Imagine when you are reading this article, at least 1 woman is being hurt by her husband!

Domestic violence is not limited to one single country. It happens every day all around the world and can happen to anyone. We are all familiar with the physical, mental and health consequences of domestic violence. However, even though the majority of people are aware of it, very few do anything about-it even when they are victims themselves.

Violence against women is one of the most systematic and prevalent human rights abuses #SDG-16 in the world. Such gender-based violence against women is a form of discrimination #SDG-5 and deeply rooted in power imbalances and structural relationships of inequality between women and men.

It is crucial to tackle such topic especially after the prevail of COVID-19 where violence against women increased to record levels around the world in 2021. This is when the United Nations called the situation a “Shadow Pandemic” in a report about domestic violence.

The most important reasons why we need to talk about such pandemic is that it harms families, impoverishes communities and reinforces other forms of inequality and violence throughout societies.

The more we talk about it, the more likely it gets that we will be able to spread awareness, take active steps to decrease it and even help women that are unable to fight against it.

One of the forms of domestic violence is women constantly being abused by their husband or partner. In this article we will be tackling reasons behind a woman being beaten, hypothetical causes of having high rates of domestic violence and potential solutions that can help reducing such violence.

Reasons behind Women being abused:
Believe it or not, with all the evolvement we are encountering, we still have women that think spousal abuse is OK.
In the following map, we will be highlighting countries where women believe that their partner are justified to beat them for the following 5 reasons:
– When she argues with him
– When she burns the food
– When she goes out without telling him
– When she neglects the children
– When she refuses sex with him

Countries with the highest domestic violence rates are countries in the Southern hemisphere. Most of these countries are least developed countries. If we take a closer look on these countries , we will be able to see top countries in the southern hemisphere where women suffer the most, for example 85 % of women in Afghanistan as well as 81 % of women in Mali believe that violence is normal and they should accept it to protect their families.

Digging more in the World Development Index Data we can see below that regions that have highest domestic violence rates are the same to have the highest percentage of teenage mothers and women subject to physical/sexual assault. The alarming number of women in such regions that think that all forms of abuse are Ok is scary.

Hypothetical causes of having high rates of domestic violence:
Social norms and attitudes that underpin them really are the root cause of violence against women.

Education #SDG-4 has long been promoted as a mean for changing women’s position in society. Growing income, opportunity and exposure to more equal social norms will help protect women against abuse, by allowing them at least to choose better partners. Uneducated women, won’t be able to understand that abuse is never OK and that she has the right and legal support to report any kind of violence.

Countries where females didn’t attain at least a secondary level of education are the same countries with high domestic violence.

In addition, the Country Policies and Institutional Assessment (CPIA) highlights how much aid should be provided to countries with weak policies. Southern countries have weak social protection and gender equality #SDG-5 policies and this is reflected below. The higher the rate of countries policies and institutional assessment programs, the more these countries need to instate policies to overcome the lack of these resources. Thus, the absence of policies, regulations, justice #SDG-16 and accountability of such events might explain the high percentage of domestic violence in such areas.

Potential Solution:
A lot of effort have been deployed to empower women, however it is not enough. We could be empowering a lady and maybe she will still go through violence in her house. A woman needs security to be able to live.

Domestic violence is not hot off the press kind of topic, developed countries had long analyzed strategies and task forces to confront these issues which can enable least developed countries to follow by already established examples.

Countries such as Canada and United States have succeeded in increasing #SDG-16 justice for women #SDG-5 by implementing several strategies that doesn’t require high investments. Therefore, African, South Asian and South American countries can try implementing at least one of the following solutions:

– Improve education opportunities for girls especially that a lot of non-governmental organizations have a lot of task forces in such areas. Reducing the gender education gap gives women more economic freedom and less ability to be influenced and controlled by men.

– Introduce strict laws against violence: This will provide women with legal rights to leave abusive relationships and find shelter and support. Citizens need to pressure their government for actions by engaging both local communities and celebrities to share stories of detrimental effects of domestic violence and increase reports on domestic violence cases in the media.

– Changes in social norms: Lead discussions in communities around domestic violence. Involving men to men talks about their believes on domestic violence and the negative effects it has on family and societies. In addition, religious and community leaders should raise more awareness and talk more about it.

– Target young boys: Educate young boys in school about how to respond to violence at home and teach them different coping mechanisms for stress. In addition, to training programs that can teach kids respectful relationships and positive behaviors.

Finally, after implementing these strategies, efforts should be deployed to continuously retrieve data to observe how attitudes towards domestic violence are changing over the time and across different regions. This can help communities to better tailor the above strategies in order to match the need of each community.