"Being male would thus be an excuse similar to being drunk, except that maleness is a permanent condition, more or less. An image of the world thus emerges that's tailor-made for continuing violence against women are necessarily victims by men, who are not necessarily in control of their passions."
VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMENUntil very recently, the concept of "human rights" rarely applied to women. Though one of the few moral visions subscribed to internationally, human rights has been historically related to civil-political rights, to the rights of individual confronting the powerful state.
But in many countries, cultural constraints prevent women from exercising or even enjoying their civic and political rights. Which may explain why women's rights are not commonly classified as human rights, since women have been largely recognized within the arena of armed and political struggle. The dominant image of the political actor in our world is male.
Many violations of women's rights are distinctly connected to being female -- the women are discriminated against and abused on the basis of gender. Feminists redefine human rights abuses to include the degradation and violation of women.
If a male activist, for instance, were held in prison without charges, incommunicado from friends and supporters, it would be immediately recognized and denounced as a violation of his human rights. And yet millions of women in many places in the world are confined to their homes, and not allowed to seek employment or consort with male strangers, with the practice condones in the name of culture and religion.
On the local front, a study made of all the admissions of battered women and children to the emergency wards of government hospitals with women's desk revealed that in the same one-month period, the number far exceeded the number of those who had fallen ill of cholera. And yet, as former Health Secretary and now Senator Juan Flavier pointed out, the cholera epidemic received far wider publicity and raised much more concern among policy-makers.
Domestic violence has clearly become a major health concern. But it is largely ignored. Why? Charlotte Bunch, a feminist lawyer who was instrumental in promoting the concept of "women's rights are human rights" at the UN Human Rights Conference in Vienna has declared that "the specific experiences of women must be added to traditional approaches to human rights in order to make women more visible and to transform the concept and practice of human rights in our culture so that it takes better account of women's lives."
SEXISM KILLS
The most insidious myth about women's rights is that they are trivial or secondary to more pressing concerns of life and death. But the truth is : sexism kills. And it kills girls and women in various ways through different stages of their lives.
BEFORE BIRTH. Amniocentesis is used for sex selection, and in cultures where there is strong preference for sons, this led to the common abortion of fetuses, resulting in skewed sex ratios in such countries as India, China and Korea.
DURING CHILDHOOD. The World Health Organization reports that in many countries, girls are fed less, breastfed for shorter periods of times, taken to doctors less frequently, and die or are physically and mentally maimed by malnutrition at higher rates than boys.
IN ADULTHOOD. The denial of women's rights to control their bodies in reproduction threatens women's health and lives, especially where this is combined with poverty and poor health services. In Latin America, complications from illegal abortions are the leading causes of death for women between the ages 15 and 39.
In the Philippines, the most frequently cited cause of death of women in maternity wards of government hospitals is "infection," often a euphemism for septic abortion. The most pervasive violation of females is violence against women (VAW) in all its manifestations, from wife battery or domestic (family) violence, sexual harassment, incest and rape, to dowry deaths and female sexual slavery. Others include pornography and the use of degrading images of women in the media.
UNDERSTANDING RAPE
Rape is an extreme illustration of the subordination of women's sexuality. In cultures where women are viewed as men's sexual and reproductive property, they also become legitimate targets of sexual aggression.
In the Philippines, girls are brought up to be ladylike, to watch how they sit and talk, walk and consort with the opposite sex so that they would not be mistaken for wanton women, bastusin in the vernacular.
A "decent woman" is expected to set the limits of propriety and intimacy, for if she doesn't, she invites aggression and is to blame.
So while society officially condemns rape, its victims are perceived as being in some way to blame for it: because their dress and manner "asked for it," because they were engaged in gender-inappropriate activities, such as competing with men in the work place or being out of their homes at night; or simply because they were, young, beautiful women.
In many cultures, rape is excused as an excess to male lust which must find release. In reality, rape and its cousin, sexual harassment, are expressions of male control over female sexuality. These acts can also be instruments of political control -- in military rape, for instance, or in the sexual harassment of women workers and trade unionists.
UNDERSTANDING VICTIMIZATION
Women are specially vulnerable because their dependency on men, which is frequently economic and is the result of various layers of discrimination. Much of women's works is unpaid labor at home and in the fields which is not valued by society nor calculated as part of the GNP or productive work of a nation.
Women are trained to believe that their value is attached to the men in their lives -- fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons -- and often they are socially ostracized if they displease or disobey them.
Women are educated to view their own self-esteem as linked to the ability to satisfy the needs and desires of others, and thus, see themselves as inadequate or bad if men beat them.
Even more insidious is the view that survivors of domestic violence or sexual harassment who choose to remain with abusive partners in risky situations have no one to blame but themselves. "Why doesn't she just leave?" is a commonplace comment.
But women's socio-economic and psychological dependency makes it difficult for them to leave situations of domestic violence or sexual harassment.
Often in rural settings, it is physically impossible for women to leave as they literally have no place to go or the means to get away, and there are no services available to them.
And if a woman has very young children, whatever decision she makes will impact not just on her, but also on her children's future. She may choose instead to stay with the "devil" she knows -- where she can at least find economic security -- rather than risk everything with the "devil" she does not know, such as homelessness which does not guarantee her or her children's safety, either.
And what kind of society is this where abused women are counseled to stay and preserve the family despite regular battering, condemned or pitied when they leave, ridiculed if they return or choose to stay?
THE POLITICAL ASPECT
VAW is not a function only of personal or cultural relations, but also of politics and power, domination and privilege between men and women in society. Violence against women is central to maintaining those political relations at home, at work, and in all public spheres.
Failure to see the oppression of women as political also results in exclusion of sex discrimination and violence against women from the human rights agenda.
Female subordination runs so deep that it is still viewed as inevitable or natural, rather than as a politically constructed reality maintained by patriarchal interests, ideology and institutions.
Though VAW affects women as individuals, it also has its implications on overall development goals. The current definition of development is that it is "a process of enlarging people's choices." Fundamental to achieving development for women must be increasing their ability to participate in all aspects of society.
Violence against women is in direct contradiction to these development goals. It disrupts women's lives and denies them options. It undermines women's confidence as sense of self-esteem at every level, physically and psychologically; and it destroys women's health, denies their human rights and undermines their full participation in society.
Where domestic violence keeps a woman from participating in a development project, force is used to deprive her of earnings, or fear of sexual assaults prevents her from taking a job or attending a public function, development does not occur.
VAW deprives society of the full participation of women in all aspects of development. The developing community has come to realize that problems such as high fertility, deforestation and hunger cannot be solved without women's full participation. Yet women cannot lend their labor or creative ideas fully to the work of building society when they are burdened with the physical and psychological scars of violence.
VAW also has its economic costs. The loss of time resulting from violence involves not only the victims, but the work time of the police, and others in the legal, mental health and social services.
Violence in an environment where public safety measures are inadequate and public transport unprotected severely limits women's integration into the paid force.
VAW denies developing countries the full talents of their women. Control and violence by male relatives can lead some of the best educated women to leave their countries, contributing to the brain drain in the Third World and to the loss of highly skilled women in the development process.
THE ROLE OF MEDIA
If violence against women is said to thrive in a culture of violence, where the subjugation of women and domination by men are accepted as "natural" and inevitable, then the media must take responsibility for helping shape this culture, and for creating and reinforcing values and attitudes that uphold this culture.
There is a "reciprocal" relationship between media and society -- a two-way process by which media content influences society and society influences the media. The process is "circular" and it is not always possible to separate cause from effect. At the same time, media practitioners are themselves shaped by this dominant culture and bring their attitudes towards women, including their biases to their work.
In an analysis of the links between media coverage and the proliferation of crimes of violence, Luis Teodoro writes: "Part of what the world is, the stories also imply, is the human male's possession of uncontrollable urges, which "fact" suggests that there is no individual accountability, only a collective one rooted in the glands and the accidents of gender."
Being male would thus be an excuse similar to being drunk, except that maleness is a permanent condition, more or less. An image of the world thus emerges that's tailor-made for continuing violence against women are necessarily victims by men, who are not necessarily in control of their passions.
There is no doubt that the media's blind spot is closely related to the personal values of key media persons, and their conventional norms on what is news and isn't. The only way a dent can be made in this is through the initiatives of committed media persons, sympathetic to or part of the movement.
But media practitioners can also help change this dominant culture, mainly by offering alternative images of women, especially of the victims of violence. Changing the predominant images of women in the media, from victimization and exploitation to survival and autonomy, means simply being true to the journalistic values of accuracy, the enlightenment of the public and fairness.