a blog.

Average 40 percent of women have suffering physical or sexual violence from men all over the world this is the global problem.Specially for the adulterated populated countries.Men should respect women because he born from a women.And I think the women should learn more education and earn more income for their security in life.
Raising this factor is also a step in preventing violence against women.

George Kevin