Synopsis "Violence Against Women: Why It Persists (in English)"
The persistency of violence against women is seriously threatening the fabric of society and is a major social issue, worthy of exploration. The prevailing explanations of how to tackle the more immediate, and well advertised, domestic violence are generally based on preventive measures which attempt to protect the victims against any harms. Most research work and studies on this subject are equally focused on treating violence from the viewpoint of gender issues, leading to conclusion that defending women as victims is the sufficient solution to stop violence, mostly in domestic scene. Since such measures are limited both in scope, enforcability and rigidity a majority of violent incidents remain unaffected by these measures and thus continue to harm communities. These protective measures, at best, serve as short term solution and cannot solve the persistency of violence against women. A more comprehensive and effective solution requires a holistic approach to social aspect of violence against women involving social as well as gender factors that would result in a cause or causes for committing violence. It is the discovery of the underlying factors that can provide a long term solution to general problem of violence against women. The common perception by researchers is that combatting domestic violence necessitates women's economic independence as well as legal protection. An economically independent woman is less likely to be subjected to domestic violence as opposed to staying home mother. According to reaearcher Lin-chi Hsu, University of Washington 2014, economic independence is a function of income level which essentially excludes many wage earners who average around $30,000 annually. "In the household bargaining models, an increase in the woman's potential income increases family violence if her initial bargaining power is low". Interestingly,"A woman with a better outside option, i.e. higher bargaining power is more likely to choose divorce when encountering domestic violence. This is not a desirable alternative. The trade-off for broken family poses different problems such as child obesity and delinquency that may lead to crime of different sort.There are also surveys showing economically independent women are not immune to violence. Even if it were feasible for all women to be economically independent, a desire to control, as human nature, will always lead to violence because economic independence is usually a proxy for a person's relative power in a given social context. Empirically, the effect of the women's income on domestic violence is inconclusive because using a woman's wage as a measurement for her bargaining power is problematic; for example, women's health condition regarding productivity is quite subjective. Researchers conducting survey of 1306 women show "violence from a current or ex-husband or boyfriend was 24.6%, and 9.5%respectively." Economic independence, moreover, does not stop aggressors from committing sexual assault against women particularly in workplaces, learning insitutions, military establishment and elsewhere. Accordingly, violence happens even when women are in positions of relative equality, for example, a man may assault his girlfriend even though both parties are economically independent partners, having comparable income, and are unmarried with no special advantage over one another; yet each party desires to exert power and control. Legal protection measures, such as restraining order, have the drawback of the majority of incidents are unreported to the police. A significant number of unreported incident result from the fear of reprisal and harsher violent behavior; hence, reluctance towards reporting incidents to the police .
