By Mandy Kanyemba
They say spare the rod and spoil the child not spare the rod and spoil the woman. I was surprised that in this era there are men who still believe in installing discipline to a woman specifically their spouses by beating them.
Considering the public and open Gender awareness campaigns done and continually being done by several different groups in order to stop gender based violence it becomes difficult to believe that there are hard headed men who turn a deaf ear to such campaigns.
I was equally disturbed by this beating up of women issue because I actually overhead two men boasting in the vehicle which I was traveling in on my way to Harare. They were talking on top of their voices as if they were talking sense yet they were exposing their shallow thoughts on beating up a woman as a way of teaching her lesson.
To my surprise one of the men was old enough to be a grandfather and the other one was young and seemed to be a single guy in his mid twenties.
The third man was against the whole idea at first because he was actually telling the two that a woman is special and precious, no matter how much she might have done wrong, it is wise to correct her in love not through violence.
Imagine the picture of the argument, two against one.
The older man instead of being a mentor became the first to say a woman must be beaten up so that she gets to know that a man is the head of the house therefore if anything goes wrong she must be disciplined by open and clenched fists.
I just imagined that it means this elderly man beats up his wife in order to prove a point at his age?
Worse the young guy supported the old man giving a reason that mukadzi anenge asina kunyatsorairwa saka ndinenge ndakuraira inini wacho ndakaroora.
I looked at the young man and secretly wished that if only I knew this guy’s girlfriend (that is if he had one) I could at least warn her to watch out for what she was getting herself into.
The third man who was against the whole idea of beating ended up keeping quiet and excluded himself from the discussion because I believe he meant what he had said from the onset that women are special and precious.
Believe me I looked at the two men full of anger and I even wished I could get them arrested because they are contributing to domestic violence in the society. But beating up a woman, someone you love, someone you chose to spend the rest of your life with. Haaa! men! I don’t believe this.
What do you gain by beating up your woman? Do you really feel good and satisfied when you look at her bruised, swollen or even in tears?
Not only married men do this, even boyfriends beat up their girlfriends.
I wonder who gives guys the permission to beat up their girlfriends because you haven’t paid dowry so who are you to beat up someone’s daughter. If you are that kind of a guy who beats up his girlfriend, you ought to be ashamed of yourself because you are somehow proving to be a coward.
Why fight with a woman?
Are you taking advantage of her physical statue?
If there are men who think that they are tough enough by beating up women, why not try to venture into wrestling since it’s a sporting activity and fight with other men until they feel they have had enough of it because that’s the only official activity that allows one to exhaust all their fighting power and strength.
I applaud a local musician, Sniper, there is a song which he sang “musikana harohwi”if im not mistaken, which he starts by saying Sniper gweta rinomirira mababie (Sniper the ladies advocate/lawyer).
As I listened to it I discovered that he is actually advocating against gender based violence because in that particular song he refers to men that no matter how much a lady may hurt or anger you, she must not be beaten, but at least show her love, this part is the chorus of the song.
I am sure you have heard it before, Its actually a sing along tune, the good part is that as you sing along you will be getting the message too and I am happy that it is a man who is actually singing against the beating up of women in the society.
He is spreading the message to his fellow male counterparts.
After I heard this disturbing conversation during my journey, I then asked myself the reason why and what really make men beat up women. Is because the woman will have lied to her spouse/boyfriend?
Will she have refused to do something which she has been instructed to by her spouse/boyfriend? Maybe she will have cooked a below standard meal or might have overspent the family budget, these are some of the ideas which came into my mind.
But do you know that beating up a woman has physiological, spiritual and emotional effects like destroying a woman’s confidence within herself resulting to low self esteem, creating hatred and fear towards you the perpetrator of violence, pain and trauma?
With deeper and further research I also discovered that the beating up of women is regarded as Gender Based Violence. (Gender-based violence’ (GBV) is still an emerging and developing term.
Originally it was used mostly to replace the term ‘(male) violence against women’, because the word woman refers to both individuals of the female sex and to feminine gender roles in society.)
Gender-based violence both reflects and reinforces inequities between men and women and compromises the health, dignity, security and autonomy of its victims.
It encompasses a wide range of human rights violations, including sexual abuse of children, rape, domestic violence, sexual assault and harassment, trafficking of women and girls and several harmful traditional practices.
Any one of these abuses can leave deep psychological scars, damage the health of women and girls in general, including their reproductive and sexual health, and in some instances, results in death.Violence against women has been called “the most pervasive yet least recognized human rights abuse in the world.”
Accordingly, the Vienna Human Rights Conference and the Fourth World Conference on Women gave priority to this issue, which jeopardizes women’s lives, bodies, psychological integrity and freedom. Violence may have profound effects – direct and indirect – on a woman’s reproductive health, including:
• Unwanted pregnancies and restricted access to family planning information and contraceptives
• Unsafe abortion or injuries sustained during a legal abortion after an unwanted pregnancy
• Complications from frequent, high-risk pregnancies and lack of follow-up care
• Sexually transmitted infections, including HIV
• Persistent gynaecological problems
• Psychological problems
Most domestic violence involves male anger directed against their women partners. This gender difference appears to be rooted in the way boys and men are socialized — biological factors do not seem to account for the dramatic differences in behaviour in this regard between men and women.
Cross-cultural studies of wife abuse have found that nearly a fifth of peasant and small-scale societies are essentially free of family violence. The existence of such cultures proves that male violence against women is not the inevitable result of male biology or sexuality, but more a matter of how society views masculinity.
What I like about the law of Zimbabwe is that there is justice on violence against females. If a woman or a girl becomes a victim of Gender Based Violence they have the right to report the perpetrator to the Police because GBV is a serious offence.
Women and girls don’t suffer in silence whilst you are a victim but go and expose your perpetrator to the Police and the law will take it course.
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