Women’s Problem – Violence – Is Men’s Problem

Nineteen years after the tragic deaths of 14 young women in Montreal, violence against women in Canada continues to be a significant and persistent social and economic reality.

It is important to remember the Montreal massacre but it is also important to remember and to speak out about the daily occurrence of domestic violence against women in our community and globally.

What are the psychological and social impacts on women and children and extended families? Do we know?

Sixteen days of activism began Nov. 25 on the International Day Against Violence Against Women and concludes Dec. 10 with International Human Rights Day. But 16 days is scant time to raise awareness on gender violence around the world. It is negligible time to raise awareness on gender violence as a "women's issue" and as a "human rights concern." It also dances around naming violence against women as a "men's issue" internationally.

What happens to women during the remaining 349 days of the year? Violence against women cuts across all socio-economic lines and affects every community.

Imagine: Close to 50% of women in Canada have experienced some form of violence. Each day, those women experience some form of violence by their partner, spouse, ex-partner, boyfriend or extended family.

This means that virtually everyone knows someone touched by violence. Women under the age of 25 make up the highest risk group. Aboriginal women are also particularly vulnerable to violence; spousal homicide rates of Aboriginal women were more than five to 10 times the rate for non-Aboriginal women.

Did you know that one in three women worldwide has been physically or sexually abused? Also, let's not forget psychological and emotional abuse, almost as harmful in the long term.

In Canada alone, studies done before 2002 show the economic cost to Canada is between $1.5 billion and $4.2 billion. In the U.S., the economic cost of domestic violence exceeds $5.8 billion per year. And a 2004 study in the U.K. identified the costs of domestic violence at £23 billion per year, or £440 pounds per citizen.

The World Health Organization has named violence against women as the number one issue affecting women's health across the globe.

Imagine the socio-economic impacts if this money were instead put towards education, homelessness and the elimination of poverty?

Women represent 83% of victims who report spousal abuse to police. This proportion holds true for every province and territory across Canada, according to Stats Can figures. In half of all cases of killings of female ex-partners, the woman was killed within two months of leaving their relationship.

When will it stop?

Violence will stop when the collective voice begins to talk about violence against women as not a women's problem but a men's issue.

Jackson Katz, in his book The Macho Paradox, writes, " I am not going to guilt-trip twenty-first-century American men by blaming them for thousands of years of sexism and patriarchal oppression. Men shouldn't feel guilty simply for being born male. If there is a reason to feel guilty, it should be about what they do or fail to do, not about their chance placement in one gender category."

If there is a glimmer of hope for women, it is that men are beginning to speak out about violence against women, truly recognizing it as a men's issue. This is good news. Speaking out is a beginning for transformation and the acceptance of responsibility.

This is breaking new ground. We need leaders who will lead and model respect and accountability: violence against women is not acceptable.

The status quo no longer serves. It is time to transform it.