Violence Against Women and Children
Violence Against Women and Children
• PHYSICAL VIOLENCE
• SEXUAL VIOLENCE
• PSYCHOLOGICAL VIOLENCE
• ECONOMIC VIOLENCE
PHYSICAL VIOLENCE
• refers to acts that include bodily or physical
harm
• is committed through:
▪ threatening/ attempting/ placing/
causing physical harm to the woman or
her child
▪ inflicting or threatening to inflict physical
harm on oneself for the purpose of
controlling her actions or decisions
SEXUAL VIOLENCE
• refers to an act which is sexual in nature, committed against
a woman or her child
• it includes, but is not limited to:
• rape, sexual harassment, acts of lasciviousness
• treating a woman or her child as a sex object
• making demeaning and sexually suggestive remarks
• physically attacking the sexual parts of the victim's body,
▪ forcing her/him to watch obscene publications and indecent shows
▪ forcing the woman or her child to do indecent acts and/ or make indecent
films
PSYCHOLOGICAL
VIOLENCE
• refers to acts or omissions that cause mental or
emotional suffering
• is committed through:
▪ conduct that causes alarm, emotional or
psychological distress to the woman and her
child
▪ intimidation, harassment, stalking, damage to
property, public ridicule or humiliation,
▪ repeated verbal abuse and marital infidelity
PSYCHOLOGICAL
VIOLENCE
▪ allowing the victim to witness the physical,
sexual or psychological abuse of a
member of the family to which the victim
belongs
▪ destroying property, inflicting harm to pets
of the woman
▪ engaging in any form of harassment or
violence
▪ causing mental, emotional anguish to the
woman
▪ unlawful or unwanted deprivation of the right
to custody and/ or visitation of common
children
ECONOMIC VIOLENCE
• refers to acts that make or attempt to make a woman financially
dependent
• is committed through:
▪ threatening/ attempting to deprive the woman custody of
her child, financial support, legal right
▪ withdrawal of financial support, preventing the woman to
engage in legal profession, occupation, business
▪ controlling the woman’s own money, properties, or solely
controlling conjugal or common money or properties
• WHY VAW HAPPENS AND PERSISTS?
• cultural beliefs and traditions have
conditioned people to think that men
and women have different roles:
• men are the leaders, pursuers,
providers and take on dominant roles
in society
• women are nurturers, men’s
companions and supporters, and take
on subordinate roles in society
• perception results in men having more
social privileges than women = gaining for
men the power over women
• with power comes the need to control to
retain that power = VAW is the expression
of men’s need to control women
• many instances of VAW have
been dismissed as having been
caused by the women
themselves = domestic
violence is sometimes blamed
on a “nagging” or “neglectful”
wife
• rape is sometimes attributed to
a raped woman’s “flirtatious”
ways
• some instances of VAW have been dismissed as trivial
▪ a woman accusing her employer of sexual harassment is
believed to have an active and malicious mind which causes her
to misinterpret her employer’s appreciation of her good looks
• there are still outdated laws that reinforce the cultural belief
that men, having the dominant role in society = have more
privileges than women
Articles 333 and 334 of the Revised Penal Code
• penalize a wife who commits adultery, but not a husband who
commits the same adulterous act of having sexual relations
with a woman who is not his wife
• a husband may only be penalized for concubinage, or when he
keeps a mistress in a conjugal dwelling or when he has sexual
intercourse with a woman who is not his wife, under
scandalous circumstances
ONE IN FOUR WOMEN EXPERIENCED
SPOUSAL VIOLENCE