Power imbalances facilitating gender based violence

In the last decade, the issue of violence against women has moved from the shadows to the foreground of commitments to attain sustainable development. Women’s rights advocates have mobilised within and across countries and regions to secure significant changes in national, regional and international standards and policies addressing gender-based violence.

Gender-based violence involves men and women with women usually, but not always, being the victim. It stems from unequal power relationships within families, communities and states. Violence is generally directed specifically against women for diverse reasons, and affects them disproportionately.

The remedy for this is still far away despite an effort to create specialised courts, the slow judicial response and process undermines progress, use of paralegals at community level as strategy has not resolved this incidence.

Traditional dispute and mediating mechanisms remain the hope often preferred by those for whom the formal justice system is difficult to access, also if you ask me because the family still gravitates around the superiority of a man who in view must be engaged to balance his power to maintain social order. My right to advocate for the right to equality especially in the rural communities is currently undergoing mutation into a school of thought that there serious need to engage boys and men at the same level of engagement with girls and women because this will provide space for men to reflect on their own experiences of violence and their roles in addressing it but also with their spouses..

I woke up on the 02 of July 2019 to a crime of passion, treated to scenes of a movie to my utter belief that men use violence against women as one of the crucial social mechanisms by which women are forced into subordinate positions. I had spent a week in my village in Rukungiri, after a little while in the city closing ends.

That morning a routine I had woken up timely for jogging only to realise that my mother had not alerted me about the presence of the sister I follow who had sneaked in at night when I had slept, she had been married off when we were tender after secondary and so since then she has been a housewife in close to 7 miles from our village.

Cut the story short, she appeared wrapped her head like the Muslim hijab; I only come to learn later that she was covering deep face cuts of a night’s beating to avoid embarrassment. I can’t go into how much passion I have for my sister but all through she has been an engine of the family success because when we went to school she maintained our ageing mother. Just minutes into our discussion the husband appeared with the village chairperson with concerns over their disagreements; this is where the grain of the matter is, so I choose to listen as am looked at as an elder in the family now.

And the issues were that my sister; my lovely had working sister owned 4 goats and sold 2 to clear their son’s school fees while the man had been away to look for the same and she could not explain the rush but deserved the whip.

With my legal knowledge on domestic violence especially the Domestic Violence Act I was stranded for the law and practice in the society is far apart and reaching out for the law is dissolute and you will know the family is broken down.

The domestic violence Act (2010) is categorical in addressing all forms of violence; it states that there is no excuse for domestic violence and that there can be no ‘consent’ to acts of domestic violence, including the ‘ordinary wear and tear of marriage.

Forget that I am a man; my head was spinning with a lot of questions but most importantly, what a man calls himself?  Why the rage and temper. I knew what women are going through in the villages as we provide psychosocial support to young mothers faced with sexual violence but this time round gender based violence had visited my corner and I looked around for remedy in vain all at the hand of a powerful man out there determined to wreck lives.

The two spouses love each other and the movie ended with apologies. Many women in the rural communities are treated to these scenes every day without notice; with lots of far reaching psychological and emotional pain and damage on families it’s all in the name of the superiority complex and the mirth about men.

The Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) elaborates that violence against women includes sexual, physical, and psychological violence in a family such as battering, abuse of children, rape; sexual harassment and intimidation, trafficking and forced prostitution.

The community continues to overlook occurrence of violence with some cultures not consider wife beating as a form of violence, sexual harassment of girls by men a norm (story for another day) Rape is not talked about in the community and generally goes unpunished and in some societies, the practice of wife inheritance (marrying a relative of the deceased husband) is forced upon a widow to protect family assets through the male inheritance line, preventing women from being able to legally inherit land and property regardless of national laws designed to protect their rights.

This powerful use of domestic violence to intimidate women into entering or staying in situations where their rights are undermined is very common and seldom recognised as women are not encouraged to complain to anyone nor are they economically independent and in a position to leave.

The indifference in the society is that it looks normal and creates entitlements for men against women but perpetuates gender-based violence, there is therefore need to streamline use of power especially that that is held by men to avoid imbalances in power that is contributing largely to gender based violence in our communities.

Unequal power relations between women and men, discriminatory inheritance rights and lack of access to property and productive resources in my view remain a major cause of women’s poverty adversely affecting women’s livelihood.

Well, the dust normally settles but still with a lot of pain on women and children, these coming weeks an integrated community will walk to end gender based violence, but even if it does not end this year pledge to create spaces and refrain your power as men to inflict harm and pain on women and girls with empathy.

Arans Tabaruka is a rural community rights advocate with IRUCE Communities