Shining the Light on Women’s Issues and People Empowerment

People empowerment may sound like a buzzword, but it has a deep and profound meaning to people who are living in difficult circumstances. It involves creating and promoting policies and actions that empower people to help themselves and move themselves out of danger and disadvantage and move into safer, more fulfilling lives. People empowerment can be the key to addressing many difficult women’s issues and societal problems. By promoting policies and actions that empower women and other disadvantaged people, society engages the most important and potent allies for women and families – the women and families who most need help.

Shining the Light

The first step to solving a problem is recognizing its existence. For generations, society ignored the reality of domestic violence and accepted its existence. In some cultures, domestic violence is still an accepted part of the way the world works. In those societies, women are still viewed as property, belonging to their fathers in their youth and their husbands after they are married. Even in so-called enlightened Western cultures, women are not accorded the same rights and respect as men and lingering attitudes about a “man’s castle” and a “woman’s place” empower abusers to continue their violence rather than empowering women to escape from it. Until 1994, there were still places in the United States where a woman could not charge her husband with sexual assault. That means that as few as 20 years ago, it was still legal for a man to rape his wife. Despite that, there’s a commonly held assumption that we’ve taken on the specter of domestic abuse and are eliminating it.

In fact, crime records show that nothing could be further from the truth. Statistics show that domestic violence is one of the leading causes of death among women ages 15 to 44. One in three women report that they have experienced violence at the hands of a current or former boyfriend or spouse. One in four women of college age report that they have been subjected to intimate partner violence.

Despite this, women who are involved in relationships with abusive partners believe that their situation is unusual. They may feel that they are at fault, or that they can control the situation and their partner’s violence. They are also subjected to judgment – much of it well-meaning – about their self-esteem issues and their weaknesses. Those judgments often make it difficult for a woman to admit that there is a problem in their relationship. She knows that the moment she admits to someone outside the relationship that there is a problem with violence, the world’s view of her will change. She will no longer be a strong, adult woman living through a difficult situation. Instead, she will be a weak victim who stays in a dangerous relationship because of low self-esteem. She will be lectured, pitied and, in many cases, avoided by the people she loves and trusts.

The people empowerment route to dealing with domestic violence, and with other women’s issues such as illegal adoption and human trafficking, is to shine a light on it – not just on the horror of it, but on the strength and dignity of the women who survive it, one day at a time.