Violence Against Women
Source: Rand Daily Mail
We need to find and combat the cause of gender-based violence at its root: patriarchy.
WE ARE observing 16 Days of Activism for No Violence against Women and Children.
The official line is that this period, which includes the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women (November 25), World Aids Day (December 1) and International Human Rights Day (December 10), should offer South Africa an opportunity to wear white ribbons as a symbol of their non-tolerance of violence against women and children.
People are encouraged to participate in various information and consciousness-raising events, talks, marches and demonstrations, and to use the media and arts to express their unified opposition against gender violence.
As a feminist academic, I should be rejoicing in this, but I'm not. I contemplate this year's 16 days of activism with the same weary, cynical attitude as I viewed last year's campaign and the one before, and all that went before them.
Is it because I'm disillusioned and feel that 16 days of activism against gender violence will not make any difference? Partly.
The relentless statistics continue. One outdated survey estimates that one in every nine women over the age of 18 in South Africa has been abused because of her gender.
We were all exposed to Talk Radio 702's "beep" campaign in which a piercing beep interrupted the broadcast every four minutes as an aural reminder of the fact that a woman is raped every four minutes in South Africa.
I don't think that these statistics and campaigns actually work. If they did, we would be seeing a reduction in the rate of gender-based violence.
So what will work against the scourge of violence against women and children? One of the campaigns that has worked in the fight against rhino poaching is to show graphic pictures of de-horned rhino carcasses. This is a shock tactic that ensures that every viewer knows what rhino poaching is, and will never forget it.
It is more difficult to show what gender-based violence looks like. It's the woman who doesn't come to work on a Monday because her husband gets drunk over the weekend and beats her up, and she doesn't want her colleagues to see the bruises.
Or it's the child who suddenly becomes introverted and possessive of her personal space, locked up in herself, reliving a trauma only she can see in her mind, where an older, male family member abused her sexually.
And it is impossible to show the women's lives that have been ruined — women who are experiencing trust issues, economic hardship and health difficulties as a result of violence being inflicted on them.
We need to find and combat the cause of gender-based violence at its root: patriarchy.
Patriarchy, or the rule of the fathers, holds as one of its most cherished beliefs a view of women as lacking. In this way of thinking, men and man are the generic words for "human". Women don't have what men have, and so they are not really human. This type of thinking lies behind the ideas that women are not as intelligent, rational or capable as men.
If women are not fully human beings, then there is no need to cherish them or to nurture them or to give them a choice in sexual acts. They are things, or objects, for the sole purpose of male pleasure and comfort.
Hang on, you say, that's a bit extreme. But if we think that women do not have the same brains as men, and can't do what men can do, either in front of a computer, with a spreadsheet, or with a pen or paintbrush, then aren't we saying that they are not fully the equals of men? And how far is that thinking from believing that they do not deserve to be treated with human dignity?
South African men have been traumatised and humiliated by nearly 60 years of apartheid, that legislated that most kinds of men in our society were not really people (in much the same way as women are now being treated by men).
Many are still living with the legacy of the migrant labour system, that separated men from their families for years at a time. I also know that economic disempowerment, not being able to provide for your family when you have been raised to believe that that is the measure of a man, destroys self-esteem.
But how low does self-esteem have to be for you to rape an infant, a toddler who is barely able to walk? And how long do we give credence to the victim card that says I was abused and therefore I can abuse?
Sixteen days of activism against gender violence in each year are not enough.
We need a society where we have 365 days of activism every year in favour of gender equality and gender peace.
Professor Byrne is the head of the Unisa Institute for Gender Studies