Taking it on from a legal perspective, I think the violence increases in the first place when women get frustrated by the judicial system. Giving Uganda as an example, violence has increased among family settings where women are gainfully employed. In most cases, women seek legal redress but end up being frustrated by the male dominated judicial system. Aside from that, most women are ignorant when it comes to rights. Regardless of whether educated or not, so many women 'accept' to put up with violent partners because they actually don't know that their rights are being violated.

Taking it on from a legal perspective, I think the violence increases in the first place when women get frustrated by the judicial system. Giving Uganda as an example, violence has increased among family settings where women are gainfully employed. In most cases, women seek legal redress but end up being frustrated by the male dominated judicial system. Aside from that, most women are ignorant when it comes to rights. Regardless of whether educated or not, so many women 'accept' to put up with violent partners because they actually don't know that their rights are being violated.

I remember reading in "Half the Sky" by Sheryl WuDunn and Nicholas Kristof of a woman whose husband stopped beating her after she got a job because she brought in good money. It's frustrating to see that there isn't always a clear answer or reaction to women empowerment.  

In Japan, there is very little awareness of domestic violence. I only know of it from my international school and foreign campaigns. Many people in Japan keep problems and thoughts to themselves. It might be helpful, if campaigns were created and targeted towards men. I don't think that it's just "a culture thing". I think people who inflict pain on others without a just reason have issues of their own as well, and need help. Asking for help is powerful, and both men and women should know this. 

Sana, 

 Violence is pervasive in the world. There is a direct link between Violence and economic empowerment of women in three different ways:

1. First, although domestic violence occurs across socioeconomic classes, poorer women are more likely to be survivors of domestic abuse than wealthier women, both due to contextual (e.g. neighborhood) and individual (e.g. male employment instability) factors.
2. Second, women who are economically dependent on their abusers are less able to leave and more likely to return to abusive partners. Further, the degree of women’s economic dependence on an abuser is associated with the severity of the abuse they suffer. Greater economic dependence is associated with more severe abuse.
3.  Third, economic abuse is in itself a form of domestic abuse since abusive partners may act in ways that harm women financially and undermine their ability to become financially independent. 

Violence is a result of patriarchal culture. Violence ends gradually with the socio cultural transformation of the society for which the raising of awareness about the adverse effects of Violence against women, engaging men and boys for the transformation of the society into an equitable one and the economic empowerment of women.    

@Anna Bolbasova and @C Vikram Simhan you both make interesting and poignant points (for lack of a better term) but I would argue part of the reason many women don't come forward is due to corruption and ill training. Actually I would go on to say the problem is manifold but the main reasons are twofold. Firstly, as I previously mentioned, the law enforcement in many countries (developed and less developed) tend to be male dominated and rarely are these officers trained to deal with incidences of violence against women. I would go on to say that some law enforcement officials, outright refuse to take the report some victims try to make.  But lets say a few of these officials are doing their job and a woman does attempt to file a report, we have seen a slew of officers claiming the victim was not compliant (because she was emotional or wasn't sure if she should press charges) and then the case gets closed before any repercussions can come to abuser. Victims want to make sure justice is served or else they feel reporting was a waste of time and could jeopardize their safety. Secondly and quite frequently family, friends and community members try to silence the victim by shaming and placing the blame on them (e.g. you shouldn't have provoked him, you know how he is, oh it's just that male ego, etc..). Often times violence, especially domestic abuse is normalized and so why bother to report? We need to train our law enforcement officials and not just sensitize men but women as well.

@Anna Bolbasova and @C Vikram Simhan you both make interesting and poignant points (for lack of a better term) but I would argue part of the reason many women don't come forward is due to corruption and ill training. Actually I would go on to say the problem is manifold but the main reasons are twofold. Firstly, as I previously mentioned, the law enforcement in many countries (developed and less developed) is male dominated and rarely are these officers trained to deal with incidences of violence against women. I would go on to say that some law enforcement officials, outright refuse to take the report some victims try to make.  But lets say a few of these officials are doing their job and a woman does attempt to file a report, we have seen a slew of officers claiming the victim was not compliant (because she was emotional or wasn't sure if she should press charges) and then the case gets closed before any repercussions can come to abuser. Victims want to make sure justice is served or else they feel reporting was a waste of time and could jeopardize their safety. Secondly and quite frequently family, friends and community members try to silence the victim by shaming and placing the blame on them (e.g. you shouldn't have provoked him, you know how he is, oh it's just that male ego, etc..). Often times violence, especially domestic abuse is normalized and so why bother to report? We need to train our law enforcement officials and not just sensitize men but women as well.

This discussion has made me wonder the cause-and-effect relationship between violence and women’s empowerment. Is economic empowerment a key approach to reducing GBV, or is reducing the prevalence of GBV instrumental in enabling women to become economically empowered? Or a little bit of both? Although more financial independence and clout within the household certainly has the potential to provide women with the option to assert more power and leave their abusive relationships, that still doesn’t address the structural, unequal power dynamics between genders that can often lead to acts of violence.

As with everything in global development this issue has many nuances and is highly contextual-dependent so based on my observations I would have to say a little bit of both is needed – both initiatives that address structural inequalities and others that provide women with opportunities to become economically empowered are needed. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated

I start with a personal history. I want to share how this link between women's economic development and violence truly impacted my grandmother. This happened in a period of economic downfall in Colombia and in which my grandfather, carried by the very machista culture of the time, was inevitably irresponsible, conceived women as mere subjugated housewives and would spend most of the family's income in drinking.

My grandma, despising his lack of insight about their future, started proposing the idea of getting a job herself to help with the expenses of the growing family. He and many other family members, however, condemned her initiative as inappropriate by arguing that 'women who worked cheated on their husbands'. That response, of course, aimed at making my grandmother feel guilty for having such considerations and also tried to put pressure on her, by making her believe society would treat her as an unfaithful wife.

Despite this attempt to discourage her, she was never submissive and ignored their advice. As a result my grandfather felt threatened and inflicted physical and psychological violence on my grandmother. She, however, kept resisting to the point in which one day she also responded violently and put him in his place. 

From then on, she gradually became the breadwinner and started managing the financial affairs of the family. After she took command of the situation they past from being a very poor family to having their four children become successful professionals. My grandmother was obviously a great example for her kids: my mother and my aunt, who are two independent hard working women who would never tolerate any kind of chauvinistic harassment; and my two uncles, who are very respectful with women and belief in gender equality.  

 

What I illustrate could be translated to a higher societal level and expect that in the same way in which my grandfather became threatened, the male populations of certain societies feel the same way when they are about to be taken out of that privileged status that patriarchy mechanically  provides them with.   

I think we can prevent this reaction though. I definitely don’t believe in men being the bad ones, most are just simply taught to blindly follow ‘male’ conducts and behaviors. My grandfather, I am sure, never had somebody who would provide them with another perspective to view women. That’s why it was only through disobedience that my grandmother gained a higher status in the house.   We, however, must try to avoid violence as much as possible through education (media, workshops, campaigns), supported by policy reconstruction to ensure strict punishment for domestic violence and specialized centers in which we can assist families in the transition to a more egalitarian arrangement of its parts.

In places where violent reactions actually take place, we must still apply all of these but yet in a less passive way. Marches and international support must accompany the struggle in order to put pressure on governments for egalitarian treat of genders and redistribution of power, and also important, we must encourage women to speak about abuse. We must endorse them to resist and provide help and support among themselves to organize and fight back in ways that can lead to a more democratic social structure. Support lines and shelters for women deciding to start new lives away from male coercion would also be necessary.  

Dear Sana,

I think that your question is very important, because the problem of domestic violence is relevant both for developing countries and developed countries, it doesn’t matter whether the country has good economic situation or bad, domestic violence exist in every country.

Concerning the issue of interdependence between women working and increase if domestic violence I would say that in many cases it does exist. To my mind it is mainly connected with mentality and it is more psychological problem. With increase of women’s income increases her role in the family, but men still want to dominate in the family, therefore they are using their physical dominance upon women, their physical power to show women that they are strong and women are wear and they cannot do anything against men. It is sad, but it is true. This is the result of traditional social role of men and women in the society. Anyway we are coming to the necessity of changing the view on roles of men and women, for promoting and providing gender equality.

I would agree with Vikram that it is necessary to encourage women to report about cases of domestic violence. Reporting mechanism suffer a lot when it comes to domestic issues such as domestic violence. The question is how to encourage women to report about the violence cases. Women usually think about the wellbeing of their family and their children more than about themselves, they do not want troubles in their family and prefer to be quite than to say about the case of violence, they afraid to stay alone, to grow children without husband. But if not to report it will continue and it is dangerous. I think that it is necessary to raise knowledge about women’s rights and legal responsibility for violence against women (for example, violence is a crime and so on), so women will know that they have a right to report about the violence and that they will be protected and men will know that they will receive appropriate punishment for their actions. But as I mentioned above, the key is changing the attitude towards women’s role in the society, without it the solution of the problem will be much harder.

Moreover, I think that it is important to organize mass media means to address the issue of domestic violence. For example, in my country, in Belarus, domestic violence is a huge problem. To act in support of women we have billboards addressing to stop violence in families, and we also have to hot telephone line where women can report about the cases of violence at home (usually, anonymously) and we have a center of psychological help for women, how suffer from domestic violence. So, probably it is possible to organize some center to help women to solve such problems, or just to support women.       

Hi Sana! 

This is indeed a fact that violence against women have increased manifold in the past years. The root cause of this is the mentality of the men that they are the the ones who should earn for the house and the women must take care of the house and children. In India, we have been facing this problem for a long time since independence. In a recent study that I conducted for the NGO Child Rights and You (CRY), I looked at the data for the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3) wherein the data showed that every 1 in 4 women are victim to domestic violence. The situation is even worse in rural areas with almost all the women facing this problem and are also abused. 

Such problems are often not reported and the women chooses to keep quiet for the welfare of the family and the men take undue advantage of the same. We need to take care of this problem in two ways: First sensitize the men about the negativity of domestic violence and second, encourage the women of the house to speak up if she is a victim to such a violence.