The home most common place for abuse

As women around the world prepare to mark International Women's Day, a survey conducted in South Africa has shown that the home is the most common place for abuse against women. The survey, published by the Institute for Security Studies, found that half the women who experienced economic, emotional and physical abuse said the perpetrator was a spouse or partner. The study, entitled Violence Against Women, found that 80 percent of the 1,000 survivors of abuse interviewed had experienced emotional abuse, 76 percent physical abuse, 63 percent sexual and 62 percent economic abuse. Women between the ages of 18 to 30 years were more likely than older women to have experienced abuse, but women between 31 and 50 were most vulnerable to economic abuse. The women interviewed tended to define abuse in terms of physical harm. The report noted that women who had been sexually abused by their partners often did not identify this as a form of abuse. Although women saw forced sexual intercourse as rape, they often doubted whether this could be considered a crime within a marriage. If women do not realise that the violence perpetrated against them is problematic, they are unlikely to seek help when it occurs, the survey said. The most common form of economic abuse, the researchers found, was having money taken out of a woman's purse without her consent. This was followed by being prevented from knowing about, or not having access to, the family income. Women also reported being forced to become the sole breadwinner for the household. Women in rural areas reported money being withheld and then being required to perform "duties" before the money was released. This could also be accompanied by threats of eviction from the home. The type of emotional abuse experienced most often was being threatened with harm and being humiliated in public. Other types included threatening harm to children, or limitations placed on a woman's freedom of movement. Social humiliation was identified by the women as the worst type of abuse because it undermined her self-image, isolated her from others and prevented her from seeking alternative feedback on her experience. This encouraged women to blame themselves for the abuse, the survey found. Women experienced a wide range of physical abuse - the most common being slapped or hit, pushed, shoved, punched, having their arm twisted or being kicked. Some were threatened or attacked with a gun, knife or blade. As with emotional abuse, survivors of physical abuse were most likely to have experienced the violence in the company of others. "It is surprising that so many survivors reported the presence of other people at the time that the worst incident of physical abuse was perpetrated and this raised the question of how those present reacted and whether they took any action," the researchers noted. A concern was that many of those present were children. Sexual abuse ranged from being forced to have sex to having their private parts touched, being forced to behave in a sexual manner for money, being forced to touch the abuser's private parts and being forced to do what was seen on videos and in books. The study found that the survivors were most likely to have experienced sexual abuse in their own home, followed by the abuser's home, challenging the notion that sexual abuse occurs mostly in dark alleys at the hands of strangers. In contrast to other types of abuse, survivors of sexual violence were generally alone with the abuser at the time the abuse occurred, but there was a startling percentage of women who were in the company of others at the time of the sexual assault. Of those who were in company, nearly half of the women in urban areas and 44 percent of those in rural areas experienced sexual abuse in the presence of children. The main concern for survivors of sexual abuse was contracting a sexually transmitted disease or HIV/AIDS. Nineteen percent of survivors contracted an STD, 15 percent became pregnant, and 11 percent had a child as a result of the most serious incident of sexual abuse. To mark International Women's Day, Mandisa Kalako-Williams, president of the South African Red Cross Society released a statement saying: "As the world celebrates International Woman’s Day we are dismayed at the escalating rate of atrocities that women are facing, ie the increased incidence of rape, domestic violence and abuse, the effects of conflict and war, as well as the impact of HIV/AIDS on women." Kalako-Williams said that as long as gender stereotyping and discrimination limited the development of girls and women, preventing them from fully participating in society, they would remain vulnerable. More details of the survey