Spoil your son and you will reap a benefit, spoil your daughter and you will be shamed.
This is the most violent and cruel thing you can say to your daughter. Such judgments and connotations and sayings that are against all women.
Sadly, this is the reality of our society. It was one of the expressions that were raised during the training about gender based violence (GBV), which was conducted at ARDD-Legal Aid in Amman.
Isn’t this violence? (I leave it for you to decide)
How can we say that we want a healthy and mature society when we actually don’t give any importance to the psychological and emotional consequences that threaten the lives of women and girls when they hear words and saying of this sort?
How can a woman be confident like a man when in every six hours a case of GBV is recorded in the US and when thirty reports of violence against children have been filed every hour in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia and 1200 cases of violence against women in Jordan, which the Ministry of Social Development have dealt with?
We don’t deny the fact that GBV affects both sexes; males and females. However, facts prove that violence against women is much higher than it is for men. GBV is not just rape, assault, and beatings, but forced abortion, slavery and human trafficking. We must also know that deprivation of civil, social, political and cultural rights, humiliation, isolation and discrimination are kinds of violence. Moreover, a lot of the traditions that society practices such as: female genital mutilation, crimes of honor, forced/ early marriage and the desire to have only baby boys are of the most violent acts that are hidden inside household and no one dares to address it.
When will society stop blaming the victims of rape and other GBV? When will society openly address honor killings in which it is seen that honor of an individual and perpetrators are seen as more important than the life of the victim?
18 cases are categorized and registered among what is known as crimes of honor.
When will we break the chains of harmful traditions that all religions are against?
When will this ignorance and injustice be replaced with renaissance and freedom.
In one of the countries, when the women went out to participate in a protest, the country passed a rule of virginity test to prevent them from participating.
How can we stop this violence and stop GBV?
One of the participants said “women have reached the moon and they are still seen as vulnerable and unable to manage themselves”. She added that, “violence has been going on since ages ago and still is, so how can we feel secure?”
We feel secure through changing all injustice, violence and negative thoughts into positive ones.
Another woman added “we can change a small group of people but not all”.
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