Reproductive Health and Violence


Domestic Violence Women as Victims in War and Emergencies Additional Costs The Key Messages .................................................................................................................

C H A P T E R S

Introduction

Reproductive Health and Early Life Changes

Reproductive Health and Education

Adolescence
and the Transition
to Adulthood

Marriage
and the Family

Labour Force Participation and Employment

Reproductive Health and Violence

The Older Years

nfluenced by the plight of one of her daughters, she is now working with the local women’s group to "shatter the silence" on domestic violence. That daughter is married to a man who beats her and who she fears will give her HIV; she wants to leave but cannot because she lacks economic means to support herself and her two children, and fears he may kill her.

Gender-based violence is universal, differing only in scope from one society to the next. The negative impacts and horrors of violence inflicted upon women—in war, the streets and the home—include rape, unwanted pregnancy, physical injury, harm to a wanted pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, disfigurement, psychological misery and death. In developing countries, it is estimated that rape and domestic violence account for 5 per cent of the healthy years of life lost to women of reproductive age.

In Bangladesh and parts of Latin America, acid throwing, a form of abuse increasingly perpetrated by vengeful lovers, leads to permanent disfigurement.
In the United States, battery is the greatest single cause of injury to women, accounting for more injury than auto accidents, muggings and rape combined.
In societies where virginity is emphasized, rape is sometimes used as a weapon of revenge to dishonour a young woman or her family.
In Alexandria, Egypt, a study of female homicides revealed that nearly half the women and girls killed had been murdered by relatives seeking to rid themselves of the "dishonour" of a family member having been raped.

Abuse-related injuries range from cuts to broken bones to death. In addition, battered women often suffer chronic headaches, abdominal pain, recurrent vaginal infections, and sleep and eating disorders. Battered women are four to five times more likely to require psychiatric treatment and five times more likely to attempt suicide than other women. About a third of battered women suffer major depressions, and some go on to abuse alcohol or drugs.

Domestic Violence

Around the world, much of gender-based violence is inflicted on girls and women by husbands, fathers or other male relatives.

In surveys from countries as diverse as Egypt, the United States and parts of Nicaragua and Zimbabwe, 20 to 50 per cent of ever-married women report being beaten or otherwise physically abused by their partners.

In Bangladesh, half of all murders are of wives by husbands. In Canada, 62 per cent of women murdered in 1987 died as a result of domestic violence. And in Papua New Guinea, almost three fourths of women murdered were killed by their husbands.

In urban Maharashtra and greater Mumbai, one out of every five deaths among women 15-45 is due to "accidental" burns.

Among Fijian Indian families, 41 per cent cite marital violence as the cause of their loved one’s suicide.

Pregnant women are particularly vulnerable. Some husbands become more violent during the wife's pregnancy, even kicking or hitting their wives in the belly. These women run twice the risk of miscarriage and four times the risk of having a low-birth weight baby. Other complications that may result from abuse are pre-eclampsia and premature labour.

In a survey of 342 women near Mexico City, 20 per cent of those battered reported blows to the stomach during pregnancy.

Much of domestic violence relates to male sexual desire, jealousy and desire to exert authority over the woman. Everywhere, for women who live with violent or alcoholic partners, the possibility of coercive sex is great.

In the United States, 10 to 14 per cent of married women report being physically forced to have sex against their will; among battered women the prevalence of coercive intercourse is at least 40 per cent.

Studies in Guatemala, the Philippines, Peru and Sri Lanka reveal forced sex in marriage, especially when men arrive home drunk.

Women as Victims in War and Emergencies

In war, rape of women and girls—often in front of family members—can be an assault on both the individual and her family and community. In situations of ethnic conflict, rape can be both a military strategy and a nationalistic policy. Rape in war may be intended to disable an enemy by destroying the bonds of family and society.

Women who have been raped in war not only endure the physical and emotional horrors of sexual violation and a possible child by the enemy, but face exposure to STDs, including HIV/AIDS. Often women who have been raped seek to keep this secret, feeling shame and fearing rejection by their husbands or partners, families and the community.

Approximately 75 per cent of the world's 18 million refugees are women and children. Repeated and often brutal rapes are a too-common aspect of the female refugee experience. Refugee women are subject to sexual violence and abduction at every step of their escape, from flight to border crossings to life in refugee camps.

Data on Vietnamese boat people indicate that 39 per cent of women were abducted and/or raped by gangsters while at sea.

Refugee workers find a common link between rape and subsequent domestic violence, especially by men whose wives or daughters have been raped in their presence.

Refugee men often feel victimized by their experience and feel that they have failed in their obligation to protect their families. This vulnerability, compounded by the frustration of resettlement, often leads refugee men to resort to domestic violence to recover power and control.
Additional Costs

In addition to personal costs, violence against women and girls puts a strain on the limited resources of most national public health care systems. The culture of silence about the causes of injury and pain suffered by too many women and girls results in an inefficient use of available services, since treatment provides only temporary reprieve if root causes are not addressed directly. Children who witness violence experience many of the same emotional and behavioural problems that abused children do. These include depression, aggression, disobedience, nightmares, poor school performance and somatic health complaints. Children who witness or experience violence are more likely to be abusive as adults.

The Key Messages:
Governments should:

• Develop or strengthen existing national plans of action, in collaboration with non-governmental organizations, to promote the protection of women, youth and children from any form of violence.

• Provide rehabilitation and support programmes for victims of violence, including confidential counselling and mental health care for girls and women of all ages who have experienced any form of violence, including sexual abuse, sexual exploitation, prostitution and trafficking.

• Develop programmes to educate, raise awareness of and prevent acts of violence against women, including by supporting non-governmental organizations and women's groups in this effort.

• Condemn violence against women and girls and refrain from invoking any custom, tradition, or religious consideration to avoid obligation with respect to elimination of violence.

• The international community should take leadership in breaking the norm of condoning war rape against girls and women. War crimes such as rape and violence against girls and women refugees should be condemned and punished.