FREQUENT reports are carried in the media of violence against women, overwhelmingly domestic violence.  These reports are almost all mentally disturbing because of their grisly nature.  Domestic violence has been described as “behaviour which causes one party in a relationship to be afraid of the other.  Domestic violence can take the form of physical, psychological or emotional abuse and forced isolation away from friends and family members.”

The kinds of violence perpetrated against women are horrifying.  Women are mercilessly beaten, often breaking their limbs or damaging their faces.  In a few instances, they have been blinded and in a large number, they have been chopped with cutlasses or stabbed with knives.  In one case at least, both arms were completely severed.

In other instances, women have been deprived of their earnings and denied food.  They are often verbally abused, insulted and their efforts downplayed or disregarded to undermine their self-worth and self-image.  Sometimes they are locked in the house or stalked by their partners when they leave the home and are thus unable to go to the police.  Reports of sexual abuse include incest and rape and procuring underage girls and women for prostitution.

This kind of milieu is very challenging and mentors and women’s groups have been putting forward solutions over the years.  A small group of mentors have advised that women “turn the other cheek” as Jesus advised victims of hurt.  They should not respond to provocations and insults and beatings, suppress their anger and forgive their tormentors.  But the vast majority of women and their organisations and the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security and even First Lady Arya Ali have taken a more proactive position and have advocated that women should protect themselves as far as they are able and that criminal charges be brought against perpetrators and that the police play a greater role in domestic violence matters than they do presently.  More safe houses should be provided where the victims could be afforded refuge.

Some social workers and psychologists have advocated that abusers should be rehabilitated rather than punished, since the vast majority of abusers came from homes where abuse of women was the prevailing environment and that they themselves were victims of that environment.  Most people, both men and women, reject such a position and desire to have the abusers punished.
The question of how to eliminate or control violence against women, especially domestic violence, is still unanswered and this is partly so because there is confusion between the older struggle by women for their rights, such as the suffragette movement or the struggle for equal pay for men and women for the same work.

These early struggles by women were against deep societal and even religious assumptions and prejudices that women were inferior or less than men.  In the Bible, for example, Eve was responsible for Adam being expelled from the Garden of Eden or there were several evil women like Delilah or Salome.  The early women’s struggles were against male dominance and superiority which had the imprimatur of historical and religious teachings.  In contrast, the current struggle against violence against women and in particular domestic violence has its roots in female sexuality.

Almost all the reports of violence against women have an element of sexuality.  If the violence were to be perpetrated against men, it would be different and less gruesome; or if the victim was thought of not as a woman, it would very likely be less grisly.  It is because women are thought of as sex objects that much of the violence against them occurs.  Sadhguru, the very popular spiritual teacher who appears on Youtube, once remarked that the difference between men and women was a small biological difference that should be confined to the bedroom and bathroom and should not be allowed to define men or women.

Though Sadhguru was not speaking of or referring to violence against women, his remark is pertinent to it, since if the perpetrators of violence against women were to think of them as human beings, such violence may not occur or it would be less horrifying.  If this proposition is accepted and women are perceived primarily as human beings and not as sex objects, the main root cause of violence against women could then be addressed.

In our view, the state and the various women’s groups have been largely addressing the symptoms of the problem, and though their efforts are laudable and very necessary, they should accompany these efforts by striving to have society perceive women primarily as human beings and not sex objects.  This is a process of education in which the media, the school system, the teachers training college and the university will have to be enlisted and occasions such as female beauty contests would be treated as of less importance.  We would then be moving towards the elimination of the horrors of violence against women.