This week for my blog post I took a look at the National Organization for Women's website on their statistics on "Violence Against Women"and it is crazy to think all of what goes on just in the United States. There are plenty of groups that have been working to help end violence against women for quite some time now but even with all of these efforts it is shocking to see the statistics.
Out of all of the women murdered 1/3 of them are killed by an immediate partner. 4.8 million women experienced domestic violence or rape. In 2006 around 600 women a day were raped.
With statistics like these in the United States where there is said to have more equality for women than other countries it is shocking to hear numbers like those. The worst part of it all is that it is happening everywhere and women are being told that they are to blame for the violence brought upon them. Well, what is wrong with people? Women do NOT ask to be abused!
The most pathetic thing of it is that a good percent of the time the women will know their attacker. Women are told it is their fault, so they fall in to believing in it. Women need to know that they do not have to be victims, and if they go through something awful like this, it is NOT their fault and they should be held so high for surviving through something that harsh! Any type of violence is not acceptable.
The other issue is that we help the attackers by not emphasizing how good some of the guys are. NOT ALL MEN ARE AWFUL!! We need to have good role models for both men and women to show as children grow up, because this violence is not natural it is a learned behavior adopted in the mind when that is all someone is exposed to. No more excuses men and women need to work together to get this issue taken care of! This will be a long road to recovery, but well worth it.
http://now.org/issues/violence/stats.html
Which now begs the question: what can we do about it? I wrote a post awhile ago about a Afghani woman named Fawzia Koofi, and how she is taking steps to improve the treatment of women in her country by running for president. This issue among others of relevance to women may stand to benefit from a more gender-balanced government. It's been highly-speculated (with some substantial rumors to boot) that Hillary Clinton will run again in 2016. If she does, I'll be interested to see the extent to which women's issues continue to be a subject of discussion.
ReplyDeleteYou do a great job at cover the bases in your blog. I think there are multiple problems with domestic violence in the United States and it will take multiple steps to lower the percentage of domestic violence and sexual abuse. It is comforting to know we can educate ourselves, and others around us to start a movement that will work to end this violence. It is important that men join this movement to educate because they aren't all bad and can help other men see domestic violence as the large problem that it is.
ReplyDeleteIt is really hard to grasp the number of women have been raped or murdered. So many that there are criminal T.V shows about them. It is ridiculous that media has made television shows about horrible investigated crimes about women when really nothing has been done. In the end they all die. You are right the women who are being attack do know their attackers and lives in fear from being exposed. This statistic will continue to rise and so will the violence. I think it would be a brilliant idea to involve domestic and sexual abuse into the education system along with STARS (students aren't ready for sex). In middle school we had the program STARS and students could remember to practice safe sex, why not be reminded to practice safety all around?
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