WHILE much has been done in Guyana on addressing and creating greater awareness of the abuse of women, the matter has been given fresh focus with the visit here by United States researcher and attorney-at-law Beth Feder.
She was in Guyana last week under the auspices of the U.S. embassy here and met Human Services and Social Security Ministry Ms. Priya Manickchand and others to discuss and share experiences on the issue.
Some points Ms. Feder brought up during a public lecture at the Hotel Tower in Georgetown on Friday are worthy of note and should be followed up by the local authorities and others committed to firmly grappling with the scourge of the abuse of women.
An important point she raised is society’s attitude to women suffering abuse.
People in society, she advocated, must reach out and give sympathy to women trying to leave abusive partners and not ridicule them for seemingly going through the process over and over.
Physical abuse, she noted, involves a calculated decision by the abuser.
“Choosing to hit is voluntary…I am not here to say that men and women should separate, but to look at ways of [dealing with this],” she said. “[Domestic violence] is not a women’s issue, it is a societal one,” she declared.
All too often in societies like Guyana, women being abused by husbands and partners in homes are regarded as domestic matters which others should not get involved in and what is clearly needed is a greater public awareness of the problem.
Violence against women takes many forms, as Ms. Feder pointed out, and it should not attract public attention only when an abused woman is seriously wounded or worse yet, murdered.
Women are child bearers, home makers, caretakers, bread winners and so much more, and deserve to be zealously protected and guarded from abusers.
Greater societal awareness will only come from a sustained and well-coordinated programme targeting key partners like the police, the media, churches and other community groups.
They all need to be keenly familiar with matters like what constitutes abuse to women and what should be done when people are aware that women in their neighbourhood, workplaces and other places are victims of domestic abuse.
According to Ms. Feder, domestic violence is a pattern of behaviour that usually starts with verbal abuse.
She said too that cases of emotional abuse are usually the most difficult to prove, adding, “We need to [tell] men, women, boys and girls: stop the violence!”
Among the instances she pointed to in her lecture are men who, while not physically harming the woman, commit violent acts against pets that belong to the women.
She said another way that the man can be abusive without actually physically harming the woman is to penetrate her social networking web pages and post abusive texts to her friends and family.
In short, abusing women is a complex matter and can take many forms.
As we have noted, while Guyana has done much to tackle the issue, it calls for far more meaningful involvement of the wider society to effectively grapple with the problem.