Violence against Women and Girls

Aqsa Ahmed Amin
Nov 1 · 7 min read

“Gender-based violence (GBV) or violence against women and girls (VAWG), is a global pandemic that affects 1 in 3 women in their lifetime”.

As this is the most critical and important issue to me. I’ve studied many articles about it and here i collect some of the most useful information for all of the readers.

About 35% of women worldwide have experienced either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence. Globally, 7% of women have been sexually assaulted by someone other than a partner.Globally, as many as 38% of murders of women are committed by an intimate partner. 200 million women have experienced female genital mutilation/cutting. Globally, girls who marry before 15 are more likely to face physical or sexual violence from a partner. In Bangladesh, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe, around half of married girls age 15-19 have faced violence by their husbands or partners. Ending child marriage would reduce intimate partner violence by more than 10% in Ethiopia, Mozambique, Nigeria and Uganda.

Violence against women (VAW), also known as gender-based violence and sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), are violent acts the victims of which are primarily or exclusively women or girls. Such violence is often considered a form of hate crime, committed against women or girls specifically because they are female, and can take many forms. Such violence is often seen as a mechanism for the subjugation of women, whether in society in general or in an interpersonal relationship. Such violence may arise from a sense of entitlement, superiority, misogyny or similar attitudes, or because of his violent nature, especially against women.

Violence against women and girls is a problem of pandemic proportions. At least one out of every three women around the world has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime with the abuser usually someone known to her.

Gender-based violence leaves long-lasting physical and emotional scars and hinders the ability of individuals, especially women and girls, to participate fully in their families and communities, economically, politically, and socially. It also holds back women and girls from getting an education, earning an income, and fully contributing to their societies. Violence against women can fit into several broad categories. These include violence carried out by individuals as well as states.

Some of the forms of violence are: rape, domestic violence, sexual harassment, acid throwing, reproductive coercion, female infanticide, prenatal sex selection, obstetric violence, and mob violence; as well as harmful customary or traditional practices such as honor killings, dowry violence, female genital mutilation, marriage by abduction and forced marriage. There are forms of violence which may be perpetrated or condoned by the government, such as war rape; sexual violence and sexual slavery during conflict; forced sterilization; forced abortion; violence by the police and authoritative personnel; stoning and flogging. Many forms of VAW, such as trafficking in women and forced prostitution are often perpetrated by organized criminal networks. Histrorically, there have been forms of organized WAV, such as the Witch trials in the early modern period or the sexual slavery of the Comfort women.

“More than one billion women worldwide is experiencing violence. It is rooted in the gender inequality that women face throughout their lives from childhood through to old age”.

According to a survey:

  1. 35 per cent of women will experience violence at the hands of their current or former partners in their lifetime, up to 70 per cent according to some national studies.
  2. Around 650 million women alive today were married as children. Of those women, more than one in three got married before 15.
  3. 200 million women and girls have undergone female genital mutilation, the majority of girls are cut before the age of five.
  4. Women and girls together account for 71 per cent of all human trafficking victims detected globally, with girls representing nearly three out of every four trafficked children.

Here, I’m going to share the story a strong girl named Khadija Saddiqi with whom i personally met, once, and felt her pain very closely.

Stab victim Khadija Siddiqi said: “My case is a fight for all Pakistani women”. A student who was stabbed 23 times in daylight in one of Pakistan’s busiest streets has accused the country’s justice system of misogyny after her attacker, having been found guilty of attempted murder, was sensationally acquitted.

Khadija Siddiqi was ambushed as she collected her six-year-old sister from school a few years ago. She was repeatedly slashed across the throat and abdomen by fellow student Shah Hussain in an attack, she said was motivated by revenge after she had spurned his advances. She escaped with her life only after her driver managed to drag Hussain off her. Her attacker was sentenced to seven years in prison, the minimum for attempted murder. But in an extraordinary turn, he was acquitted by the high court following claims by his lawyers that it had been Siddiqi who had pursued him, based on a letter she had written when she was 17, and that she had wanted the case to become “high profile”.

Half a dozen of her stab wounds were two inches deep and she was lucky to be alive. Her body was covered in at least 60 stitches.

Ms Siddiqui, who was 21 when she was brutally attacked and now studies in the UK, came from a typical urban and educated but conservative Pakistani family. She grew up in an environment that encourages women to be modestly dressed and cover their head, but also allows them to mix with males and have a say in choosing their husbands. During her second year of law school, she started a relationship with Shah Hussain, which soon soured. She has described him as a jilted lover, someone "who had a violent streak, and was given to coercion and blackmail".

Hussain’s father, Tanvir Hashmi, a senior lawyer in the south of the state "wields considerable influence on lawyers across a large belt in Punjab", said Jibran Nasir, a lawyer and activist who has been campaigning for Khadija Siddiqui since her troubles began. "So lawyers who aspire to develop good contacts across the bar would be loath to annoy him.

“Today is a victory for all women,” Khadija Siddiqi said after her attacker was jailed.

Ms Siddiqui’s family also allege that they received offers of money to drop the charges from powerful people in the state.

“There were times when we were so frustrated we seriously considered their offer, but the only thing that made me reluctant was the fact that they were not apologetic," she said.“They continued to paint me as a woman of questionable moral character, of having multiple illicit relationships. They tried to convey to us that we had no case, and that Hussain was going to be acquitted in any case. So I refused. And my family stood by me, which gave me courage."

Siddiqi, who was educated partly in London and is currently a law student, said, “I was compelled to fight. I had seen victims and women struggling and fighting tooth and nail and not getting their words heard.”

After listening her story and the story’s of many other Khadija and Zainab, i closely felt that there is need of change in our judicial system. The women or girls who lost the battle of life during their struggle to get justice needs someone to support them and there is a need of such an organization and if already working then they should work in a manner that we didn’t came to hear about any Khadija or Zainanb again. I’m also trying to do so as I’ve recently joined and organization working for the justice of women and I promise to give the best part of me to my nation.

Raise you voice and say no to violence.

It’s not about feminism, its about human rights as the women and girls are also human being like others.

    Aqsa Ahmed Amin

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