They are your rights, assert them

"The right to live a life free of violence is missing from the lives of most women"

Those of us who are going to vote wonder

¿What do POLITICAL CANDIDATES propose on this issue?

The right to live a life free of violence is missing from the lives of most women. Different kinds of violence affect women throughout their lives, whether in their relationships, in their families and in the educational and work environments, among others. That is, private and public places are a common scenario for these aggressions, directly connected to the socially constructed gender relations, according to which women have a subordinate and discriminated position in unequal power relations. This subordination is strengthened and reinforced aggravating the conditions of vulnerability for women, just like in the feminization process seen in the HIV-AIDS pandemic.

Sexual violence against women and girls has been found to be one of the main causes behind the spread of the AIDS epidemic. Which somehow explains the impact of HIV – AIDS on women, especially those lacking autonomy and power to decide on their body, sexuality, and reproduction. Extensive research shows that in the places where the prevalence of HIV is high, women who have been victims of violence are up to three times more likely to contract the virus than those who haven’t. Fear of violence also has an active role in this reinforcement cycle. On one hand, fear prevents them from rejecting unsafe sex. It has been proven that many women are aware that their regular partners may be carriers of HIV, but lack the social power to refuse dangerous intercourse for fear of abuse. On the other hand, violence and fear of violence are factors that have an impact on women’s actual ability to get tested, to disclose and acknowledge the fact that they are a person living with HIV-AIDS in the spheres of their daily lives and also to demand the timely treatment to which they are entitled. This multi-causal trait of violence against women is that makes the approach from public policies and intervention programs that much harder.

For many years violence against women wasn’t considered to be a human rights or public health issue. Its inclusion within the scope of health care services is still a pending issue in many countries worldwide. There are even more obstacles for interconnection of violence towards women and their sexual and reproductive health, in spite of the fact that several international documents of the United Nations system have established the direct link between them. Forced pregnancy, dehumanized care of delivery and birth, “spontaneous” abortion caused by assault on pregnant women by their partners, sexual violence, rejection of the use of contraceptive and protection methods by their partners, the transmission of HIV, underground abortion, are only a few examples of the close interrelation between violence against women and sexual and reproductive health. When a State fails to provide the sexual and reproductive health care services that women need (maternal health services, treatment for uterine cervical cancer, contraception services, abortion services, sexual violence care), there are discrimination actions at play, by omission, towards women.

Since violence is a problem related to health, education and deep-seated cultural rules that have established it, violence towards women is a violation of their human rights. States, therefore, must implement public policies to prevent, eradicate, and punish all forms of violence against women and girls, including structural violence, symbolic violence, patrimonial violence and any other kind of violence arising from the gender inequality condition.