Women getting more blows

14.DEC.07

EDITOR: In spite of the intense focus and a concerted campaign on domestic violence and abuse, Vincentian women continue to get more blows behind closed doors, and sometimes in public. Much of the domestic violence against women in our society goes unnoticed, unreported and sometimes closed up in the closet.{{more}}

Young girls and women are too ashamed to report the matter to the authorities out of false pride and ignorance in some cases. Their basic defence against such brutality is to seek a protection order from the court. Sometimes these orders keep the aggressive males at bay, while in other instances, the order is broken with fatal results. It is a fact that there is an increase in gender violence, especially domestic violence in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. The court records reveal this sorry state of affairs.

The figures could be even higher, having regard to scores of unreported cases. But even though the law allowing husbands to beat their wives and children, and treat them as personal property, was abolished “centuries” ago, the ideology still lives on and is strongly being propagated in Social Studies textbooks that are being used by our children within the nation’s schools.

Violence is mainly manifested out of gender inequality and this manifestation cannot be measured, but it can be seen. Violence sustains and maintains inequality, but it is not the way in which male authority is to be maintained. Every society can still have male authority at home but without violence. In the local courts, there has been an increasing number of reports and applications for protection orders by women against men at an alarming rate. The archaic ideology of male dominance and female subordination no longer belongs to today’s world and must be eradicated. But in spite of the female struggle for equality, sexual harassment continues to plague the workplace and our communities, towns and villages.

Domestic violence reaches right across the social spectrum of the society among upper class, middle class, poor and working people. Women from all the various strata are receiving nuff blows, steady licks and real violent abuse by men, but they are hiding the scars, making poor excuses and refusing to involve the law. Vincentian women are suffering peacefully from domestic violence. Demand that violence against women must stop now. You cowards!

Conley Rose