Why Do Women Accept To Be Punching Bags?
- Category: Gender
- Date 04-12-2005
- 332 views
You can use a woman as a rope to hang another woman and she will gladly execute the ignoble task with stark precision. Women have occupied the underdog place in human affairs and have strangely laboured to sustain their unenviable status with mocking passion. I daresay, that is why Mama Anna Senkoro will possibly earn the least of the women’s votes, come December 14th.
In many homes, a lady is literally right in the seventh heaven when her pregnancy conveys a baby boy at delivery. In terms of opportunities, most mothers do not care to persuade their husbands to give equal opening to boys and girls. Whereas there is no evidence, for example, that men have single-handedly shored up boys into schools; mothers are often accomplices in denying girls’ education.
The cyclic troubles facing the girl-child
A while ago, UNICEF said that out of the 115m children around the world not getting any primary school education, 90m are girls, adding that it is a tragedy that so many children, especially girls, have been abandoned to a bleak future. Culture has been blamed for such obstructions; many girls are denied schooling because cultural traditions define a female's place as in the home.
Moreover, social pressure is exerted on girls to marry early, sometimes as young as the age of ten! "Male privilege and entitlement (ensure) that when educational opportunities are limited, boys will take available classroom space," the UN study says. Many of the countries highlighted in the report are in sub-Saharan Africa (where we live), where women empowerment is still very low.
Women’s experience and tolerance of family torture
Today, domestic violence is the most common form of abuse against women, according to yet another recent study by the World Health Organization, which surveyed 24,000 women in 10 countries, Tanzania inclusive. One in every six women has suffered abuse, especially in poorer countries, where women are said to believe that it is justifiable for men to mistreat them.
Other than assault or rape by strangers or acquaintances, most partners ironically mete violence on their women “lovers”. According to the report, the percentage of woman, physically or sexually attacked by their partners in the preceding year was 4% in Japan and Serbia, compared with between 30% and 54% in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Peru and Tanzania.
Such domestic violence stood at 56% in rural Tanzania and 43% in urban Tanzania. Many of the areas with higher rates of violence were more rural, traditional communities where the problem had remained largely hidden. Some of the victims (women) said they did not report the violence because they considered it normal, and encouraged it as a consequence. Some women even said that their husbands were justified in beating them.
To that effect, most of the men you have met in offices, businesses or streets have tormented their women in some degree. The study co-ordinator Claudia Garcia Moreno found one thing in common everywhere - the violence was often severe, women “being choked, hit with the fists, dragged, burned” and etcetera.
What are we reaping from women’s misfortunes?
"Education of children, especially girls, is the cornerstone to national progress," UNICEF Executive Director Ann Veneman said in a statement. Lack of it shatters a country’s foundation for progress. Education in general and girls’ education in particular leads to greater economic productivity, reduced infant and maternal mortality, and a greater likelihood that the next generation of children will go to school.
As regards the torturing of women in homes and communities, the WHO report also found that despite the variations in abuse rates, victims of physical or sexual abuse were twice as likely to suffer from ill health than those who had not been abused. To harass a woman, or any human being for that matter, is to commit murder – to sentence her to a slow death.
"Women who have ever experienced violence in their life end up having much higher levels of all kinds of ill-health: like poor general health, being suicidal, having more miscarriages and abortions, long after the violence happened," researcher Henriette Jansen said. Nothing draws a woman closer to her grave.
Who can avert such a worrying trend?
We all acknowledge that this trend is unfortunate. It is even more a misfortune when women believe that their condition is normal and unchangeable. They must develop and believe in their own potential to force change, remembering that, “belief in victory is often a battle won”, and knowing a disease is usually half its cure!
By Venansio Ahabwe
Source: Peering Eye, Sunday Citizen