Effects of Community Violence on Women

Mural painted by women in Zone 18, one of the most violent neighbourhoods in Guatemala City April 2018. The murals signify women’s empowerment and freedom from violence. Photo: UN Women/Ryan Brown

In 1969, Johan Galtung introduced the concept of structural violence, which I believe is a much broader perspective of how we perceive community violence against women. It can be defined as the “avoidable impairment of fundamental human needs”, which is, how these multiple invisible layers of violence that the “structure” inflicts upon women of all ages prevent them from achieving the simplest goals in their lives. Community violence can be simply understood by referring to this definition of structural violence, as community violence is in fact one of the biggest pillars of systematic and structural violence passed down to women through ages. So, when we discuss gendered violence, this is a necessary issue to talk about, since even in the 21^st century, community violence is dangerously rampant and present unabashedly through all communities and societies of men and women that ever exist.

Most researches and modules on violence against women and its consequences focus on the visible, that is physical consequences and ones perpetrated in the domestic sphere. It is important to start discussing violence from the domestic sphere itself since it is the most vulnerable place a woman resides in. The domestic sphere can include home, involving familial relations like fathers, sons, brothers, husbands, or even intimate partners. This domestic form of violence in marriage and relationships can be seen as a consequence of societal norms imposed by the communities. The institution of marriage is considered as the only legitimate structure by the society and hence, hegemony and violence in such spheres is consequently normalized by the same society that creates it. This is the first instance where we can understand how communities are responsible in perpetrating violence against women, even in their domestic spaces.

Community violence can be sensed by the presence of an obnoxious environment in the neighbourhood. A person perpetrating community violence against a woman is usually outside the domestic household, unlike the perpetrators of domestic violence who are usually family. It is however important to notice that women and children are mostly on the receiving end of domestic violence, but in community violence, it is both the men and women who lie on the receiving end. Many may question the accountability of community violence for women’s well-being, or even presence of community violence. The answer to these is it absolutely exists in multiple forms like promotion of rape culture, defending a perpetrator, passing interpersonal violent acts as normal, conducting frequent hate crimes and violent acts to counter violence itself. It is usually a pattern found that someone who is aggressive outside the household, is also aggressive inside it. A community that harbours violent men, shall also defend them when they are violent within their household to their wife, mother, daughter, sister, girlfriend or other female family members.

To understand community violence, it is important to understand the socio-cultural and political framework of the community. Violence persists through almost every community, but in different degrees. The political setting of a community also reaches our homes and influences our own selves as well as our families. Everyone is embedded in a community and hence shall act with respect to it. For example, political and cultural understanding of a community shall make them impose their own kind of gender norms and stereotypes on young girls and boys. The young children are raised with respect to these societal norms, which may eventually lead into gendered discrimination and violence. Gender norms can harbour rigid stereotypes and develop violent tendencies in children from a very young age. An obnoxious communal environment can deeply root hatred and irritability in young children, which develop into violence and abuse with age. A cultural spill over reaches our homes and we legitimize every violent act as an act of care, love or morality.

A violent community usually resolves violence with violence, and also punishes its women through violence if they break moral codes set by the them. In a research paper called Structural Violence on Women: An Impediment to Women Empowerment, it is said that “The ethics, the values, the morals, and the culture of society have been framed in such a way or we can say structured in such a way so as to promote exploitation of this segment”. It further goes on to say that the consequences of such violence are both amply mental and physical. The women are denied their basic fundamental rights and their mental health is ruined by patriarchal impositions. The effect on their physical and reproductive health is less talked of. Physical health effects include unwanted pregnancy, injuries from beatings, miscarriage, STDs, low-performance rates. These are usually passed off as natural disasters. Mental health effects include severe trauma, depressions, anxiety, fear, dysfunction, neurosis. The article further mentions that these structural and systematic forms of violence are mostly as a result of “outdated and repressive governance, an inefficient legal justice system, a weak rule of law, and socio-political structures that are heavily male-centric.” Not only these, communities are largely responsible for extreme consequences like rape, child marriage, female infanticide. Even lighter layers of abuse include eve-teasing, threatening, stalking, cyber bullying, etc, especially against young girls, which eventually lead to extreme cases. Communities that harbour these perpetrators are always responsible in promoting culture of violence.

Community violence poses a permanent threat to a woman’s safety, her mental and physical well-being. Although it is virtually visible, as discussed in Structural Violence on Women: An Impediment to Women Empowerment, its problematic effects operate “continuously not just sporadically.” A woman’s dire need of equality in a community is not the ultimate aim, since even an equal woman is a victim of violence in some form, at some point in her life. To change this systematic structure of violence and improve lives of women, it is important to understand these underlying power dynamics that operate within our society. It is only by acceptance of the wrong in the first place that we can begin to break free from the culture of silence.