Although we have all talked and learned a lot about violence against women since the beginning of class, this article was interesting to me because it has statistical information that I was unaware of. For example, marital rape is still permitted in some countries and violence against women costs the global economy an enormous amount of 8 trillion dollars….WOW! Even though this statistic has nothing to do with violence against women, I still wanted to share it with you guys; it will take another 75 years before women and men are paid equally for equal work. This is something I have always found strange. Anyways, I believe that if these countries keep permitting violence against women, how in the world are we going to help put an end to the situation. Something that really frustrated me was when Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka said “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”. People can only do so much but when countries have laws such as allowing men to beat their wife under certain circumstances, like they do in Nigeria; this can sometimes give out a sense of hopelessness to some people. Of course, I’m not saying that we should just give up and not help these women, but if these countries were to change their laws that would be major help. This article also talks about how many cases go unreported (what we learned in class last week), and although violence against women is being spoken more of today; Lydia Alpizar mentions that “it is still not a real priority for most governments”. So my question to you is although violence against women is a major issue in our country, what do you think would be a good way to help these other countries were laws of violence against women are permitted?
-Jazmin Gonzalez