Section 4. The problem of domestic violence

Domestic violence is a global phenomenon. According to feminist geographer Joni Seager, it is reported as ‘common’ in almost all countries (1997: 26—7).¹⁴ It affects millions of women annually.

But domestic violence is also a hidden problem. For many countries, there is little or no statistical information, indicating that it is ‘a crime that is under­recorded and under-reported’ (UNICEF 2000: 4). For countries where data are available, the rates vary.¹⁵ For example, in the United States, an estimated 28 per cent of women have been victims of domestic violence at least once in their lives. In South Africa, the estimate is 48 per cent. In Pakistan, estimates range from 70 to 90 per cent (Seager 1997: 26-7).

The prevalence of domestic violence is a powerful indication of the inequality and vulnerability of women across cultures. Domestic violence is the most common form of gender violence, the latter encompassing all forms of violent practices perpetrated on females because they are females. ‘Whether gender violence operates as direct physical violence, threat, or intimidation, the intent is to perpetuate and promote hierarchical gender relations. It is manifested in several forms, all serving the same end: the preservation of male control over resources and power’ (Green ¹999^{1 i}^²)∙

What distinguishes domestic violence from other forms of gender violence is the context within which it occurs (the ‘domestic’ or ‘private’ sphere) and the nature of the relationship between perpetrators and victims (familial). Because domestic violence occurs within the ‘private’ sphere of the family, making it visible (as a first step to making it redressable) is exceedingly difficult.

In the case of intimate violence, male supremacy, ideology and conditions... confer upon men the sense of entitlement, if not the duty, to chastise their wives. Wife-beating is, therefore, not an individual, isolated, or aberrant act, but a social license, a duty or sign of masculinity, deeply ingrained in culture, widely practiced, denied and completely or largely immune from legal sanc­tion. (Copeion 1994: 116)

Women who are subjected to or threatened with violence at home often are incapacitated by the violence itself from seeking protection. They may be para­lysed by terror and the ever-present threat of attack. Victims are also often deterred from even imagining alternatives because of the importance of the family as a social institution. This vulnerability is compounded by economic dependence on male family members, and by the fact that many women’s principal identity derives from their membership and role in the family. The problem of domestic violence is exacerbated by social and legal constructions of the family as ‘private’, and popular perceptions of male power (including domination and aggression against women) as normative.

Although domestic violence occurs within families and overwhelmingly targets women, it is neither a ‘private’ matter nor a ‘women’s’ problem; it is a societal problem, implicating both the ruling state and the community⁷ within which families are socially situated. Yet there is great reluctance or resistance in societies around the world to recognize and deal with this problem because of an un­willingness to see such practices as violence. By imagining and referring to beatings, confinement, intimidation and insults as ‘discipline’ or ‘punishment’, rather than ‘battery’ or ‘abuse’, the nature of harm is obfuscated.

In contexts where intra-family violence is not explicitly prohibited by law (i.e. criminalized), perpetrators enjoy legal impunity. In contexts where it is prohibited but the laws are not enforced, perpetrators enjoy social impunity. In either situation, such impunity constitutes a failure on the part of the state to exercise its powers and prerogatives to deter, punish and prevent violence against its subjects. It is also a failure of society to reject and condemn the brutalization and intimidation of women at the hands of family members.

As those involved in efforts to eradicate violence from women’s family lives attest, changing social attitudes and official policies that contribute to the problem are arduous tasks. Exposing and criticizing domestic violence calls into question the structures and discourses of familial authority. Seeking means of ameliorating the problem entails challenges and changes to the ways in which such authority is legitimated and enforced. It entails, in short, changes in law and society.

Even in societies with robust legal rights for women, domestic violence is both commonplace and hidden, signalling an enduring difficulty in activating a legal solution. In societies where women’s rights are weak, their vulnerability to violence is compounded by a lack of options to seek protection from the law. And in societies where gender and family relations are derived from religious law, if jurists and officials interpret the law to sanction violence for specific purposes or under certain circumstances, demands for reform can be condemned as heresy or apostasy. In Muslim societies, where family relations are administered in accordance with shari'a, mobilizing support and instituting legal reforms to pro­hibit intra-family violence necessitate an engagement with religious discourse, beliefs and practices.