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Article 2 of The Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women

2022-04-22

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/14

Article 2

Violence against women shall be understood to encompass, but not be limited to, the following:

( a ) Physical, sexual and psychological violence occurring in the family, including battering, sexual abuse of female children in the household, dowry-related violence, marital rape, female genital mutilation and other traditional practices harmful to women, non-spousal violence and violence related to exploitation;

( b ) Physical, sexual and psychological violence occurring within the general community, including rape, sexual abuse, sexual harassment and intimidation at work, in educational institutions and elsewhere, trafficking in women and forced prostitution;

( c ) Physical, sexual and psychological violence perpetrated or condoned by the State, wherever it occurs. 

Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (1993)

In the consideration of the history of the equality of the sexes, one of the most important things to take into account in the protection of women as persons are the idea of women as more vulnerable in certain ways. These can include in the bearing of the future generations of the species or in the violence enacted against them for a variety of reasons, of which culture, society, religion, law, economics, politics, social life, and individual men and women become an important consideration in said violence.

This violence comes in a variety of forms. Some of the more recognized ones are the physical forms of violence such as battering and prevention of free movement. If a woman is abused in the home by a husband’s or wife’s fist, this can become an issue for the health and well-being of this individual. Furthermore, there are the issues with the movement of women.

In the several Member States of the United Nations bound to various equal rights documents, we see the restriction on the movement of women within the context of the cultural and religious practices named Guardianship Laws. The idea being that women cannot move freely because they are a more vulnerable sex and so deserve protection from the evils of the world.

Said protection should come from the men in the women’s lives, this is the basis for a benevolent sexism with women being seen as obviously, from within the assertions and premises of the Guardianship Laws, needing protection from the men in their lives. That is, women must travel with a “guardian” or a male relative to be able to travel anywhere in the ways they see fit.

Then we come to Article 2 of the Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. We see the delineation of equality for the first portions of the document with the scope of the violence in consideration. If not within this scope, then the act does not necessarily equate to violence against women but could be violence in another context. However, documents must be adhered to and, thus, require a certain rigidity in the definition.

In this, we see the equality in three domains as laid out in the sub-sections (a), (b), and (c). Each dealing with the aspects of violence against women based on their sex. In (a), it states:

Physical, sexual and psychological violence occurring in the family, including battering, sexual abuse of female children in the household, dowry-related violence, marital rape, female genital mutilation and other traditional practices harmful to women, non-spousal violence and violence related to exploitation;

The forms of the violence considered legitimate within the context are the physical such as punching and kicking, the sexual such as marital rape, and the psychological such as threatening repeatedly to withdraw financial resources or leaving. Within this framework, we see the problems for the women and less for the men because the violence meted out to women is much worse for women because of the men being more physically imposing, having more influence in the society and family, and owning most of the financial resources of the state.

This makes the violence against women in these domains particularly of note because women often lack the ability to contend in those areas without the support of other men or women as a means of a group or general solidarity for protection from the men who are consistent abusers.

In (1), the statements list the forms of the abuse with the likes of battering and sexual abuse of female children, which, unfortunately, continues to happen to the very present, where women do not get much consideration for their equal status even as girls. Then there are financial issues around the considerations of the women being owned by the men or the family, or the religious community as dictated in the holy texts.

It is in this sense that we can see the development of harshness towards women who do not want to be a part of dowry but then this leads to backlash and in fact violence of the psychological, physical, and sexual form because many may consider the women in their lives as an object, chattel in other words, in their lives. Then the marital rape and female genital mutilation remain distantly linked but gravely associated acts against the female form.

In the girls and in the women, the point of the female genital mutilation – for tens of millions of women who have undergone it, especially non-consensually – is to reduce or eliminate sexual pleasure for the women in order for them to be less likely to cheat and leave their future or current husband for another man. It becomes an honor system of the family, enforced on the girls and women, and for the men as the husbands. It is what it is: violence – spade a spade.

Then there are all of the other myriad forms of violence against women not even completely covered within the document including the exploitation in one form or another, even the cultural traditions or practices inculcated and expected from a young age and intended to bring about certain attitudes and behaviours in women and girls that leave them in many senses subordinate and dependent on the traditions.

Article 2(b) becomes a furtherance of the prior sub-section with the descriptions of the three forms of the violence laid out before, as follows:

Physical, sexual and psychological violence occurring within the general community, including rape, sexual abuse, sexual harassment and intimidation at work, in educational institutions and elsewhere, trafficking in women and forced prostitution;

As this violence against women, in the aforementioned three types, comes within the heading of the general community, or the socio-cultural milieu thereof, the extensions comes from not only the general or the familial particular but also into the world of work and education. If a woman is desperate for finances and does not have any other recourse or if the males in her or their life forces work for finances without any educational or work background, the woman or women may be forced into some of the lowest and most degrading forms of work found in the sex industry.

In Canada, there are several acts laid out for the protection of the women against the various forms of intimidation and violence in the workplace, where women finally have some form of possibilities for self-protection within the environment of the workplace and through the formal legal documents and mechanisms in the state. These give some protection, some, but not a tremendous amount for the women who have already moved well into their careers prior to these being implemented – or did not know about them, which takes a lot of time.

Because the creation of documents representative of the better conscience of the population for the equating of personhood with everyone in the species and not simply one sex or others who look a little different than you. Women for a long time, for an example, were thought unsuited for the educational realm and for the workplace. It became an assertion of women’s only place in the home with the kids and the homecare and left to idly chat about the goings on to and fro of the social life of the small town.

Did not necessarily have to be the case, but was the case for centuries and centuries, it simply kept women at a state of miserly ‘equality’; women left as something less than, owned, and reduced to a few servile duties including sexual pleasure for the man especially for reproductive purposes. Not much of a life, and not much to say of the society as well given that structure, as we now know, it can and women can be so much more.

Within Article 4(c), then we find more about violence but more tersely stated, it states in full:

Physical, sexual and psychological violence perpetrated or condoned by the State, wherever it occurs. 

The State or the nation-state has been involved and deeply interested in the perpetration of violence against women. Not as a singular case or even a set of instances but as a principle, the coordination of the nation-state with religion to coerce and manipulate women into subordinate roles with the approval of the creator of the universe seems not accident and quite functional for those who do not uppity women thinking for themselves and going about their own lives, on their own terms, and for their own economic and educational reasons.

Women do not even get stated in the history books much, especially in the allegorical historical collections of books produced by and for, and as a part of, the religious traditions of the world. How many women play a lead role in the Bible or the Quran for two major examples? Not many, Mother Mary Magdalene, Fatima, and others; there are not many others, but their roles do not amount to the main character or narrative within most of the plots and, even in the case of Christianity, as a child bearer or someone who brought forth the saviour of the world, i.e., a subsidiary role for Mary.

And so on, the narratives that have been given to the women with such subordination and submissions to the men and the family, and the community and the society within many traditions could, with a slight change in perspective, amount to a psychological form of violence against women and girls. It limits their views of themselves through truncation of roles and role models.

Under Ceausescu, we saw Decree 770, where women were forced to bear a large number of children or else as that phrase goes. That was only a few decades ago. The nation’s governments and the world’s religions have always had an exquisite emphasis on the limitation of women intellectually, emotionally, psychologically, sexually, and physically. These kinds of articles state, in a crystallized sentence even, the import or salience of having a woman or girl be able to be free by any individual or governmental restriction on their capacity or capabilities within the society.

None of this is history alone, this is now and always potential in the future, even here in Canada. Be chary, be wary, but be strong.–One can find similar statements in other documents, conventions, declarations and so on, with the subsequent statements of equality or women’s rights:

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

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From → Chronology, Jacobsen's Bank, The Good Men Project

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