{"id":83432,"date":"2016-11-28T12:00:17","date_gmt":"2016-11-28T12:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=83432"},"modified":"2016-11-25T18:23:59","modified_gmt":"2016-11-25T18:23:59","slug":"many-forms-of-violence-against-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/11\/many-forms-of-violence-against-women\/","title":{"rendered":"Many Forms of Violence against Women"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ren\u00e9<\/a>25 November is the day designated by the United Nations General Assembly as the \u201cInternational Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.\u201d Violence against women is a year-round occurrence and continues at an alarming rate.\u00a0 Violence against women can take many different forms. There can be an attack upon their bodily integrity and their dignity.\u00a0 As citizens of the world, we need to place an emphasis on the universality of violence against women\u00a0 but also on the multiplicity of the forms of violence. We need to look at the broader system of domination based on subordination and inequality.\u00a0 The value of a special Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women is that the day serves as a time of analysis of the issues and a time for a re-dedication to take both short-term measures \u2013 such as the creation of a larger number of homes for battered women \u2013 and longer range programs.<\/p>\n

Both at the international UN level and at the national and local level, there have been programs devoted to the equality of women and to the promotion of women in all fields. Thus, it is important to stress that women are not only victims in need of special protection but also that women should participate fully and effectively in all aspects of society.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, women have largely remained invisible and inaudible by being allowed to have a key role in the \u201cinformal sector\u201d – those sectors of the economy that are the least organized and are often left out of the statistics of the formal economy as if the informal sector did not count.\u00a0 Women have turned to the informal sector – or have been pushed into it \u2013 as a way of sustaining a livelihood for their families.<\/p>\n

In the informal sector, women survive and often have a major responsibility for the economy of the whole family. Fathers are often absent by need or by choice.\u00a0 Some women do well in the informal sector and serve as a model \u2013 or a hope \u2013 as to what others can accomplish.\u00a0 Self-employed women are increasingly helped by micro-credit programs.\u00a0 Micro-credit loans are useful but rarely do such loans allow a person to move outside the informal economy.<\/p>\n

Women’s work in the informal sector accounts for a large proportion of total female employment in most developing countries of Africa, Latin America and Asia.\u00a0 Women work as food producers, traders, home-based workers, domestic workers, prostitutes and increasingly are engaged in drug trafficking \u2013 anything to earn an income to feed their children.\u00a0 The informal sector is their last hope for economic and social survival for themselves and their families.<\/p>\n

Gender inequality and the walls built around the informal sector are the marks of the \u201csilent violence\u201d against women. Amartya Sen defined the major challenge of human development as \u201cbroadening the limited lives into which the majority of human beings are willy-nilly imprisoned by the forces of circumstances\u201d.\u00a0 On 25 November, this day for the elimination of violence against women, we need to look closely at the many social, cultural and economic walls which imprison.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________<\/p>\n

Ren\u00e9 Wadlow, a member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and of its Task Force on the Middle East, is president and U.N. representative (Geneva) of the Association of\u00a0World\u00a0Citizens and <\/em>editor of Transnational Perspectives. He is a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment<\/a><\/em>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

25 November is the day designated by the UN General Assembly as the \u201cInternational Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.\u201d Gender inequality and the walls built around the informal sector are the marks of the \u201csilent violence\u201d against women. Amartya Sen defined the major challenge of human development as \u201cbroadening the limited lives into which the majority of human beings are willy-nilly imprisoned by the forces of circumstances\u201d. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-transcend-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83432\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}