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COMMEMORATIONS for the 16 days of Activism Against Gender based Violence have run since 1991, but it seems it has not yielded much positive results as women and children are still being socially, physically and emotionally abused.
One then wonders why? Where are we missing the point?
Guides.womenwin.org states that a�?Gender-based violence involves men and women, in which the female is usually the target, and is derived from unequal power relationships between men and women. Violence is directed specifically against a woman because she is a woman or affects women disproportionately. It includes, but is not limited to, physical, sexual, and psychological harm.
The most pervasive form of gender-based violence is abuse of a woman by intimate male partnersa��.
As a society, everyone has to take up the challenge for positive results because it seems there are a lot of loopholes in dealing with gender based violence.
Sixteen days is a time when people get to talk more of violence against women and its impact on a womana��s physical, psychological, social and spiritual well-being. For positive results, 16 days of activism should not just be a a�?thinga�� of 16 days, but a lifestyle, a culture to be cultivated throughout the year, to curb gender based violence by any means necessary.
When one mentions violence against women, most people tend to just think of physical violence, but sadly ita��s not only about that, women are abused on a daily basis and in some instances the perpetrators will not even be aware as they have normalised the abnormal.
Abused women, sometimes due to financial dependence on their spouse, rarely report the abuse. It all starts with the teachings in families, churches and schools and later manifests through attitudes as people grow up. Even the Bible in Proverbs 22: 6 says, a�?Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.a�?
Women are abused because people have been brought up in societies where little respect is given to them. Imagine a world where women are feared or respected in as much as men are, there would definitely be limited violence against women. A point of departure to such a world is for women to stop looking for empathy from men but rather confidently stand for what they believe in.
A day hardly passes by without reports of sexual harassment of women, murder reports and most of the time women will be on the receiving end and surprisingly societies always find reasons to justify actions of perpetrators.
The fight against gender based violence should address the inequality of sexes from an early stage, since it is such inequality that breeds abuse of the a�?perceiveda�� weaker sex.
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Londile Moyo
Online Reporter