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Social Structure and Social Change

Notes amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The 15 states in which the ERA Amendment has not been ratified
are Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada,
North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah and Virginia.
Not only would a federal ERA help to secure the status that women have worked so hard to achieve,
ERA proponents argue, but it would also offer legal precedent in courts of law where discrimination
cases are being considered.
9.5 Violence against Women

Violence against women is partly a result of gender relations that assumes men to be superior to
women. Given the subordinate status of women, much of gender violence is considered normal and
enjoys social sanction. Manifestations of violence include physical aggression, such as blows of varying
intensity, burns, attempted hanging, sexual abuse and rape, psychological violence through insults,
humiliation, coercion, blackmail, economic or emotional threats, and control over speech and actions.
In extreme, but not unknown cases, death is the result. These expressions of violence take place in a
man-woman relationship within the family, state and society. Usually, domestic aggression towards
women and girls, due to various reasons remain hidden.
Cultural and social factors are interlinked with the development and propagation of violent behaviour.
With different processes of socialisation that men and women undergo, men take up stereotyped
gender roles of domination and control, whereas women take up that of submission, dependence
and respect for authority. A female child grows up with a constant sense of being weak and in need
of protection, whether physical social or economic. This helplessness has led to her exploitation at
almost every stage of life.
The family socialises its members to accept hierarchical relations expressed in unequal division of
labour between the sexes and power over the allocation of resources. The family and its operational
unit is where the child is exposed to gender differences since birth, and in recent times even before
birth, in the form of sex-determination tests leading to foeticide and female infanticide. The home,
which is supposed to be the most secure place, is where women are most exposed to violence.
Violence against women has been clearly defined as a form of discrimination in numerous documents.
The World Human Rights Conference in Vienna, first recognised gender- based violence as a human
rights violation in 1993. In the same year, United Nations declaration, 1993, defined violence against
women as “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or
psychological harm or suffering to a woman, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary
deprivations of liberty, whether occurring in public or private life”.
Radhika Coomaraswamy identifies different kinds of violence against women, in the United Nation’s
special report, 1995, on Violence against Women;
1. Physical, sexual and psychological violence occurring in the family, including battering, sexual
abuse of female children in the household, dowry related violence, marital rape, female genital
mutilation and other traditional practices harmful to women, non spousal violence and violence
related to exploitation.
2. Physical sexual and psychological violence occurring within the general community, including
rape, sexual abuse, sexual harassment and intimidation at work, in educational institutions and
elsewhere, trafficking in women and forced prostitution.
3. Physical, sexual and psychological violence perpetrated or condoned by the state, wherever it
occurs.
This definition added ‘violence perpetrated or condoned by the State’, to the definition by United
Nations in 1993.
Coomaraswamy (1992) points out that women are vulnerable to various forms of violent treatment
for several reasons, all based on gender.
1. Because of being female, a woman is subject to rape, female circumcision/genital mutilation,
female infanticide and sex related crimes. This reason relates to society’s construction of female
sexuality and its role in social hierarchy.

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