Understanding and Stopping Violence Against Women

This is a lit review of articles on the sexual exploitation of women and children within the US. They look at the economics side of human trafficking and the legal issues surrounding human trafficking.

"although accession offered women's movements political opportunities to put pressure on their governments, the adaptation to EU regulations is characterized by top-down reforms and the unequal compliance of national governments." The European Union is unique in that it brings many different countries with different cultures together under some overarching policies. Women's organizations have been dealing with the difficulties of making all the member state's governments commit to women's issues being on their agenda. Also, they have been working towards violence against women initiatives and trying to get the different governments to support them.

This essay focuses on how the violence in Guatemala has become to be understood as a " cultural fact". The author explores how the naturalization of political violence intro cultural violence was produced and how it was patterned.The author explores this through the exploration of the period of " La Violencia" where descriptions and public displays of cadavers and public assasinations were portrayed in newspapers.Through media the goverment was sucessfull in the creation of generalized fear.

This article talks about ways to help end trafficking within the US by focusing on targeting the source countries and creating stronger penalties for people who are trafficking humans. Author also talks about reasons for why human trafficking within the US will probably increase in the coming years.

The first nationwide campaign on the violence against women Fifth Women has had deep impact on the public opinion. The message "Every fifth woman is abused" has become to a fact often repeated in media and news. The women NGOs that launched in the year 2001/2002 the campaign on violence against the women "The Fifth Woman" founded the umbrella NGO "Initiative Fifth Woman".

This source is very valuable for my research because it is a report that attempts to recover the historic memories during the civil war in Guatemala. This volume explores the different impacts of political and sponsored state terrorism on the different social sectors of Guatemala. It discusses how the state respressed any form of sympathy or indentification with the guerilla movement. Moreover, it also focuses on violence against women during this period and especially the objectives and effects of raping women in public. This source also discusses how rape was used as a tool to communicate social and political messages and to dehumanize indigenous communities. The report also discusses the social roles through which women responded and resisted this type of violence.

This source explores the ways in which state sponsored terrorism during the civil war in Guatemala was sustained. It discusses the nature of the torture and masacres during this time. It describes the way in which soldiers were trained to masacre and rape victims and how they were mentally and physically trained to do so. This source also discusses the different goverment's sectors that participated and collaborated with the state's sponsored terrorsm.

Doskoch, P. 2006. "Skewed Sex Ratio of Births in India may be the Result of Sex-Selective Abortion." International Family Planning Perspectives (32)2: 102-3. This short article provides an introduction to the affects of sex-selective abortion. She includes basic statistics in support of the imbalance of male to female birth rates in India, using sex-selective abortion as a justification for such results. I found it necessary to use statistics to better understand the depth and significance that sex-selective abortion and infanticide have in India.

McDonnell, Karen A., Andrea C. Gielen, Patricia O'Campo and Jessica G. Burke. 2005. "Abuse, HIV Status and Health-Related Quality of Life among a Sample of HIV Positive and HIV Negative Low Income Women." Quality of Life Research 14(4):945-957. This article is important because it looks at how a person's quality of life is affected by HIV and intimate partner violence. This helps to address the question of my paper (how rape and HIV status are related) in that it looks at how rape and HIV can affect a woman's quality of life. The quality of life argument is very important because it will add a more personal, and less academic look at HIV and IPV. This will add a perspective to my paper that an article merely focusing on the spread of HIV through rape cannot.

Women's vulnerability to sexual violence after Haiti's quake.

Unaware before taking this class of reality, I too, like the majority of society, was influenced by the misconception that rape was a stereotypical image. I have come to find through taking this class that the majority of rape and physical assaults are experienced by females from a male perpetrator who is an intimate partner, including spouses, boyfriends, or dates. When searching ways in which the violence against women has been an issue under which proactive means have been taken toward awareness or even a solution, I came across the website for the Bahamas Crisis Center. This page offers a direct introduction to the issue with the poster that states, "When we got married, I promised to love, honour and obey him and he promised the same to me. I gave him my love, respect and my heart, but last night he betrayed that love and broke my heart. He RAPED me." This page seeks to directly address marital rape as an eminent threat to the well-being of women and the society at large by taking a problem that ordinarily occurs within the home and places it in people's faces. The video "Silent Pain" is a collage of images, words, songs, and interviews. It begins with a description of the emotions felt by women whom are betrayed and raped by their husbands. When asked if they were aware of what marital rape was, those interviewed replied "no" and of those who were female, they remarked that it is indeed, unacceptable while the males depicted it as "a condoned act of marriage". Fortunately, the video also attempted to show how the issue has become increasingly apparent in the media to raise social acknowledgment. The video ends with a detailed personal account of a woman who was raped by her husband. I believe this is a positive step toward making a private issue a public one that needs to urgently be addressed.

This was an amazingly difficult video for me to watch. The explicit images from films, reenactments, etc. were incredibly jarring. However, I think that this was a good thing because it really sent the message through to me, even more so than the readings we have been doing in this course, especially those from last week. I think it is great that you found this. Is this also implemented in the US or only in the UK? This might be something really good to place within the symposium!

"Say NO- UNiTE End Violence Against Women" is a campaign out of UNIFEM which aims to end violence against women worldwide through the activism, support, and help of people. The objective is have 100,000 "actions" performed globally by November 2010 that in some way help end violence against women, such as working in a shelter, donating money to an organizations, or taking an activist stance. There is a section where people can write in their name to stop the violence against women and tell governments to "make ending violence against women a top priority." I think we should all sign and try to take action!

This might seem an odd choice but I decided to post this because I found it to be incredibly moving and emotional. Although it does not explicitly deal with violence against women, it is about war in the Ukraine and violence against all people (men, women, and children). Women do play a key role in the sand art though: mothers being abandoned by their soldier husbands, left to fend for themselves and their children, women growing old without knowledge of family and lovers who died, etc. This violence towards women seems to be more symbolic and emotional, rather than strictly physical. Relates to past readings like Bourdieu, Das, and perhaps Enloe.

I am really glad that you chose to bookmark this video. I remembered you showing it to me a while ago and liking it, but watching again just now from a different angle, I feel as though I can see much more. This woman is obviously harboring some intense grief, whether it be just hers or that of her country as well. I love the way she used this form of artistic expression, coupled with emotion provoking music, because it told her history from a couple sitting comfortably on a street bench to a mother and child alienated from perhaps the same male figure on the other side of a window. This production obviously made a impact on the audience who most likely share her history of war, destruction, tears, violence, alienation, hopelessness, etc. Thank you for finding this.

This is a link to the Battered Women's Justice Project. This site is helpful because it deals with both local and international domestic violence, and covers a wide variety of issues including battering, stalking, child abuse, immigrant rights, etc. It both provides resources for victims of domestic violence and also works to show how to change the legal system and criminal justice proceedings concerning domestic violence.

This is a link to "Man Up" , a group dedicated to helping youth end violence against women and girls, it's slogan being that violence against women is everyone's issue, not just a women's issue. They give out grants to youth activists to start programs against domestic violence in their communities, and work through a number of mediums including sports, music, technology, and art.

While I fully support any non-profit organization's attempt at gaining awareness and participation by female and male youth alike, I would also argue that I have seen better-designed and more informed websites to encourage participation for the cause to stop violence against women. The section with the definition of different types of violence was rather informative, but I wish the "Get Involved" section would have been more in depth and easy to navigate to links of promoted involvement.

This website is dedicated to showing how art can be used as a healing tool for victims of domestic violence. There is a list of exhibitions that can be seen online which include postcard art, dolls, masks, and family trees, and each piece is created by a person who experienced some form of domestic violence. I think this site is a good one because it shows how the victims aren't alone and allows them to possibly heal from the experience.

I found this particular piece of art among several others under the category of on deviantart.com, an online community created for all sorts of artists. X4rsyzt3m, the artist, provided a short explanation of her piece, which included statistics about violence against women, particularly violence among intimate partners of which she is a victim. I read the comments below the work and was taken aback by what a person called Saywhaat and another called Humanisticparadox said in response to the piece. (I do not agree with either of them). Saywhaat was offended by the piece because she (I'm assuming it is a she) thinks that the artist is, "degrading not only [her]self but [her] entire sex" because the artist thinks that women should be treated differently, which I am not sure the artist is trying to say. I was personally offended by what Humanisticparadox said because he (he admitted to being a he) thinks that it is our fault that we are the weaker sex emotionally and physically and that we should be toughened up instead of protected.

I chose to bookmark this page to supplement my other bookmarked page from deviantART. It is my understanding that the anti-violence against women poster was created in support of this new law. I found it interesting and important to note because of the date in which this law was had passed and is hopefully now being implemented. This law establishes that women and children are to be given the same human rights as men. It also claims to ensure that women and children receive appropriate aid from the state when necessary. I do not know if this new law, which should have been created many more years ago, is currently being upheld to its fullest description.

Amnesty International is an organization that is working to enforce human rights through various campaigns. They work across countries with the government in order to change law and help push legislation to help further equality. This page in particular focuses on their work to stop the current violence against women occurring around the world. Here you can read about the problems facing various countries, learn more about what different governments are doing, and what Amnesty International believes needs to be done. Here you can find resources to help in your own activism such as fact sheets, videos, and specific campaigns.

In the midst of taking a class on the different outlets of Violence Against Women, the student is often left with a better understanding of how and why rape, physical assault, murder, human trafficking, and Femicide against females occurs as well as an overwhelming feeling of helpless and hopeless. The website entitled the "Virtual Knowledge Centre to End Violence Against Women and Girls" is an attempt to take pro-active steps in helping the public form campaigns, educate others, seek justice, form legislation and public policy, prevent, discover where safety zones exist, and research the various locations where the violence exists. It truly takes a step in helping the public feel less helpless and asking questions of what the can do to help because it directly leads one toward the answers.

For the paper on Human Trafficking- a somewhat related source