Tag: Violence

Français, Gender, Women and Girls

Aux racines de la violence contre les femmes : comprendre ses causes profondes et comment y remédier

Par Hyeshin Park, Coordinatrice du programme Égalité femmes-hommes, et Gabrielle Woleske, Analyste de politiques publiques, Centre de développement de l’OCDE

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Chaque jour, 137 femmes sont tuées par leur partenaire ou un membre de leur famille. Une femme sur trois dans le monde a déjà subi des violences conjugales au cours de son existence. Alors que la violence à l’égard des femmes demeure un problème mondial persistant, nombreux sont ceux qui continuent de n’y voir qu’une simple affaire personnelle ou ne concernant que « certains hommes mauvais ». La nature généralisée de ce phénomène indique toutefois qu’il s’agit aussi d’un problème social collectif, prenant racine dans les normes sociales largement répandues et liées au concept de masculinité – c’est-à-dire les constructions sociales qui définissent la façon dont les hommes se comportent et, surtout, sont censés se comporter dans des contextes spécifiques pour être considérés comme de « vrais » hommes. Pour comprendre pourquoi certains hommes sont violents envers les femmes et y mettre un terme, il nous faut donc identifier et questionner les normes qui conduisent à ce type de comportements, et dépasser le discours qui voudrait restreindre ce problème à l’action individuelle de « certains hommes mauvais ».  

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Covid-19, Gender, Women and Girls

Gender-based violence: the ‘pandemic within a pandemic’ with devastating human and economic consequences

By Flavia Bustreo, Global leader for health & rights of women, children, adolescents & elderly & Former Assistant Director-General at WHO, Gabriela Ramos, Assistant Director-General for Social and Human Sciences, UNESCO and Felicia Knaul, Director, Institute for Advanced Study of the Americas, Professor, Department of Public Health Sciences at the Miller School of Medicine

Last year, in early February, we joined global leaders and Ministers from a number of countries at a landmark conference organised by the OECD on ending violence against women. The first of its kind, it reflected the rising recognition among OECD countries that violence against women is both a grave violation of human rights as well as an economic sinkhole. The COVID-19 crisis has magnified the existing ‘pandemic within a pandemic’ of violence, with devastating consequences for individuals, and for our societies and economies at large.

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Gender, Women and Girls

Three root causes of violence against women and how to tackle them

By Hyeshin Park, Gender Programme Co-ordinator and Gabrielle Woleske, Policy Analyst, OECD Development Centre

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Every day, 137 women are killed by their partner or a family member. And one in three women worldwide have experienced intimate partner violence (IPV) in their lifetime. While violence against women remains a persistent, global problem, many continue to view it only as an individualistic issue or the actions of “some bad men”. However the widespread nature of the problem indicates that violence against women is also a collective, social problem, rooted in the widely-held social norms surrounding masculinities – socially constructed notions about how men behave and importantly, are expected to behave in specific settings to be considered ‘real’ men. To understand why some men perpetrate violence against women and to end it, we must uncover and address the drivers that lead to such behaviour and move beyond the discourse that simply attributes it to the individual actions of “some bad men”.

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Covid-19, Gender, Women and Girls, Humanitarian, New social contract

Preventing a child marriage pandemic

By Gabrielle Szabo, Senior Gender Equality Adviser and Chiara Orlassino, Research Adviser, Save the Children UK

This blog is part of a series on tackling COVID-19 in developing countries. Visit the OECD dedicated page to access the OECD’s data, analysis and recommendations on the health, economic, financial and societal impacts of COVID-19 worldwide.
Shumi, 16, avoided child marriage with the support of Jasmin, a neighbour and Save the Children-trained peer leader who runs an advocacy group for girls in the village. Photo: Tom Merilion/Save The Children/Bangaladesh

By New Year’s Eve, half-a-million girls may already have married as a result of the economic crisis caused by COVID-19. New analysis from our Global Girlhood Report suggests that by 2025, 2.5 million girls may marry as children. These marriages will add to the estimated 12 million child marriages that take place every year, 2 million of which involve girls under 15 years of age.

These increases will continue over the next decade, but they are not a challenge for future leaders and communities – they are a challenge for today. The risks that set girls on a path to child marriage are already mounting, and materialising. Decision-makers and gender equality advocates must ask ourselves what we can do to stop COVID-19 triggering a child marriage pandemic now. Fortunately, our history already holds many of the answers and we are learning more about how to respond to new challenges from each other every day.

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Development Matters
Policy, Social Protection

Like it or not: coercive power is essential to development

By Erwin van Veen, Lead Levant Research Programme, Senior Research Fellow, Conflict Research Unit at Clingendael

Understanding the political economy of coercion is essential to achieving developmental gains in countries at the lower end of stability and institutional performance. Surprisingly, this matter rarely features on the development agenda, which means the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals continues to suffer in such countries.

If national development is defined as the long-term, collective pursuit of the highest level of wellbeing for the greatest number of citizens, it is a deeply political and highly contested process by default. That is in part because all these components are subject to varying definitions. What is the collective? What is wellbeing? Who is a citizen and what are their rights? Different countries offer starkly different answers to such questions. But beyond definitions, there are also more commonplace reasons for development being such a political undertaking.

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Gender, Women and Girls

To be it, girls and boys need to see it

sigi-banner-woman-day-2020

By Gabriela Bucher, Chief Operating Officer, Plan International

Domestic-violence-kidsWhy representation is key to eliminating gender-based violence.

We entered Women’s Month during a landmark year for girls’ and women’s rights, when a number of hallmark standards for women’s human rights globally — from the Beijing Declaration to the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 — are being reviewed and renewed. But decades after these agreements were signed, millions of girls and women remain subject to gender-based violence. 84 million girls worldwide are trapped in child marriages and subject to intimate partner violence. 3 million girls are still at risk of undergoing female genital mutilation (FGM) every year. It’s time for drastic action.

Gender-based violence is rooted in outdated, entrenched and deeply harmful attitudes about gender that pervade in our societies. The Social Institutions and Gender Index shows that intimate partner violence, for example, is higher in countries where it is most socially accepted. To eliminate gender-based violence around the world we must tackle the problem at its source by unpicking harmful gender norms, beginning at an early age and empowering young people to becoming ambassadors for gender equality within their own communities. Continue reading “To be it, girls and boys need to see it”

Development Matters
Gender, Women and Girls

Where are men in the drive to end violence against women?

By Gary Barker, President and CEO, Promundo-US

This blog is a part of the OECD High-Level Conference on Ending Violence Against Women

#MeToo has led to an unprecedented global calling out of men’s use of violence against women — whether harassment, sexual assault or intimate partner violence. In addition, the last 10 years have seen advances in legal protections for survivors of violence and a massive expansion of research on what works, and what does not, to prevent gender-based violence. With all of this, men’s voices and actions, as allies, actors, and as partners in preventing gender-based violence are often either missing or silent. First, we should start by saying what we mean by gender-based violence (GBV). The phrase, while useful and necessary, often leads us to overlook the fact that we are mostly talking about men’s violence against women – harassment, sexual assault, physical, sexual, economic intimate partner violence in the home by male partners against female partners, and sexual exploitation, among others.

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Latin America and the Caribbean, Policy, Social Protection

Security, violence and fiscal policies in Latin America

By Eduardo Salido Cornejo, Public Affairs and Policy Manager Latam, Telefonica    

Police-Latin-America-ViolenceViolence is a central theme in Latin American popular music. Films and paintings portray well-known tragedies affecting Latin American societies. Art imitates life according to the 2017 Latinobarómetro since Argentinians, Mexicans and Panamanians declare public safety their number one problem. It is second on the list of citizen concerns in Colombia and Venezuela, just behind supply issues in Venezuela and the peace process in Colombia. Violence, crime and insecurity are the region’s main issues ahead of unemployment, economic problems or inequality.

According to data from the Brazilian think tank Igarapé Institute, 33% of all homicides in the world take place in the region, which is home to just 8% of the world’s population. Of the 20 countries with the highest homicide rates, 17 are in Latin America, where 43 out of the world’s 50 most violent cities are located. For every 100 000 inhabitants in Latin America, 21 are murdered, while the world average is seven. In the last decade, the homicide rate in Latin America increased 3.7%, while the population grew 1.1%.1

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