Violence against women.

This essay opens its discussion of violence against women by referring to the 1994 television broadcast of a 10-year-old Egyptian girl undergoing female genital mutilation (FGM) without benefit of infection control measures or anesthesia at the hands of a local barber. After presenting a brief description of FGM, its various justifications, and its impacts on its victims, the official Egyptian policy is described as ambiguous, and the broadcast is shown to have caused influential religious leaders and medical personnel to defend FGM and, thus, led to postponement of a bill to outlaw FGM. The next section of the essay shows that Egypt's response to FGM reflects the international debate on all forms of violence against women emerging from and reinforcing the social relationships that give men power over women. These forms of violence include domestic violence in almost all societies; the dowry-related, bride-burning homicides that claim 5000-12,000 lives each year in India; son preference that leads to abortion of female fetuses and female infanticide; and crimes such as rape, sexual abuse, and forced prostitution. The essay continues with a look at the costs of violence hidden in the damage to women that increases health care costs substantially and reduces economic productivity. Violence towards women, which occurs throughout the world and can prevent women from participating in public life or from controlling their fertility, is a male tool to inhibit women from gaining autonomy outside the home. The essay concludes that victims of violence are beginning to break the silence that surrounded these deeds and are seeking legislative protection. Laws may not result in real-life changes, but the movement to eliminate FGM may prove to be the first success in women's efforts to achieve human rights. An example is the important precedent being set in the US by a woman seeking asylum to avoid facing an arranged marriage and FGM in her native Togo.