Understanding and Stopping Violence Against Women

The Spiritual Alliance to Stop Intimate Violence is an organization that advocates awareness on intimate violence as a global issue. The website provides information on family life and focuses on strengthening the partnership between parents and children.

I think this website is really important because it focuses on intimate violence which affects not only women but children as well. The majority of the other bookmarked websites primarily discuss violence against women, and although that is obviously extremely important, I think it is also very important to look at how violence against women in the home can affect children and the ways to help families cope with intimate violence and the ways we as a world can try and stop it. SAIV works to raise awareness about this issue that occurs around the globe by grassroots movements and by bringing these issues to different sectors of the government, two very important movements that help in creating change. This website and SAIV are very important to our class because they work to bring to light intimate violence as a global issue and the ways we can become active to stop the violence and help families affected by intimate violence around the globe.

This website is created by men to get information and discuss male victims of domestic violence. It's not an official website by any means, but it is kind of interesting to read, if only to spark interesting discussions.

Gaudermann, Kimberly 2003 Women's Lives in Colonia Quito: Gender, Law, and Economy in Spanish America. Texas: University of Texas Press. "Women's Lives in Colonial Quito: Gender, Law and Economy in Spanish America" by Kimberly Gaudermann provides a very important historical perspective to my paper. This book discusses how domestic violence was handled in Quito, Ecuador in the seventeenth century. Women who reported instances of domestic abuse were able to charge their husband and bring him to court. The state empowered women through giving them the ability to punish their husbands if he hit them or mishandled their money or dowry property. The state's incentive in doing this was to control the money and property involved in marriages and to ensure that no one person had more power than the state and was able to 'play' them in anyway. This book is an extremely important aspect to my paper in answering the question of why domestic violence is not created as a problem in Latin America because it shows that domestic violence was not always ignored. Rather, during the seventeenth century the state was very involved in trying to prevent domestic violence and any man who committed this crime was punished. However this is not true today where domestic abuse is created as a cultural norm and the government does not do much to enforce prevention on this matter. I think this book is important because it creates another part to my paper that is not only historic but also develops questions for why the ideas toward domestic violence have changed in Latin America and how that affects women.

Encuesta Nacional de Salud Familiar FESAL 2008 http://www.fesal.org.sv/, accessed April 2010 "Encuesta Nacional de Salud Familiar," is a site which has a document of statistics from 2008. The information shows rates and incidents of domestic violence in El Salvador. There are percentages that show what kind of violence is experienced and how women react to the violence, in terms of if they tell a friend, family member, or report it. The data also explains the different types of violence that women experience, meaning physical, sexual, and verbal. In detail it also discusses the kind of forms these three types of violence take, such as pushing and kicking for physical violence, humiliation and threatening for verbal abuse, and forced sex for sexual abuse. This information also discusses the differences of domestic abuse between rural and urban areas of El Salvador. This source helps to understand domestic violence in Latin America because it gives actual data and information on the rates of domestic violence in a particular Latin American country. Unlike other sources which do not mention domestic violence at all but only focus on femicide. This site is very helpful because it gives me the type of information that is very hard to find because domestic violence in Latin America is not a widely addressed issue.

Lancaster, Roger M. 1992 Life is Hard: Machismo, Danger, and the Intimacy of Power in Nicaragua. Berkeley: University of California Press "Life is Hard: Machismo, Danger, and the Intimacy of Power in Nicaragua" by Roger N. Lancaster discusses domestic abuse in Managua, Nicaragua. Lancaster discusses the unequal power structures that exist between genders and enforced gender norms. The machismo culture in Managua produces men who show their masculinity through violence, power, and dominance over the women in their lives. Women also have fixed gender roles of tending to their domestic chores and obeying their husbands. When women act outside of their gender roles, such as drinking, not listening to their husband, or telling their husband what to do, this is when their husband hits them in order to show that they are the men and thus they have the power. This book is important to my paper because it explains how domestic violence is culturally situated in Latin America and what cultural circumstances cause domestic violence, which in this case are gender norms including women's inequality and men's power over women.

United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women. 2009 The UN Secretary-General's Database on Violence against Women. http://webapps01.un.org/vawdatabase/country.action, accessed March 2010. The UN Secretary General Database on Violence against Women provides information on the laws, plans, and organizations which have been formed in different countries to end and prevent violence against women. The laws from Latin American countries such as Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador are very important to my paper. I discuss what has been done in different Latin American countries to stop and prevent domestic violence. Some of the links on this website connect to the actual laws which are very interesting to read in order to understand the details of each law, meaning what is being changed and implemented and who is responsible for helping victims.

"The study described in this paper looked at homelessness law in the UK before the passage of the recent Housing Act (1996) in Britain. It does not bear out the supposition that homeless families, including women escaping from domestic violence and their children, were unfairly favoured under the previous legislation. The paper argues that the withdrawal in the new Act of the statutory link between homelessness and a lifeline to permanent housing is an example of the ambivalent and contradictory nature of government policy in relation to families and to the social position of women, and is a potentially disastrous development for many women experiencing domestic violence and for their children."

"The McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act is the primary federal funding for homelessness services across the nation. McKinney-Vento funds also support domestic violence programs that are providing transitional housing and emergency shelter to victims. According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in 2005, 663 projects that identified domestic violence victims as the primary population to be served were awarded nearly $118 million to provide housing and services for this vulnerable group."

This article investigates the experience of low-income Hispanic women in terms of their risk of intimate partner violence. The authors argue that because African American women and Hispanic women tend to be over represented in the low-income strata, their economic status affects the type and duration of abuse they may be susceptible.

This report combines quantitative measurements during the civil war of the number of people killed, the types of violence commited and other factors with historical information on how institutionalized violence was perpertuated during the civil war in Guatemala. It is useful to my research because it provides quantitative results on which I can support my arguments.

I use this entry from encyclopedia.com only to reference historical content on the Tailhook Scandal of 1991. This incident is an example of the United States military's mal-treatment and rape of female soldiers. This coincides with my topic on female soldiers involvement in armed forced.

Gostin, Lawrence O., Zita Lazzarini, Diane Alexander, Allan M. Brandt, Kenneth H. Mayer and Daniel C. Silverman. 1995. "HIV Testing, Counselling and Prophylaxis Following Sexual Assault." Reproductive Health Matters 3(5, Pregnancy, Birth Control, STDs and AIDS: Promoting Safer Sex):104-116. This article is important because it looks at how HIV and rape are related in the US. It also looks at prophylaxis like another source on prophylaxis in South Africa. This is very important because it will help to give the paper a more cross-cultural approach. It argues that not enough attention has been paid to the transmission of HIV during rape because in the US the transmission rate is lower, and is thought of as lower. However, looking at the effects of the transmission in the US is just as important as looking at it in South Africa to give it a more global perspective.

(This is the organization's website that produced my source. Diigo would not allow me to bookmark the actual source because it is a pdf file so I am doing the organization's website instead) Consejo Centroamericana de Procuradores de Derechos Humanos 2006 Situación y análisis del femicidio en la Región Centroamericana. Instituto Interamericanode Derechos Humanos Secretaría Técnica (IIDH). http://www.conadeh.hn/pdf/Femicidio.pdf, accesed March 2010 Consejo Centroamericano de Procuradores de Derechos Humanos 2006 Situación y análisis del femicidio en la Región Centroamericana. Instituto Interamericano de Derechos Humanos Secretaría Técnica (IIDH). http://www.conadeh.hn/pdf/Femicidio.pdf, accessed March 2010 "Situación y análisis del femicidio en la Región Centroamericana" is a document that presents data and statistics on violence against women in Central America. The study is focused on femicide but there is a small amount of information on domestic violence. This study is important to my paper for two main reasons. First, it does provide some information on the occurrences of domestic violence which is helpful to answering one part of my research question which studies the role of domestic violence targeted against women in Latin America. Secondly, this study provides a lot of information and data on femicide in Central America, including rates and laws. This immense amount of data on femicide in contrast with the little presented on domestic abuse demonstrates what is constituted as a problem in the region and what is considered to be important enough to study. Femicide has been constructed as the main issue targeting women in Latin America which is why this study and many others focus solely on that rather than other forms of violence against women as well. In my paper I am also looking at the constraints to studying domestic violen

This article by Sheila Jeffreys discusses female soldiers involvement with the military. She argues that they are in a double jeopardy of being symbolically objectified and physically abused. This article helps my discussion on the political acts of violence against women through an analysis of the United States military and their treatment of women. This is one of the topics I address in my paper and have used many quotes to support my argument

"Encyclopedia of Rape. ed. Merril D. Smith. 2004. :xxvii,-301 p. This book, and specifically pages 97 and 98, explain how HIV/AIDS is transmitted through rape. Although this is a short piece, just two pages, they are very important as they are from an encyclopedia that focuses on rape, and can give a very strong explanation of the general ways that HIV/AIDS is transmitted through rape. The explanation also talks about how it is not just women who are infected with HIV from rape, but the paper will focus on how women are affected by HIV from rape.

This is an important source because it gives information on women who are affected by HIV/AIDS in the world, and is an easily accessible site for people around the world who have access to the internet. It not only gives important information on where to get help and what to do, but it also gives some information on other countries, adding yet another global perspective. More importantly, it focuses on the effects that can occur from being infected with HIV/AIDS. This is important to know in order to understand the effects on quality of life that HIV can have.

Desai, Sapna. 2005. "HIV and Domestic Violence: Intersections in the Lives of Married Women in India." Health and Human Rights 8(2, Emerging Issues in HIV/AIDS):140-168. This article is important because it looks at another culture, where HIV/AIDS is spread through marital rape. This is important because acquaintance rape, and rape by random people are not the only types there are, but they are frequently the only ones that are talked about. This article explores how women have no control over their sexuality and bodies, and are forced into sex with their husbands, thus leading them to contract HIV. This will help to add an angle to the paper on marital rape.

"The simple statement, 'I Am an Emotional Creature,' becomes a challenge to the myriad ways in which girls are looked at but not seen, talked about but not listened to, used, discarded, violated, exploited, maimed, and at the extreme killed. Like a woman claiming her body, a girl claiming her emotions breaks a silence and unleashes a vast resource of clean energy, an energy that can inspire all of us to transform and heal the world."-Foreword Excerpt This new book is part of a bigger movement that seeks to end violence against women worldwide. This book is from the same author of the Vagina Monologues and seeks to raise awareness on the current state of the lives of girls and the, sometimes horrific, experiences girls around the world have growing up. I bookmarked this book's site because this book is one of many creative ways in which people are seeking to contribute to solving the problem of violence against women. By writting this book she is appealing to masses of girls that are more prone to reading this book than doing research on the phenomena of Femicides. It is reaching out to a different demographic and empowering them by raising awareness on this issue.

This article investigates the intersection of gender, sexuality and violence in regards to 2nd generation mainland Puerto Rican Youth. The authors argue that as a result of negative behaviors and language, the youth perpetuate cycles of violence through the use of gendered based language.

"V-Day is a catalyst that promotes creative events to increase awareness, raise money and revitalize the spirit of existing anti-violence organizations. V-Day generates broader attention for the fight to stop violence against women and girls, including rape, battery, incest, female genital mutilation (FGM) and sexual slavery." V-Day is a movement started by Eve Ensler. This organization promotes awareness and education through performance as well as carries out campaigns worldwide. Their purpose is to generate media coverage and instigate dialogues especially with the younger demographic. This way they have been making an impact and contributing to end violence against women and girls.