by Dev Dasai
Note from the writer: As a preface to this paper, I would like to note that Gender-Based Violence (GBV) occurs against all genders – while the scope of this essay specifically focuses on GBV against women, in no way is discrimination against genders other than women less important.“
The alleged kidnapping and murder of Sarah Everard by Metropolitan Police officer Wayne Couzens in the UK revitalized the public conversation on the prevalent and persistent problem of violence against women. “Kill the Bill” protests, which were further energized due to the police response to the murder, led to the delay of a proposed policing bill in the UK which aimed to increase the power of the police in controlling crowds and protests. This essay aims to explain the statistics and causes of gender-based violence and put forth some general policy solutions which could help reduce Gender-Based Violence (GBV) in society.
The 2021 UN Women UK-YouGov study found that 71% of all women in the UK have experienced some form of sexual harassment in public. Further, 97% of women aged 18-24 had experienced the types of harassment listed in the study. The study defines sexual harassment as unwanted sexual conduct “including rape, other aggressive touching, forced viewing of pornography, taking and circulating sexual photographs, as well as verbal sexual conduct.” (1) In the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicate that more than 1 in 5 women have experienced complete or attempted rape. (2) Globally, 1 in 3 women who have been in a relationship has experienced physical and/or sexual violence from their partner at some point. (3) Studies also show that women of colour experience certain kinds of harassment at greater rates than white women. (4) LGBTQ+ people are also more susceptible to sexual harassment and discrimination. (5)
There are multiple ways to understand GBV. One way, often heard in public discussion around such topics, is to look at ontogenic or individual factors. These refer to features in an individual’s developmental experience which shape their response to stressors. Such factors include having witnessed violence between parents and experiencing physical or sexual abuse as a child. (6) However, looking at the role of individuals alone cannot explain why the rates of GBV vary across demographic groups. The Ecological Framework is a comprehensive way of understanding factors that influence GBV. It explains violence as an interplay of individual, relationship, community, and societal factors, proposing that there is no single factor that causes gender-based violence. The Ecological Framework model was first introduced in the 1970s and was first applied to child abuse (7); it has since been applied to GBV (8) and elderly abuse. Fundamentally, GBV can be thought of as a consequence of the power imbalance in society between men and women. This power imbalance can be seen in every level of the ecological framework, and hence broad policies which could reduce the power imbalance in society can meaningfully combat GBV.
So how do we prevent GBV? We are often told about steps we should take as individuals to prevent this from happening to us or people around us but these common suggestions are not as helpful as we might think. For men, these steps include escorting women late at night, walking to the other side of the road and making themselves visible in instances when a woman might view them as a threat though different individual experiences often lead women to have different preferences as to how men should act in these scenarios. For women, include wearing comfortable shoes rather than heels, wearing bright clothes, and walking on a brightly lit path etc. There are a lot of problems with these suggestions. For one, this enforces the idea that GBV is mostly committed by strangers. In reality, studies show the opposite – 78% of all rapes or sexual assault offenders among college-age students are nonstrangers (intimate partners, relatives, casual/close acquaintances). (10) Such advice also gives an opening for victim-blaming – skeptics of GBV victims might be prone to claim that “this wouldn’t have happened if they had…” And despite everything, GBV still happens. Sarah Everard, for example, made multiple conscious decisions to prevent herself from falling prey to GBV, but she did. The New York Times reported that “she took a longer route that was well-lit and populated. She wore bright clothes and shoes she could run in. She checked in with her boyfriend to let him know when she was leaving. But that was not enough to save her life.”
Several policies can be implemented to reduce GBV. Exhaustively criminalizing various types of GBV is very important since there are many forms of GBV that are still not crimes in many parts of the world, such as forced marriage and marital rape. Even though marital rape exemption (i.e. rape is not a crime when the victim and the perpetrator are married) in the US was eliminated, it is rarely prosecuted and there is still a distinction in how non-marital and marital rape cases are sentenced. Then there is the issue of attrition. A large portion of the women who suffer from GBV do not report to relevant authorities. The 2021 UN Women UK-YouGov study also found that the two main reasons women do not report incidents are: “I didn’t think the incident was serious enough to report” (55%) and “I didn’t think reporting it would help” (45%). (1) This not only makes prosecuting criminals difficult but also makes it difficult to study and understand the issue using criminal records. Further the rates of attrition vary for different demographics. (– –) The same study also found that 44% of women thought having more confidence that reporting would lead to prevention would have encouraged them to report.
Trusting the reporting mechanism is essential because it not only punishes those responsible, but it also discourages future crimes. Allocating more funds to Office of Violence Against Women in the Department of Justice, creating and maintaining shelters for victims and simply showing empathy to victms can increase reporting (11). Increasing public trust in the reporting and prosecuting mechanisms is vital, which would probably be most constructive if it is done by actually improving the reporting and prosecution process and being more empathetic to victims, and not just by some PR campaign.
Other broad and long-term policy changes could also be useful. One of the many causes of the power imbalance between men and women is the difference in earnings. Women do the majority of the unpaid housework (12), and even in the labor market, women are often relegated to care work. (13) Programs that close the gender pay gap and reduce the double burden on women – for example, a national family leave program – will be helpful. The double burden on women arises because while labor force participation of women has increased over the past decades, the involvement of men in unpaid household work has not kept up (14). A well thought-out family leave program can help even out the labor market, by not penalizing women for having children and encouraging men to be more involved in unpaid housework. Specifically, widely-used paternity leave can reduce the double burden on women by making it more acceptable for fathers to be involved in housework and childcare. Various family leave programs already in effect in various parts of the world can be used to understand the long-term effects of such laws which in-turn could help us design more effective future policies. Better representation of these issues in film and media, and awareness campaigns in school could help the public understand the problem and view it as the multi-level issue it is. Over time this could promote empathy for victims which could even reduce the issue of attrition discussed above. Another possible area of improvement is that instead of using statistics like x % of people are affected by sexual assault, it might be useful to discuss it in terms of the role of perpetrators – for example, one in ten men studying in the US commit sexual violence during their time at university. (15) Such statistics are indeed rare but they might be useful in moving away from victim-blaming and they could also help individuals understand the dynamics of sexual violence by showing that the perpetrators are often not strangers but often members of our own social circles.
There are a lot of unanswered questions about GBV. A lot more further research is needed to completely understand the problem, but there are a lot of things we can do now, as described above. As individuals, the best thing we can do to stop GBV is step in when we feel something is wrong but it is important to realize that GBV is also affected by larger, societal-level forces and hence advocacy for broader systemic changes which will make society better and safer for everyone.