The 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence is an international campaign that takes place each year between November 25 (International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women) and December 10 (Human Rights Day). Gender based violence remains one of the most pervasive human rights violations in the world. According to the United Nations Concept Note: Unite to End Violence Against Women, 1 in 3 women have been subjected to physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence, non-partner sexual violence, or both, at least once in their life. Imagine yourself at an event, a concert perhaps. 100 people are in attendance, and 60 of those identify as female, that would be 20 people in that space right there. But even two are two too many, and so the campaign against Gender-Based Violence has been implemented in 1991, and since then, many nations and organizations participated in it. This was two years before marital rape became illegal everywhere in the United States.
When you hear the word ‘crime’ what do you see in your mind? I see bank robbers jumping into getaway cars, police with sirens taking chase, gun fights between drug selling street gangs – most likely all my imaginations are scenes from The Rookie or Hawaii 5-0 or some other TV show I watched at one time or another.
In reality though, crime is mostly a family affair. The majority of crimes are committed by people we know, and when it comes to homicide, they are committed by family members. According to statista.com, in 2022 in the US, 1,998 homicides were committed by strangers, 3,751 by acquaintances, work relations or neighbors and 4,255 by family members. Of those 4,255, 1,124 were committed against girl-friends and wives, and 343 against boy-friends or husbands. And yet, when we think about crime prevention, we usually think about more patrols, better lighting on the streets, and locking our cars and doors – and all these strategies are commendable for sure! But would conflict resolution training, marriage counseling and substance abuse treatment be more effective? I am sure it would, to a certain degree. However, family life is guided by the values and customs of society as a whole. If violence is seen as an acceptable, maybe even admirable way of getting what you want, people within and outside of families will be violent. If women are seen as somehow lesser than men, then women will be victimized more often than their male counterpart. If Indigenous women are seen as somehow lesser than White women, then Indigenous women will be victimized more often than others.
Another way of talking about these – sometimes unspoken – assumptions which pave the road to direct violence, is naming them as cultural violence. Cultural violence are values, ideas and ideologies which can be used to rationalize and legitimize direct violence. They are expressed in popular culture, media, art, politics, religion and other places. When they find their way into the law and common practices of the land, then we call them structural violence. Obvious examples of structural violence in history are slavery in the United States, the antisemitic Nuremburg Laws in Nazi Germany, and Apartheit in South Africa. But there are unjust ideas, laws and common practices paving the way to direct violence also today. Thanks to Peace Researcher Johan Vincent Galtung, we now know about the interplay between cultural, structural and direct violence.
Unsurprisingly, as we read in “Unite to End Violence Against Women”, the most successful strategies to end gender based violence are those which address cultural and structural violence: easing economic hardship, investing in women’s rights organizations, transforming social norms, addressing unequal gender power relations, strengthening essential services for survivors and enabling safer environments. Just as cultural and structural violence leads to direct violence, so does cultural and structural justice lead to direct justice. A research paper published by the IMF (International Monetary Fund) examines “The Heavy Economic Toll of Gender-Based Violence” in Sub-Saharan Africa. An increase in violence against women by 1 percentage point is associated with an 8 per cent lower level of economic activity. The researchers write:
This economic cost results from a significant drop in female employment. Our results also show that violence against women is more detrimental to economic development in countries without protective laws against domestic violence, in natural resource rich countries, in countries where women are deprived of decision-making power and during economic downturns. Beyond the moral imperative, the findings highlight the importance of combating violence against women from an economic standpoint, particularly by reinforcing laws against domestic violence and strengthening women’s decision-making power.
Rasmane Ouedraogo & David Stenzel
The Magnificat, Mary’s song, is one of the most powerful pieces in Scripture. The way Mary sings about justice melts the personal and the societal into one. She thanks God for uplifting her as individual woman: The Mighty One has done great things for me; and she thanks God for uplifting all who are lowly: [God] has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly. Mary knows that the child which God put into her womb will renew the relationship between God and all of Israel: [God] has attended to his servant Israel, so that he remembers [God’s] mercy. She knows that she is now an instrumental part of salvation history. The small and the large, the personal and the universal, have folded into each other. – I just cited the Magnificat in the translation by Francois Bovon, the Hermeneia commentator. He uses the English tense known as present perfect, as is commonly done, to translate the Greek tense known as aorist. Present perfect in English is a complex tense as it reaches from the past into the present. The aorist tense in Greek language is even more complex. It reaches from the past to the present to the future. Let’s read how Bovon explains the use of the aorist in the Magnificat:
For exegesis, much depends on the interpretation of the aorists. Are they ordinary observations of past history, or gnomic attestations of God’s usual conduct? Are they ingressive aorists, signaling the beginning of eschatological events? Or are they influenced by the prophetic perfect in Hebrew, and thus pictures of the future? In sum, is this hymn a genuine praise to God for help granted, or a hidden prophecy of hoped-for salvation?
Francois Bovon, Hermeneia, Luke 1, p.57.
So, which one is it?
- The Mighty One has done great things for me.
- The Mighty One always does great things for me.
- The Mighty One has started to do great things for me.
- The Mighty One will do great things for me.
In Mary’s song, the small and the large, the personal and the universal become one, and so do the past, the present and the future. The proleptic nature of salvation, the already-now-but-not-yet is artfully presented in the content of the song, as well as its form, the use of grammar. In God, everything is possible, and human limitations can be overcome.
God’s justice leads to God’s peace. The meaning of Shalom, peace in Hebrew language, includes the values of harmony, wholeness, completeness, prosperity, welfare, and tranquility. Peace is by definition a communal achievement. Our biblical ancestors knew that peace is not possible where harmony and wellbeing are lacking! Justice is also a communal affair. A society which only grants justice to some and not all, is unbalanced and broken. The Sub Saharan Research presented by the International Money Fund demonstrates the connection between justice, prosperity and peace impressively! Oppressing women does not lead to more wellbeing for men and children, nature, or society as a whole. God made women and men, both in Godʻs image, not to unleash horrible and everlasting enmity and violence, but so that they may complement and help each other. God created the whole universe as an interconnected and interdependent whole. What affects one, affects all. But somehow, we are trained to think: It’s us or them. Either women or men. Either old or young. Either black or white. Either straight or gay. Either Christian or Jew. Thinking in hostile and exclusive binaries is not helpful. It is harmful. It is part of cultural and structural violence that leads to direct violence. Every suffering person in society is like a hole in the bucket, a tear in the fabric. It weakens not only the one, but the whole. Mary gives us a powerful vision of a just and balanced community where everyone can live in peace and prosperity. Letʻs follow Maryʻs lead. Letʻs end gender-based violence once and for all and focus on taking care of each other.