25th of November: a day as symbolic as heavy. This day is dedicated to the elimination of violence against women, a task definitely easier said than done. On a reoccurrence like this, we need to focus on understanding systemic gender-based violence, starting from small acts like catcalling, to try to eradicate that violence at the root.
This is extremely difficult, we know, but if we never correct someone when they say something misogynistic on the workplace or at a family gathering, or a man when he catcalls a girl on the street, we will never see a change.
Lets start by understanding this violence.
Gender-based violence and its systematic nature: Asian examples
Gender-based violence is not something casual: it is part of a system and deeply rooted in our patriarchal society. Everywhere in the world, violence against women is systematic and on the rise in different ways.
In Asia, we see the highest percentages of Lifetime intimate partner violence among women aged 15-49: between 51% and 29% of women in different Asian subcontinents experience violence from their partners throughout their life, a World Health Organisation’s report found. According to the 2022 World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT)’s report on Gender-based Torture in Asia, Asian women still suffer from many types of violence and torture like:
- (Female) Genitalia mutilation – partial or total – done in many Asian countries like Sri Lanka for non-medical reasons, against the girls’ will. This issue is still not addressed, and wasn’t even publicly recognised until 2016.
- Trafficking and sexual exploitation, which is still a relevant issue in the Philippines even after the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act was passed. Women from rural communities are more vulnerable to sex trafficking, forced domestic work, sexual abuse and gender-based violence in general. According to a report by UNICEF, the Philippines has become the global epicentre of the live-stream sexual abuse trade.
- Sexual violence and torture, even in detention centres. Women who are sexually abused in prison are reluctant to come forward due to the social stigma of being arrested and the lack of funds, since they usually dependent on the male members of their family.
- Violence against female members of the LGBTQIA+ community in Mental health centres. In Mongolia, mental health is a prevalent issue with 109 cases every 10,000 citizens in 2016, and the mistreatment of female patients part of the lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex communities still goes unaddressed by Mongolia’s National Mental Health Program, also being discontinued after 2019.
In all of these examples, we can see how violence is not properly,or at all,addressed by governments, making it is a systematic and structural issue: institutions preventing women and girls from getting their basic needs met, and indirectly enabling these systems to take advantage of them, makes this violence systematic and hard to eradicate. There are structural inequities that are harmful to women, especially when part of the LGBTQIA+ community, and prevent them from getting an adequate education and good healthcare.
Violence against women is a global epidemic, weighting on their physical, psychological, sexual, and economic life.
Technology-facilitated violence against women
This year’s theme for the Day of Elimination of Violence against Women is online or technology-facilitated violence, trying to address the growing problematics of the online world. According to the 2024 United Nations’ report on technology facilitated violence against women and girls, the rapid growing of technological change creates new ways of abusing women and girls, allowing them to be harassed online through defamation, violent threats, hate speech, hacking and stalking, doxing and even image and video-based abuse.
Artificial Intelligence also has a scary part in this: AI facilitates the proliferation of image-based abuse by being used to create fake nude photos of women and girls, even when they’re not a public figure. According to Sensity AI, 90 to 95 per cent of all online deepfakes are non-consensual pornographic images with around 90 per cent of these depicting women.
This growing problem results in more women and girls getting harassed, both online and in-person, feeling violated in their personal life and their bodies being transformed in nothing more than an object for men to look at. Many women have experienced this type of violence, for example
- Arab States: 60 per cent of women internet users have experienced online violence.
- Eastern Europe and Central Asia: research across 12 countries found that more than 50 per cent of women over 18 years old have experienced some form of technology-facilitated abuse in their lifetime.
- Sub-Saharan Africa: a study of five countries found that 28 per cent of women had experienced online violence.
- Europe and the USA: a survey of women aged 18 – 55 in Denmark, Italy, New Zealand, Poland, Spain, Sweden, the UK and the USA found that 23 per cent of women reported at least one experience of online abuse or harassment.
Taking action against gender-based violence
Eradicating these problematics is not easy, even defying where to start might be overwhelming. This is why we have organisations like UN Women, that is actively working with governments and international bodies through the Commission on the Status of Women and the UN General Assembly to combat online abuse, contributing to framework like the Global Digital Compact, the UNODC Cyber Crime Convention and the EU Directive on combating violence against women to implement policies to make the Internet world safer for women.
Outside the online world, we also have the World Health Organisation working on preventing violence against women, that they describe as a public health problem, with a program called RESPECT:
R – elationship skills strengthened
E – mpowerment of women
S – ervices ensured
P – overty reduced
E – nvironments made safe
C – hild and adolescent abuse prevented
T – ransformed attitudes, beliefs, and norms
Even you can help women be more respected: talk, speak up, call someone out: the awkwardness of calling someone out on their wrong patriarchal behaviour is nothing compared to the consequences of letting them happen. Be the change the world needs.
