Today, on the Int'l Day agst Violence Against Women, are things getting better or worse?
After 25 years of activism, I would very much like to report that violence against women is getting better. I tried. I really tried....
Today, on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, Israel woke up to this doozy of a headline:
In case anyone was wondering why this day still exists….
I have floods of memories from over 25 years of feminist activism. Protests, rallies, art installments, speeches, essays, numbers, statistics. I remember one of my first protests in Jerusalem in the late 1990s when I was in charge of the megaphone and other equipment. I couldn’t shlep it all myself, so my loving husband helped me with the shlepping. One of the women there, a head of one of the feminist organizations, starting barking orders at him — about where to put a table, about why he wasn’t helping out on the other side. She simply assumed that, well, he was the only guy there, so he must have been the hired help.
I would like to write the following sentence: So much has improved during those 25 years.
But it hasn’t really. I mean, maybe a little.
Maybe there are more men today at protests. Maybe. Although at a recent anti-rape protest in Modi’in following the harrowing gang-rape in Eilat, there was one guy there. Good for him….Where there is life there is hope.
Okay, let’s start by looking at the ways things may have changed.
There is more awareness about the issue. #Metoo perhaps changed this. So did Lili Ben Ami, at least in Israel, and women like her around the world. Lili’s sister, Michal Sela, was murdered by her husband in 2019, and Lili mobilized and became a force of nature on the issue. If things have changed, it’s because of people like Lili. Only when there is a tragedy followed by enormous power and courage by activists do we ever see the needle move a bit.
More abusers are being held accountable. Since #metoo, over 200 high-profile men have been removed from their jobs because of sexual abuse and harassment. Many have been replaced by women. So that’s good, in a way, though the pervasiveness of the problem is staggering.
We understand the dynamics better. There is a lot more information out there about the dynamics of gender-based violence, grooming, connections with emotional abuse, signs of an abuser, statistics, and more. In theory, the police have also become better trained, but if the Gabby Petito case is any indication, they often have no idea what they are doing.
We understand risk factors better. We know how issues such as poverty, race, and ethnicity sexual orientation, disability, and others increase women’s risk. We also know how the presence of a firearm in a house increases women’s risk by some 500%
That said, there is a lot that is not really getting better.
Gender-based violence and abuse seems to be getting worse not better. The numbers of women who experience sexual abuse (1 in 3), who experience domestic violence (1 in 4), or who are murdered by their intimate partners (roughly 20 a year in Israel, 2 in 5 female murder victims worldwide) — these numbers have not shown any improvement anywhere.
The Corona pandemic created a shadow pandemic of violence against women. Lockdowns, unemployment, and women’s “second shift” at home all contributed to threats to women’s lives. Women’s shelters around the world are reporting spikes in women seeking emergency help.
Sex trafficking of children is getting worse. An estimated 10 million children worldwide are being sexually trafficked, a number that has TRIPLED in the past decade.
Online dynamics have heightened the risks. Online bullying and online sex abuse are getting worse, and there is very little anyone seems to be able to do about it., whether to protect children, women, or anyone else. And online abuse can be deadly.
The underlying issues that create a setting ripe for abuse are getting worse and not better. Now that we understand that gender inequality and sexism support abusive environments, it is even more alarming how these issues are getting worse, especially as a result of the pandemic but not only. Read more here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Violence against women is a pandemic but it cannot be helped with a vaccine. It needs a deep shift in cultural ideas about gender, power, violence, and social hierarchies. That takes attention, resources, budgets, and an entire society willing to hear and support women, especially those who are talking about these things.
I’d like to finish with some kind of inspiring or helpful idea or thought. Something hopeful, a sign of change, something…. But I’m tired. I’m really, really tired. I got nothing. What about you?
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