Back to Index

Who are the perpetrators of gender-based violence?
Gloria Ganyani, HealthDev.org
January 24, 2008

http://www.healthdev.org/viewmsg.aspx?msgid=5ffa6011-4058-4bb3-8d22-a3f059d792e0

"A house wife is locked inside a room and heavily beaten by her husband. While this is happening, her mother-in-law sits on the floor listening to the beatings, offering no assistance or making any effort to stop her son from beating his wife," Zimbabwe's Justice Rita Makarau told a crowd of thousands at the launch of the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Based Violence in Harare.

"Angered by this kind of abuse and behavior the daughter-in-law takes rat poison and also gives some to her two-year-old child so that they die together. Unfortunately the child dies and the mother survives and is arrested and eventually brought before the courts. She is charged with murder and punished according to the law."

"Is she such a bad person and isn't the mother-in-law just as much a perpetrator of gender-based violence?" Justice Makarau asked the crowds.

While gender-based violence (GBV) is synonymous with violence against women the story left many people wondering who the real perpetrators of violence are. In relating the story, Justice Makarau showed that GBV is not perpetrated by men alone and in some cases is committed by women against women. There are also many forms of GBV, which range from physical to emotional abuse.

"If a mother-in-law asks her daughter-in-law to stay in the rural areas to assist her to do some chores like tilling the land and uses her like a slave while her husband is alone in town, that is gender-based violence," Minister of Women's Affairs, Gender and Community Development, Oppah Muchinguri, said.

Justice Makarau also said women were sometimes tried as murders, having killed their husbands as a result of an emotional reaction to some form of abuse.

"We need assistance on how such issues should be handled," she said. "There is need to educate and change the attitudes of police officers, magistrates, prosecutors and nurses in order to end gender-based violence."

Before the Domestic Violence Act was passed, violence in the home, especially against women, was not treated with the seriousness it deserved and was regarded as a "domestic issue", which meant it should be solved by the concerned parties at home.

But Justice Makarau said the patriarchal nature of Zimbabwe had a lot to do with GBV and that there were many stereotypes associated with feminine behavior. For example, women are often regarded as having less education, a lower capacity for reasoning and are seen as weak and less economically empowered. These stereotypes need to be challenged.

Highlighting the mandate of the Domestic Violence Council, Bishop Manhanga appealed to everyone in the crowd to be more open about domestic violence issues. "We are not asking for a reduction in GBV, we are advocating an end to it," he said.

Although a large percentage of the perpetrators of GBV are men, there is mounting evidence to suggest that women are also committing acts of violence. While men often use physical violence, women are more likely to abuse their partners emotionally.

Men are often subjected to emotional abuse if they fail to fend for their families or if they have less social status than their partner. In most cases, men do not report their encounters with violence.

Everyone needs to be aware of GBV and familiarize themselves with the different kinds of violence. In this way, we can make sure that the Domestic Violence Act becomes more than just a piece of paper.

Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.

TOP