Women, Families and Violence: Changing Lives #dayoffamilies #maritalrape ##womensrightswithinfamilies

There can be no justification for violence against women and children! All family members must be protected against domestic and sexual violence. #DayOfFamilies

What do we mean by “women’s rights within families”? Why are families important to women’s rights?

Women’s rights to safety, resources and opportunities and their voice and agency can be either realized or violated through gender power dynamics within families. These rights violations can be a matter of life and death: In 2012, 47 per cent of all women who were victims of homicide were killed by an intimate partner or family member (compared to 6 per cent of male homicide victims).
Women’s equal right to resources and assets, which is a critical component of sustainable development, can be compromised when they are pressured by family members to renounce their share of inheritance, or when they are prevented from seeking paid work. In many countries women’s main avenue for accessing land is through the family, so it matters greatly how laws and social practices shape intra-family resource distribution.
The real risk to women and girls, and to their families, comes when States turn a blind eye to the violence they experience in the name of ‘privacy’, or when the family choices they make are stigmatized because they do not conform to the norm, and when they are denied equal rights to resources and opportunities in the context of economic and environmental crises, and when their families are torn apart through forced migrations and deportations.


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