Violence against women: Twenty years of developments to combat violence against women 2014, para. 61
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- Violence against women is a systemic, widespread and pervasive human rights violation, experienced largely by women because they are women. The concept of gender neutrality is framed in a way that understands violence as a universal threat to which all are potentially vulnerable, and from which all deserve protection. This suggests that male victims of violence require, and deserve, comparable resources to those afforded to female victims, thereby ignoring the reality that violence against men does not occur as a result of pervasive inequality and discrimination, and also that it is neither systemic nor pandemic in the way that violence against women undisputably is. The shift to neutrality favours a more pragmatic and politically palatable understanding of gender, that is, as simply a euphemism for "men and women", rather than as a system of domination of men over women. Violence against women cannot be analysed on a case-by-case basis in isolation of the individual, institutional and structural factors that govern and shape the lives of women. Such factors demand gender-specific approaches to ensure an equality of outcomes for women. Attempts to combine or synthesize all forms of violence into a "gender neutral" framework, tend to result in a depoliticized or diluted discourse, which abandons the transformative agenda. A different set of normative and practical measures is required to respond to and prevent violence against women and, equally importantly, to achieve the international law obligation of substantive equality, as opposed to formal equality.
- Legal status
- Non-negotiated soft law
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Means of adoption
- N.A.
- Topic(s)
- Equality & Inclusion
- Gender
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Violence
- Person(s) affected
- Men
- Women
- Year
- 2014
- Paragraph type
- Other
- Paragraph number
- 61
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