1. Funding women’s full participation in civil society. Women who are active in civil society can be highly effective in influencing global, regional and national treaties, agreements and laws and in exerting pressure to ensure their implementation. More money needs to flow toward supporting women’s active participation in civil society.
2. Scaling up prevention efforts that address unequal gender power relations as a root cause of gender-based violence. Some programs have effectively structured participatory activities that guide the examination of gender norms and their relationship to power inequities, violence and other harmful behaviors. They work with multiple stakeholders across the socio-ecological spectrum and across multiple sectors. But, we need to do a better job of evaluating these programs so we can move them from limited, small-scale pilots to larger-scale, societal-change programs.
3. Bringing gender-based violence clinical services to lower-level health facilities. The provision of gender-based violence clinical services has focused on “one-stop shops” at high-level facilities, such as hospitals, where all services are offered in one place. But, the majority of people who access services at high-level facilities do so too late to receive key interventions, such as emergency contraception and HIV post-exposure prophylaxis. For faster access, we should focus on bringing services closer to the community, particularly in rural areas.
4. Addressing the needs of child survivors, including interventions to disrupt the gender-based violence cycle. In shelters and services for women, it is common to see children of all ages in waiting rooms or safe houses. But, it is rare to see anyone working with these children, who have experienced a traumatic event. Sometimes they are victims, but most likely they are witnesses to violence against their mothers. We lack trained professionals to work with children who have experienced gender-based violence, especially when the perpetrators are parents or other family members.
5. Developing guidance for building systems to eliminate gender-based violence. There is ample global guidance on how to address gender-based violence through certain sectors, such as health, or through discrete actions, such as providing standards for shelters or training for counselors. But, we are missing practical guidance for building the whole system from A to Z — putting laws into practice, raising awareness of services and creating budgets.
6. Developing support programs for professionals experiencing secondhand trauma. After three years of working with a program to address school-related gender-based violence, I had to walk away. Despite my commitment to ending gender-based violence, I simply could not hear another awful story. My experience is not unique. Burnout is a reality, and we lack qualified people to deal with gender-based violence survivors.

Source degrees

Sexual violence is any sexual act or attempt to obtain a sexual act by violence or coercion, acts to traffic a person or acts directed against a person’s sexuality, regardless of the relationship to the victim. It occurs in times of peace and armed conflict situations, is widespread and is considered to be one of the most traumatic, pervasive, and most common human rights violations.

Sexual violence is a serious public health problem and has a profound short or long-term impact on physical and mental health, such as an increased risk of sexual and reproductive health problems, an increased risk of suicide or HIV infection. Murder occurring either during a sexual assault or as a result of an honor killing in response to a sexual assault is also a factor of sexual violence. Though women and girls suffer disproportionately from these aspects, sexual violence can occur to anybody at any age; it is an act of violence that can be perpetrated by parents, caregivers, acquaintances and strangers, as well as intimate partners. It is rarely a crime of passion, and is rather an aggressive act that frequently aims to express power and dominance over the victim.

For more   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_violence

Source Wikipedia

Physical abuse is any physical force that injures you or puts your health in danger. Physical abuse can include shaking, burning, choking, hair-pulling, hitting, slapping, kicking, and any type of harm with a weapon like a knife or a gun. It can also include threats to hurt you, your children, your pets, or family members. Physical abuse can also include restraining you against your will, by tying you up or locking you in a space. Physical abuse in an intimate partner (romantic or sexual) relationship is also called domestic violence.

Emotional abuse can feel as destructive and damaging as physical abuse, and can severely impact your mental health. It’s often used as a way to maintain power and control over someone.

Emotional abuse may be accompanied by other kinds of abuse: sexual, financial or physical. However, it doesn’t need to include other kinds of abuse to count as abuse; it’s serious enough on its own to be a concern.

Types of emotional abuse

Emotional abuse can involve any of the following:

• Verbal abuse: yelling at you, insulting you or swearing at you.
• Rejection: Constantly rejecting your thoughts, ideas and opinions.
• Gaslighting: making you doubt your own feelings and thoughts, and even your sanity, by manipulating the truth. For more information on how gas lighting works, visit the National Domestic Violence Hotline.
• Put-downs: calling you names or telling you that you’re stupid, publicly embarrassing you, blaming you for everything. Public humiliation is also a form of social abuse.
• Causing fear: making you feel afraid, intimidated or threatened.
• Isolation: limiting your freedom of movement, stopping you from contacting other people (such as friends or family). It may also include stopping you from doing the things you normally do – social activities, sports, school or work. Isolating someone overlaps with social abuse.
• Financial abuse: controlling or withholding your money, preventing you from working or studying, stealing from you. Financial abuse is another form of domestic violence.
• Bullying and intimidation: purposely and repeatedly saying or doing things that are intended to hurt you.

source REACH OUT.com

Culture is “the customs, civilization and achievement of a particular time or people.” Culture often determines the values, worldview, attitudes, behavior and practices of women and men from birth to death. 

Traditional African society looked upon women as perpetually dependent on males.  Women have to be protected and guided by men.  Women are often objects of exploitation, and a source of wealth to men who handle them like personal property. 

Yet, despite this cultural subordination, women in African tradition frequently occupy leading positions in divining, rainmaking and as mediums in prophesying, healing and counseling.  These occupations illustrate that women are given leadership in various spheres, even in cultures generally repressive towards women. 

Examples of culture and the treatment of women 

• Chicken wings—In Uganda, women cannot eat chicken wings.  Otherwise they would fly like a chicken and not be submissive, especially in bed. 
• Physical Abuse—In some cultures in West Africa, women are to be beaten at least once in three months in order to remain disciplined.  If they are not beaten, the women ask for it! 
• Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).  Some cultures say that a woman needs to go through FGM to be tamed, so that she does not become sexually promiscuous.  This primitive practice is still active. 
•  Marriage by abduction- is a practice in which a man abducts the woman he wishes to marry. The woman is enslaved by her abductor, raped and taken as his wife. Later she may suffer different types of violence.
•  Forced marriage- is a marriage in which one or more of the parties is married without their consent or against their will

 

While most cultures seem to lower or reduce the value of women, at the same time culture often raises the value for men to threatening proportions.  For example, a Moran (Maasai young man) is expected to kill a lion to prove he is a real man.  The boy child is encouraged “never to cry.”

by Judy W. Mbugua