How and why might violence against women be perceived as indicator of Essay

How and why might violence against women be perceived as indicator of unequal citizenship - Essay Example This paper presents a very thoughtful argument as to why and how violence against women is an indicator of unequal citizenship. It explores the aspect of gender violence as a whole providing particular forms of violence affecting women, locations where these forms of violence take place, role of government in eliminating violence, and the key political values and forms of citizenship linked either directly or indirectly to the increased widespread of gender violence. Indeed, violence against women can be seen as an indicator of unequal citizenship in that from ancient times; women have been perceived as having no value in the society and considered as a man’s property. They were mandated to be submissive to their husbands and not perform industrial activities; they were forced to early marriage, and practiced female genital mutilations as well as mistreating widows like inciting them to commit suicide.2 In addition, with all these, there is no equal citizenship because men alw ays dominate and abuse women but a few or no perpetrators are brought to justice. For instance, there have been claims that death sentence as a rape case charge does not end violence but failure to prosecute rapists does not eliminate violence either. Today, feminist movements have addressed the issue of violence and discrimination aggressively as a criminal act so as to ensure that there is equality and elimination of gender discrimination because women need to be treated fairly equally as men. Additionally, violence against women serves, as a perfect example of unequal citizenship in that, the fact that women are not equally given chance to occupy some offices is a sign of inequality and as a result, women feel left out. Even though most women in the contemporary world are offered different job opportunities and others are even designated some tasks that are usually performed by men, they are still discriminated in some sectors. This to some extent can be seen as an indicator of u nequal citizenship. Furthermore, existences of forms of violence that affect women across a variety of location like battering, domestic violence, sexual violence among others, and the fact that responsible bodies cannot aggressively address them confirms gender imbalance and unequal citizenship. For instance, most societal members especially men believe that wife battering not a big issue and it is something that must be done as a way of ‘disciplining women’. More so, violence against women shows unequal citizenship since it has been noted that popular form of violence against women globally is intimate partner violence commonly referred to as domestic violence. This is what has been happening and is still happening but the government cannot work on this to offer complete protection of women. Psychological violence where a man dominates a woman and literally forcing her to be submissive to him as well as exploiting her economically,3 persists. Indeed, this confirms tha t violence against women is a manifestation of unequal citizenship in our societies. Truly, violence against women indicates unequal citizenship because men usually abuse women in other ways like sex working, child abuse and trafficking and yet, just like men they are supposed to be protected.4 As a result, only few perpetrators are held accountable of their inhuman acts and it has been confirmed that some police officers threaten the victims to never say a word. This for sure can be seen as lack of protection of wome