GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE: PUBLIC HEALTH CONSEQUENCES AND SOCIETAL IMPACT

0
569

ABSTRACT

The United Nations has identified gender-based violence against women as a global health and development issue, and a host of policies, public education, and action programs aimed at reducing gender-based violence have been undertaken around the world. This study highlights new conceptualizations, methodological issues, and selected research findings that can inform such activities. In addition to describing recent research findings that document relationships between gender, power, sexuality, and intimate violence cross-nationally, it identifies cultural factors, including linkages between sex and violence through media images that may increase women’s risk for violence, and profiles a host of negative physical, mental, and behavioral health outcomes associated with victimization including unwanted pregnancy and abortion. More research is needed to identify the causes, dynamics, and outcomes of gender-based violence, including media effects, and to articulate how different forms of such violence vary in outcomes depending on cultural context.

CHAPTER ONE

  1. INTRODUCTION
    1. Background of the study

Gender based violence (GBV) is the violence directed against a person on the basis of gender. It constitutes a breach of the fundamental right to life, liberty, security, and dignity, equality between men and women, non-discrimination and physical and mental integrity (EU institute of gender equality, 2010). A recent global review of 50 population-based studies carried out in 36 countries indicates that between 10 and 60% of women who have ever been married or partnered have experienced at least one incident of physical violence from a current or former intimate partner (Heise.L, 2009).

1.2  STATEMENT OF PROBLEM

Most of the GBV researches that have been conducted previously focused solely on the effects of GBV on the females. However, it is evident that cases of GBV have transcended gender and more cases of male victims are being reported. Therefore, this study goes an extra mile by trying to explore the effects of GBV in both male and females.