Despite “great strides” in eliminating the worst forms of discrimination against women, the inability of the society to protect women and girls from violence is proof of a fundamental flaw, according to the Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA).
“Confronting violence against women cannot be achieved at the level of philosophy or in theory, nor will it
be achieved on the basis of flawed ideas or timidity in recognizing the work that remains to be done. Systematically challenging the obsessive sexualizing of social interactions is a good place to start creating public awareness of the dimensions of the problem,” the GHRA Executive Committee said in a statement, released on Thursday, for International Day for Elimination of Violence Against Women.
Guyana, it said, is on par with the many countries that have adopted measures that promote equality of women. Great strides have been made in eliminating the worst forms of discrimination in these areas, it further noted. However, the amount of violence against women and girls, it argued, is the clearest proof that the understanding of equality of women is seriously deficient.
Defining equality on the basis of extending to women things that men want, has reached the limits of usefulness as a way of approaching women’s rights, the GHRA said, while adding that equality of women is limited to the extent that it remains compatible with widespread violence to which women are exposed.
“The present predicament of women with respect to violence, therefore, depends at bottom, on escaping from the straitjacket of masculine values, especially masculine tolerance for violence,” it explained.
Men accept and resort to violence routinely not only as a last resort, the GHRA further argued, saying that this is particularly true in Caribbean societies, where violence against women is an integral part of an approach to problem-solving that accommodates corporal punishment in schools, the death penalty and homophobi violence. “Within this gamut of violent responses, sexual violence against women and girls is the most pervasive and persistent expression of violence in Guyana,” it said, while pointing out that approximately 60% of cases in the current assizes are crimes of sexual violence and this is the tip of the iceberg.
“There is no remotely equivalent intrusion into men’s lives of this routine violence which poses a daily ordeal for women and girls,” it added, while also noting that sexual harassment of girls and women is common place.
According to GHRA, the most effective approach to reducing violence against women is to start to construct women’s rights around an understanding of the opportunities and resources that women need to lead successful and meaningful lives as women. “Articulating the short-comings of what has been achieved to date with respect to women’s rights is sufficient to indicate how far we still are from a society in which women are free to be women on the same terms as men are free to be men,” it said.
