Violence against women is a violation of women's human rights and occurs across all political, economic, cultural and social divides. It causes physical and psychological damage to women and children. It is a grave social problem that threatens the safety, equality and bodily integrity of every woman.

Violence against women in the home can range from hitting, spitting, stabbing, blows to the head, being kicked while pregnant, being thrown down stairs and in some cases can end in death. We cannot look at violence against women as solely a matter of physical assault. Many women suffer years of mental and verbal abuse, resulting in long term psychological damage.

As a client of Women's Aid once said "you don't have to be beaten to be battered".

An effective strategy to deal with domestic violence needs to take account of many social and cultural factors. Assumptions are made about the relationship of domestic violence to alcohol abuse, to mental illness, to poverty, unemployment and social class. If we accept these factors as the "cause" - ignoring the social history of marriage, the family, women's inequality and the laws which have regulated them, we will look in vain for solutions.

Violence against women cannot be addressed in isolation from the subordinate position of women at a societal and domestic level. Current laws and government policy are beginning to recognise that women who are subjected to violence within the home are entitled to the full protection of the law. Likewise children's rights are also beginning to be safeguarded. It was not always so.

Social Attitudes: The Need for Change

Women's Aid believes we must begin to look at our social attitudes to "battered women" rather than treating domestic violence as an individual problem. The social stigma and silence that has historically surrounded the physical, sexual and mental abuse of women is an effective tool in trapping women in a violent relationship. It blames the woman for what has happened and removes the responsibility for the crime from the perpetrator. In other words her would not have hit/abused her if "she had behaved differently".

At one level we "disapprove" of the idea of violence within the family, but "disapproval" is far removed from condemnation and the imposition of social and criminal sanctions on the man for his behaviour, or offering the woman options to leave. In 1996 in Ireland, there is still an appalling lack of support services for women in abusive relationships.

In the Middle Ages, community members would gather their pots and pans and march, reciting homespun and barbed rhymes to the house in which a social offender lived. There they would clang and sing out their disapproval for some time and then march on. This practise was called "Charivari" and it is believed to have been used to stem "excessive" wife beaters as moderate wife beating was to a large extent acceptable during those centuries.

Nowadays, who in the community clearly says to the violent male "this behaviour is unacceptable"? The prevention of violence against women and children is not simply a family matter but the responsibility of all.

What can we do? We can listen, believe the woman, stop condemning her, support her to live a life free of abuse and fear. Crimes of violence in the home must be looked at in the context of our social attitudes rather than solely as an individual problem.

After all the abusive man could marry your sister, friend, niece or even your daughter.

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