[The latest United Nations
report draws attention to the rise of “extremism and conservatism,” and without
naming any countries or groups, it argues that what they share is a “resistance
to women’s human rights.” The assaults and abductions by the Islamic State have
brought new urgency to the issue. ]
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Afghan
women who cannot return to their homes live in a shelter run by Women for
Afghan
Women in Kabul. Credit Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
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UNITED NATIONS — The evidence is
ubiquitous. The gang rape of a young
woman on a bus in New Delhi sets off an unusual burst of
national outrage in India. In South Sudan, women are assaulted by
both sides in the civil war. In Iraq, jihadists enslave women for
sex. And American colleges face mounting scrutiny
about campus rape.
Despite the many gains
women have made in education, health and even political power in the course of
a generation, violence against women and girls worldwide “persists at
alarmingly high levels,” according to a United
Nations analysis that the Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is
scheduled to present to the General Assembly on Monday.
About 35 percent of women
worldwide — more than one in three — said they had experienced violence in
their lifetime, whether physical, sexual, or both, the report finds. One in 10
girls under the age of 18 was forced to have sex, it says.
The subject is under
sharp focus as delegates from around the world gather here starting on Monday
to assess how well governments have done since they promised to ensure women’s
equality at a landmark conference in Beijing 20 years ago — and what to do next.
Hillary Rodham Clinton,
who attended the Beijing conference in 1995, is scheduled to speak on Tuesday.
Since the Beijing
conference, there has been measurable, though mixed,
progress on many fronts, according to the United Nations analysis.
As many girls as boys are
now enrolled in primary school, a sharp advance since 1995. Maternal mortality
rates have fallen by half. And women are more likely to be in the labor force,
though the pay gap is closing so slowly that it will take another 75 years
before women and men are paid equally for equal work.
The share of women
serving in legislatures has nearly doubled, too, though women still account for
only one in five legislators. All but 32 countries have adopted laws that
guarantee gender equality in their constitutions.
But violence against
women — including rape, murder and sexual harassment — remains stubbornly high
in countries rich and poor, at war and at peace. The United Nations’ main
health agency, the World Health Organization, found that 38
percent of women who are murdered are killed by their partners.
Even as women’s groups
continue to push for laws that criminalize violence — marital rape is still
permitted in many countries — new types of attacks have emerged, some of them
online, including rape threats on Twitter.
Where there are laws on
the books, like ones that criminalize domestic violence, for instance, they are
not reliably enforced.
The economic impact is
huge. One recent study found that domestic violence
against women and children alone costs the global economy $4 trillion.
“Over all, as you look at
the world, there have been no large victories in eradicating violence against
women,” said Valerie M. Hudson, a professor of politics at Texas A & M
University who has developed world maps that chart the
status of women. The vast majority of countries, by her metrics, do not have
laws that protect women’s physical safety.
In some cases, the laws
on the books are the problem, women’s rights advocates say. In some countries,
like Nigeria, the law permits a man to beat his wife under certain
circumstances. But even when laws are technically adequate, victims often do
not feel comfortable going to law enforcement, or they are unable to pay the
bribes required to file a police report.
Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka,
the executive director of the United Nations agency for gender equity and women’s
empowerment — known as UN Women — said that for the laws to mean anything,
governments around the world have to persuade their police officers, judges and
medical personnel to take violence against women seriously.
“I am disappointed, I
have to be honest,” she said about the stubborn hold of violence against women.
“More than asking for more laws to be passed, I’m asking for implementation.”
According to Equality
Now, an advocacy group that tracks laws pertaining
to women, 125 countries specifically criminalize domestic violence. But
so-called wife-obedience laws still remain in some places. In some others,
rapists can get off the hook by marrying those they assault.
Yasmeen Hassan, the
group’s executive director, said that governments need to be reminded that they
committed to making their laws fair for women. Cultural differences cannot be
an excuse, she said. “It’s always a cop-out for governments to not do what they
signed up to do,” she said.
The new round of global
development targets that governments around the world will have to agree to
later this year, known as Sustainable Development Goals, includes a separate
requirement for women’s equal rights, including how they protect their female
citizens from violence.
The latest United Nations
report draws attention to the rise of “extremism and conservatism,” and without
naming any countries or groups, it argues that what they share is a “resistance
to women’s human rights.” The assaults and abductions by the Islamic State have
brought new urgency to the issue.
Ms. Hudson, the academic,
said the persistence of violence in so many forms is in part because it can
establish domination against women of all kinds, for a broad range of personal
and political purposes. A husband can just as easily beat his wife if she is a
high school dropout or a college graduate. An entire territory can be claimed
if fighters rape the local women — or take them as sex slaves, as is the case
of the Islamic State.
“I think violence against
women is so darn useful,” she said. “That’s why it’ll be so hard to eradicate.”
Violence can start before
birth. Sex-selective abortions, have been reduced in some countries, as in
South Korea, but are higher than ever in other places, like India, and are
going up sharply in places like Armenia.
Harassment is
commonplace. In the United States, 83 percent of girls aged 12 to 16 said they
had experienced some form of harassment in public schools. In New Delhi, a 2010
study found that two out of three women said they were harassed more than twice
in the last year alone.
Violence against women is
often unreported. For instance, a study conducted in the 28 countries of
the European Union found that only 14 percent of women reported their most
serious episode of domestic violence to the police.
“Violence against women
has epidemic proportions, and is present in every single country around the
world,” said Lydia Alpizar, executive director of the Association for Women’s
Rights in Development, a global feminist group. “Yet it is still not a real
priority for most governments.”
Perhaps the biggest
change in 20 years, say those who attended the 1995 Beijing conference, is that
the subject is now front and center in public discussion.
“There is actually a
great deal more attention being paid today to violence against women,” said
Charlotte Bunch, a feminist scholar who attended the Beijing conference. “The
truth is, it’s a complex issue that isn’t solved easily.”
