World Social Forum - Violence Against Women: The “Other World” Must Act
Introduction
It was decided that for the second meeting of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre there would be a forum for reflection and debate on alternatives to the “culture of violence.” The World March of Women agreed to write the paper that will serve as the basis of discussion for this forum. We have deliberately chosen to talk about violence against women in order to illustrate how central this form of violence is to the so-called “culture of violence.” It could be said that this is the original form of violence, even the paradigm on which other forms of violence are modelled. We chose to talk about violence against women precisely because feminists have always been the ones to speak about this phenomenon. Apart from the contributions of feminists and the pressure we have brought to bear, the public discourse on this issue has been like violence against women itself: invisible.
It
is somehow terrible to talk about a “culture of violence.” It seems paradoxical
to casually pair the words culture and violence—one, with its positive
connotations and the other, with all its negative associations. The use of the
word culture suggests, to varying degrees, social endorsement, assent and
transmission. This is exactly what happens with violence against women.
Without
denying the importance of other forms of violence, we believe that if the
causes and consequences of violence against women are thoroughly understood,
the groundwork can be laid for alternatives to construct another world based on
equality and respect of others.
The
aim of this paper, then, is to demonstrate the universality of violence and its
diverse forms and, especially, to pinpoint its causes in order to succeed in eradicating
it. We denounce the patriarchy—a system which for thousands of years has
imposed inequality, exploitation, privilege, discrimination, values, standards,
and policies, based on the presumed natural inferiority of women as human
beings and on a hierarchy of social roles assigned to women and men. It is this
system that generates violence. We denounce neoliberal capital globalization
that is supported by a sexual division of labour that creates additional
inequality between men and women and concomitantly, the potential for increased
violence. Our goal is to put an end to
violence against women and we will enumerate the elements that must be changed
in order to do so. Naturally, this directly concerns all who are active in the
struggle against liberal globalization.
We hope that everyone who reads this paper will contribute to it with his or her thinking and proposals so that we will arrive in Porto Alegre in 2002 with a powerful text that invites action. We welcome your comments.
IN THE DAWN OF THE 21ST
CENTURY: DEEPLY ROOTED TOLERANCE AND COMPLICITY WITH ALL FORMS OF VIOLENCE
AGAINST WOMEN
Violence against women: a
transnational and transcultural reality
Violence
against women takes different forms depending on the society or culture in
question, but it is a social phenomenon that cuts across all social classes,
cultures, religions and geo-political situations. There are no exceptions, and
the rule is unfortunately confirmed every day.
Indeed,
every minute women are abused, humiliated, assaulted, raped, beaten, exploited
and killed, most often by men close to them—and this has been true for
thousands of years.
Violence
occurs most often in the private realm (feminists have amply shown that the
“private is political”): for example, within the family, in the form of
incestuous rape, genital mutilation, infanticide, son preference, forced
marriage, etc.; and within marriage or a sexual relationship, in the form of
marital rape, blows, psychological control, pimping, “honour” crimes, femicide,
etc. The public sphere is also the arena for violence against women in the form
of sexual and psychological harassment in the workplace, sexual assault, gang
rape, sex trafficking, pornography, organized procurement rings, slavery,
forced sterilization, etc. Violence against women is most often an expression
of one man’s domination, but it may also be practiced in an organized manner by
several men or by a state (systematic rape in Bosnia and Haiti). Too often it
is tolerated, excused or encouraged by silence, discrimination, women’s
dependence on men, theoretical justifications and psychological approaches that
support various stereotypes and myths: men are unable to control themselves,
especially their sexual impulses; rapists are mentally ill; women love “real”
men, etc.
The multiple manifestations of
violence against women
Some
global statistics on violence against women (taken from Sexism and Globalization, World March of Women, 2000):
·
20% to 50% of women are, to varying degrees, victims of wife assault.
·
An estimated 5,000 women and girls in the world are victims of
“honour” crimes every year.
·
According to UNICEF, one in 10 women in the world is raped at least
once in her lifetime.
·
According to most published studies on the subject, women are most
often raped by a man they know.
·
There are an estimated 130 million women in the world who have
suffered genital excision; every year nearly two million more women are
subjected to this custom, at a rate of roughly 6,000 per day, or five girls per
minute.
·
Estimates of the number of women in the sex industry range from a low
of nine million to as high as 40 million women throughout the world.
·
It is estimated that the sex trade generates $52 billion every year
for organized criminal networks.
·
It is evaluated that four million women and girls are bought and sold
around the world every year, to future husbands, pimps or slave merchants.
·
In the region of Southeast Asia alone, nearly 70 million women and
children have been victims of sex trafficking over the last 10 years.
·
Over 100 million girls are missing around the world because of son
preference.
·
In India, an average of five women are victims of dowry-related
burnings every day, and many other cases are never reported.
·
In 2000, a study conducted in the 15 member states of the European
Union revealed that 2% of women workers (three million) have suffered sexual
harassment at work and 9% of women and men workers have experienced
psychological harassment.
Fundamentalist regimes: extreme
examples of the institutionalization of violence against women
Fundamentalist
regimes like that of the Taliban in Afghanistan have institutionalized violence
against women, conferring on all men the divine right to employ it at any time.
Over the centuries, the absolute control of women and appropriation of women’s
bodies has manifested itself in different ways, ranging from outright horror to
manipulation. The 20th century saw progress in women’s rights but no
significant reduction in the violence of which women are the specific targets.
We know about “honour” crimes, dowry-related crimes against young women, and
the levirate: all practices that give men in the family life and death power
over the women and girls. Furthermore, in the West, despite broad recognition
of women’s rights, violence and diverse forms of control persist (a woman is
raped every 6 minutes in the United States, non-recognition of marital rape and
the right to abortion in Switzerland; expansion of sex trafficking; massacres
of women like that of 1989 in Montréal). No society is free of violence against
women because there is no society where women and men are equal, even where
equality of rights or formal equality has been recognized.
On
the international scene at the moment, the situation of Afghan women is
probably the most striking example of the indifference or tolerance of the
intolerable in societies claiming to respect fundamental human rights. Before
October 7, few countries had actively called for the end of the Talibans’ abuse
of women that had gone on since 1996. Since the beginning of the war, however,
it has become popular to justify the bombing by pointing to the non-respect of
women’s fundamental rights. According to Amnesty International, the number of
women victims of armed conflict has risen from 5% during the First World War,
to 50% during the Second World War, to almost 80% during the 1990s. There is no
reason why the present war should be any different. Women in Afghanistan, like
the rest of the population, want the bombing to end, and with the departure of
the Taliban, to see the institution of equal rights. Afghan women’s groups also
want to be actively involved in peace negotiations and in the restoration of
democracy in their country.
Rape as a weapon of war
Another
manifestation of violence against women is the use of women’s bodies as war
booty or a weapon of war. In all armed conflict, from ancient times to the
present, aggressors have used rape as a way of attacking their enemies. Rape
camps were organized during the Balkan war, for example, as part of the “ethnic
cleansing” campaign. It has now been revealed that during the Algerian war,
French combatants committed rape on a massive scale. Between 1932 and the end
of the Second World War, Japan set up camps so that its army could be
“serviced” by sexual slaves. In these rape centres, termed “Recreation
Centres,” 200,000 women were forced into sexual slavery. The slaves, known as
“comfort women,” were kidnapped from neighbouring countries who were at war
with Japan. Since the end of the war in Kosovo, women from Eastern Europe have
been kidnapped, confined, terrorized and taken by organized crime networks into
brothels in Pristina. Almost half of the men frequenting these brothels are
international NGO workers and peacekeeping forces. The list goes on and on.
Women fight back and organize
Despite
the suffering they have endured, women everywhere fight back against violence
every day. They organize with each other and demonstrate to change laws, ensure
their implementation, challenge the “customs” for which women pay the price,
and to offer solidarity to women who are victims of violence, etc. Every day,
women who have been violently attacked find the courage to rise up in loud and
determined protest. They are the principal fighters against this social
scourge. Here are just a few examples: the Maurician women who mobilized
against wife assault and had a law passed in 1997; the plays created by
Filippina women to prevent sex trafficking; Women in Black in Serbia, who
protested Milosevic’s militarist and nationalistic policy and supported women
refugees in Kosovo; and associations in Burkina Faso who work with adolescent
girls to prevent genital mutilation and forced or early marriage.
THE CAUSES OF VIOLENCE AGAINST
WOMEN
Violence
against women is rooted in the hatred of otherness and the belief that
domination is a viable means of survival. The patriarchy instituted a system of
masculine domination (social, economic and political) over women. Despite the
progress of feminism in the last few years, men and boys in all societies and
social classes derive large benefits and concrete privileges from this system
of domination: for example, domestic work and the raising of children are
everywhere the almost exclusive domain of women and girls, who do it for free.
Boys and men everywhere are accorded more value than women and girls. In order
to impose and to maintain what is the oldest and most persistent system of
exploitation and oppression, violence, or the threat of violence, is used as a
tool of control and punishment for disregarding the patriarchy’s established
rules (hierarchy, submission, obedience, etc.). Our societies have developed
(and continue to develop) from a foundation that espouses a hierarchy of
individuals according to sex. In this context, otherness is seen and
constructed as a threat rather than as an advantage. From this springs the need
to dominate in order to survive that is the basis of the patriarchy. The desire
to preserve the privilege inherent in the status of the oppressor leads to the
use of violence as an affirmation of masculinity and as a tool for maintaining
dominance. A bond of solidarity is thus constructed among men to assure the
continuity of this situation. As long as we refuse to challenge these
realities, we will not succeed in eliminating violence against women.
Patriarchal
domination generally models itself on the dominant economic system or existing
mode of production. The mode of capitalist production therefore coexists with
its forerunner, patriarchal domination, and uses it to great profit. Regimes
that were supposedly socialist have also operated hand in glove with patriarchy
and women’s historical experience with these types of societies has convinced
us that a “progressive” regime will not automatically guarantee women’s
equality and be resolved to eradicate sexist violence. Women are obviously
present in all social classes. It is women, however, who constitute the
majority of workers in the informal economy, the free economic zones, and those
without paid work in the South. In the North, women form the majority in the
ranks of the unemployed and of those with unstable, flexible and part-time
jobs. Women—in the South and the North—still perform virtually all domestic
labour for free. These areas of heightened vulnerability may also present the
risk of increased violence and make it harder for women to escape violence.
Women
are further rendered vulnerable by racist discrimination. These different modes
of oppression intersect, interpenetrate and mutually reinforce one another. A
disability, youth or old age, lesbianism and prostitution are additional
factors that increase the likelihood of women being targetted.
THE CONSEQUENCES OF VIOLENCE
AGAINST WOMEN
The
repercussions of sexist violence on the lives of women victims are never
negligible. The entire being is profoundly shaken, with everything that was
previously taken for granted now thrown into question. Paradoxically, whatever
the circumstances or forms of violence we have suffered, we feel ashamed and guilty.
We feel shame for the invasion of our intimate beings, for being robbed of
control and of our physical and psychological integrity. We feel guilty for our
supposed failure to offer resistance (the reality is always more complex than
it appears). This is true in every part of the world—South and North, East and
West.
The
repercussions of violence are most obvious in women’s health: physical
consequences of genital mutilation such as repeated hemorrhages and even
septicemia; multiple contusions, broken bones, etc. from repeated blows.
By
definition, violence can also result in death: the murder of newborn girls in
China, “honour” crimes in Jordan and Morocco, the murder of women in Ciudad
Juarez, Mexico. But death can also result from wife assault: a blow struck a
little harder than usual by a husband, in a particularly vulnerable spot. Even
the World Bank has to admit that violence against women, as much as cancer, is
responsible for death and incapacity in women of reproductive age, and causes
more health problems than road accidents and malaria combined.
The
consequences are also psychological: loss of self-esteem, depression, suicidal
feelings, nightmares, anxiety attacks, psychosis, fear of sexual relations,
vulnerability to sexual exploitation (prostitution), etc.
Consequences
are often material in nature: forced move, job loss, termination of studies,
etc. Relations with intimates may be upset: separation with spouse, distancing
from erstwhile friends, etc.
The
primary consequence of violence against women, even the threat of violence, is
that it maintains women in a state of constant fear and vulnerability and
restricts our movements (especially in the evening or nighttime), access to
public spaces where we can feel safe, social participation, and autonomy. Women
are thereby denied access to full citizenship. Violence fulfills a role of
social control of women. Furthermore, these consequences also manifest
themselves as economic costs.
VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND LIBERAL
GLOBALIZATION
One
of the results of liberal globalization is the relocation of businesses from
the North to the South in the quest for cheaper labour. The labour market is
thereby opened up to women, but under the most severe conditions: pay that is
not adequate to live on, intolerable working conditions presenting grave health
risks, non-existent labour rights, prohibition of unionization. The
precariousness of their situation in the labour market renders these women
extremely vulnerable: for example, during hiring interviews in the maquiladoras
of Mexico, women workers must answer questions concerning their sexual
practice, menstrual cycle, and birth control measures. Companies also demand
pregnancy tests. Because most of these women are single mothers or are the main
source of income for their family, they submit to these humiliating controls
over their bodies. In plants that have been relocated to Bangladesh, women
workers have two big fears: fire and rape. In June 1996, 32 women were burned
in Dacca because the factory had no emergency exit or fire extinguishers. News
spread fast. Inversely, when it comes to rape, the law of silence prevails.
Women routinely suffer sexual harassment and are threatened with dismissal if
they do not submit to their male bosses.
In
the North, changes in work organization (increased duties, accelerated work
pace, more pressure on employees, etc.) and the development of all kinds of
unstable and atypical jobs have led to rising psychological harassment, with
women being the principal victims because they form the majority of the people
in these jobs.
As
capitalist globalization evolves, we see a growing feminization of migration,
for the most part toward industrialized countries. These women are forced to
emigrate because they can no longer support themselves at home and must help
their family with regular shipments of money back home. Some countries, like
the Philippines, even encourage this migration. Women are often employed in the
home where they may be forced to endure sexual harassment and rape by their
employers in addition to being dependent because of their undocumented status.
This was the case of the Filippina Sarah Balabagan (14 years old) in Saudi
Arabia, and Véronique Akobé from Ivory Coast. Both were tried and sentenced for
attempted murder or murder of employers who had raped them.
The
international financial institutions (IMF and World Bank) impose structural
adjustment programs on indebted countries in order to “restore” their
economies. These programs prescribe the destruction of public services, drastic
reduction of the civil service, major increases in the prices of essential
goods, etc. They force women to even higher levels of unpaid work to compensate
for the newly non-existent services, throw thousands of women and men on unemployment,
and impoverish and starve entire populations. These pernicious actions destroy
the social fabric, thereby setting the stage for the emergence of additional
violence against women, in particular within intimate relationships. They
promote the merchandizing of women’s and children’s (mainly girls’) bodies—the
only thing they have left to sell—in prostitution, domestic slavery, organ
trafficking, etc.
The sex trade: a vastly profitable
industry
Liberal
globalization has bestowed a planetary dimension on the sex trade, which had
already morphed from a neighbourhood phenomenon into an industry.
Internationalization has generated a huge market for sexual commerce where
women and children have become consumer items to meet the male “demand.”
Prostitution has expanded considerably in the Southern hemisphere during the
past three decades, and in Eastern Europe, since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
It appears in different forms. There is rising domestic prostitution linked
with the movement from the countryside to the cities. Women and children are
prostituted in the “red-light” districts of metropolises in their own
countries: Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, India, etc. Spurred by the ease of
transportation and communications, the attraction of the “exotic,” the search
for ever-younger prostitutes who are supposedly not HIV-positive, sex tourism
is steadily growing. Some countries even depend on the income from prostitution
to assure their development. Sex tourism is not only a phenomenon of countries
in the South. It is also practiced in Europe, in Berlin, Hamburg and Amsterdam,
which have become major destinations. These cities also happen to be in
countries that have recognized prostitution as “sex work.”
Parallel
to this local prostitution, the international traffic in women and children has
exploded. In the cities of Japan, Western Europe and North America we now see
hundreds of thousands of young women who have been “displaced” into
prostitution. The largest contingent comes from countries in South and Southeast
Asia: roughly 400,000 per year. Next is the former Soviet Union, followed by
Latin America and the Caribbean. These women and children are sometimes
kidnapped and sold from middleman to middleman until they reach the ultimate
destination. Other women are forced out of desperation to leave their country,
and subsequently fall prey to organized crime networks that assure the passage
over borders, and promise well-paid work in a bar, or marriage with a man from
the West. The Constitution of “Fortress Europe,” which drastically restricts
the free movement of persons, the vision of Eldorado in the West, and the
desire to flee war are some of the reasons women resort to these strategies.
In
the crime networks, women are “conditioned” into prostitution by the use of
violence to force them into obedience and submission: blows, humiliation,
repeated rapes, etc. These networks generate huge profits. Interpol has
calculated that the income of a pimp living in Europe is roughly 108,000 euros
per year. Trafficking women for the purposes of prostitution is now more
profitable than drugs: drugs generate one-time profits, while a prostituted
woman is a year-long source of income to the pimp.
Prostitution
networks are supported by the unrivalled and completely unchallenged growth of
pornography: sex-shops, pornographic Web sites, videos, etc. These businesses
transmit commercialized, degrading and violent images of women’s bodies, most
of the time in complete legality. They do the same, this time illegally, with
children. Women appearing in these films are often themselves victims of rape,
violence and murder, as the demand for “hardcore” films and “reality shows”
skyrockets.
ALTERNATIVES, PERSPECTIVES AND
DIRECTIONS TO TAKE TOWARDS THE COMPLETE ELIMINATION OF ALL FORMS OF VIOLENCE
AGAINST WOMEN
How do we stop it? What needs to
be done so that this age-old violence is eradicated?
Discriminatory
practices and sexual inequality are often, even today, entrenched and
institutionalized in the laws of numerous countries. Throughout the 20th
century and up to the present day, feminists have been struggling for
recognition of our fundamental rights. We have demanded and pressured to have
our gains formally written into law. Recognition of our formal rights is indeed
the first battle to be won, whether at the national or international level. Our first demand, then, is that violence
against women be prohibited by law in every country and that the content of
international and regional Conventions (where they exist) be transposed into
domestic legislation (see demands of the World March of Women in the
Appendix).
Next, ensure that these laws
prohibit all forms of violence.
There
are still some countries where marital rape is not a crime: for example, in
India, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, and Serbia. There are countries, like Haiti,
where wife assault, both psychological and physical, is not recognized. There
are still countries where the criminal code stipulates that if a rapist marries
the woman he raped, he will not be prosecuted, for example: Costa Rica,
Ethiopia, Lebanon, Peru, Uruguay. There are still countries, France, for
example, where only a superior, not a colleague, can commit sexual harassment
in the workplace.
Next, we must continue to ensure
that these laws are actually implemented.
In
almost all countries, laws prohibiting violence against women are poorly
implemented due to the absence of a clear political will to ensure their
enforcement. In reality, in those countries where women have the possibility of
doing so, very few report their assaults out of fear of reprisal or simply out
of fear of not being believed. The
violence thus remains invisible. In all the countries of the world, it is
feminists who have made it visible.
Some
Western countries are old hands at double talk: shedding a few tears of
compassion, they sincerely deplore violence against women; at the same time—in
the name of freedom of expression—they allow the walls of their cities to be
plastered with advertisements that degrade and debase the public image of women
and incite and give permission to men to rape.
But laws do not solve everything.
It
is the responsibility of the state in all countries of the world to create a
climate where violence against women is unacceptable to all citizens.
It
is the responsibility of the state in all countries of the world to educate
their population by every means possible toward this goal, starting with the
youngest children.
It
is the responsibility of the state in all countries of the world to sensitize
professionals who will have contact with victims (social services, health,
education, law enforcement, and the justice system) to the reality of this
particular form of violence.
It
is the responsibility of the state in all countries to recognize and promote sexual
equality and women’s fundamental rights.
We
have a long way to go, to be sure, when some states have even institutionalized
violence against women. But we are here,
after all, to press for utopia.
It is not only up to the states to
assume responsibility
All
social movements—anti-neoliberal globalization associations, trade unions and
political organizations—must actively denounce violence against women. Unions,
for example, must condemn sexual harassment at work and support any woman who
has been the victim of wife assault and is facing the necessity of quitting her
job because her spouse follows her to the workplace (this happens both in the
North and South).
It
is our individual and collective responsibility as women and men to speak out
against violence wherever we see it, including within our own mixed activist
organizations. We must work to prevent its occurrence. We must not repeat the
behaviour of the people who, at 6 o’clock one evening in 1986, stood on the
Paris métro platform and watched a young girl being raped and did not move to
help her.
It
is the responsibility of our male colleagues in social movements to publicly
show their solidarity with feminists’ struggle against violence against women,
in the name of the other society we want to build together. How about a solemn declaration by social
movements and the World March of Women in which we commit to a common struggle?
Why not organize an international tribunal on violence against women for the
third meeting of the World Social Forum?
Violence
of all kinds deprives women of our autonomy and undermines our physical,
psychological, and intellectual integrity. It prevents us from working, from
being politically active, from having fun—in short, from living. This must be
heard and understood.
Violence
against women is legitimized and generated by all forms of inequality,
fanaticism, sexist discrimination, and the condition of inferiority and
marginality in which society attempts to maintain us. Violence is the ultimate
guarantee of women’s oppression; at the same time, our unequal societies are
the breeding grounds of sexist violence. The struggle against inequality is
also a struggle against the legitimization of violence.
Men
will certainly lose a little privilege in the struggle against sexual
inequality. But are we not gathering
together to rid society of privilege, ALL privilege? Men, like women, stand to
gain human relations based on reciprocal trust and respect. They, like women,
stand to gain new individuals who have shed the garb of outdated tradition.
Men, like women, will gain a society that is genuinely egalitarian, for which
we are struggling in all other areas: racism, anti-colonialism, etc.
Many
authors refer to the innate nature of violence, and its “natural” aspect. Freud
proposes the existence of a death wish. Some even believe there is a “violence”
gene. None of that has been proven, in our opinion. We might also suggest that
violence is a social construction. Free of all harmful influences, it is quite
simple to educate a child to non-violence. Those arguing that violence is
“natural” would seem to be looking for ideological justifications or a way to
legitimize it.
What
is clear, meanwhile, is that violence is used to dominate. One cannot
exert domination over another without violence. It need not always be explicit:
ideology also serves to maintain the hierarchy of dominance.
One
of the things that makes it possible to really live, as a human being, is the
ability to relax in peace and not constantly be on one’s guard. A permanent
state of war is intolerable. But that presupposes a minimum of trust in the
Other—the basis of any “normal” human relationship. Some women do not even know
what it is to trust in this way. For them, life consists of dealing with the
unexpected: the violence of their partner or their superior at work. LIVING is
virtually impossible. Their lives are reduced to mere survival and a slow
psychic death.
WHEN WE WILL BE ABLE TO STOP IT? “A people who oppresses
another people is not a free people.” To paraphrase: “A person who oppresses
another is not a free person.”
Our
capacity to build another world is also dependent on this: social movements
must commit to challenging the unequal relations between women and men; they
must undertake to incorporate in their analysis the links between capitalism,
sexism and racism; demand the respect of women’s rights; commit to challenging
the “culture of violence”— in both individual and collective practice. It is
only by so doing that we have a chance of shaking the foundations of patriarchy
and liberal globalization.
World
March of Women
www.ffq.qc.ca/marche2000
Last modified 2007-11-13 09:04 AM
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