I was reading a blog on designtrend.com and newsdzimbabwe.co.uk regarding a recent domestic abuse case. The statistics on designtrend.com were just alarming. It says 35% of women worldwide have been victims of domestic violence. About 80% of violence towards women results from domestic violence. An estimated 40% of women killed worldwide were slain by an intimate partner. About 93% of incidents of sexual violence occurred between intimate partners.
Researchers have defined physical violence as being punched, slapped, choked or being attacked with a weapon sexual violence was defined as being physically have sex, or being compelled to have sex through threat or intimidation.
Those are just numbers and incidents reported from across the world. I am interested to reach out to the voiceless in marginalized communities. It’s sad to acknowledge that the statistics in marginalized communities or poor countries is more than the estimated or expected. The estimations reported above from designtrend.com are mostly observations in the developed world. The violence in countries like Malawi usually goes unreported and the victims die in silence. Only the critical cases hits the media faces, for instance a husband in one of the districts who denied a divorce from his wife, after a few months of separation cut off his wife’s arms with a panga knife because he found her with another man. He claimed he loved her so much that he didn’t want other men to love her too, so making her ugly or without arms would only make her his always. It is traumatizing to see women walking out of their houses every morning smiling as if it is all rosy in her house. Some women reach a point of lying, creating events that didn’t take off to justify a disfigured or bruised faces.
Most Malawians have been raised in a culture that prevents revealing anything that happens inside their houses. Young couples on their wedding day have been counseled that marriage is endurance of problems faced in the marriage. However the advice doesn’t specify to what extent they are supposed to endure the pain and which side is most likely to live by the advice. The counseling though meant to prepare the couple for a lifetime commitment does not say anything about what happens when things goes beyond expected endurance levels. In a special way we arm men with deadly weapons to kill their wives. Women because they are weak and helpless in many areas they remain the victims.
This blog has been inspired by a pregnant woman who died due to domestic violence. She was in her third trimester, 20 years of age and had 1 child. She was from an area I am currently working. One afternoon we received a message that we have had a maternal death in our catchment area. Usually we investigate the cause of maternal death so that we can empower the communities to prevent anything that might have led to the death of another pregnant woman. The hospital reported that the woman came in the facility already dead. This time the report from the hospital said she had died because her spleen burst due. Then the people from her village reported that the husband was abusive. He could beat her and this time after a misunderstanding they got into a fight and later just collapsed. Other women took her to the hospital where she was declared dead upon arrival and the husband run away.
Yes it is our culture for men to have control over their wives. Yes it has been our culture for men to act captains of the households and women always respect that. This has been disturbing news considering that she was heavily beaten while heavily pregnant. I have always wondered where men get the will to demonstrate that power through beating a pregnant woman. Getting pregnant in rural Malawi has been regarded as an occupational hazard because most of the women are forced to reproduce just to stay married. The society never expected that part of this job would carry the risk of being killed in the process.
Many women like this victim have died in silence because the communities regarded the incident as part of our culture. Sometimes women have failed to report in fear of being laughed at by the society since they are asked to endure the problems of marriage. A strong woman protects her family and doesn’t go out telling her marriage problems. Women when they go to police to report cases of domestic violence the police used to either laugh at them or took the case lightly. Now the DFID has stepped in to support Victims Support Unit (a branch of police that deals with issues of abuse in our communities). However the women are still afraid to come out and talk about their victimisers.
If she had reported to the police or anyone in the community reported to the police earlier I believe we’d have a different story now.