Women's Rights & Issues
Related: About this forum'We Will Not Be Beaten': Thoughts on the 20th Anniversary of the Violence Against Women Act
'We Will Not Be Beaten': Thoughts on the 20th Anniversary of the Violence Against Women Act
by
Ruth Rosen
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Until the womens movement organized in the late 1960s and early 1970s, most Americans considered wife beating a custom. The police ignored what went on behind closed doors and women hid their bruises beneath layers of make-up. Like rape or abortion, wife beating was viewed as a private and shameful act which few women discussed. Many battered victims, moreover, felt they deserved to be beaten - because they acted too uppity, didnt get dinner on the table on time, or couldnt silence their childrens shouts and screams.
Men slugged women with impunity until feminist activists renamed wife beating as domestic violence, and described its victims as battered women. Such women needed refuge, and activists created a network of shelters for women who tried to escape, often with their children, the violence threatened by their
partners. Throughout the 1970s, feminists sought to teach women that they had the right to be free of violence. We will not be beaten became the slogan of the movement against domestic violence. Books and pamphlets argued that violence violated womens rights. But it wasnt until 1994, during the Presidency of Bill Clinton, that Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act, legislation that allocated funds to investigate crimes against women, created shelters for battered women, provided legal aid, and protected victims evicted from their homes because of domestic violence.
Feminists considered VAWA landmark legislation. It gave the federal government the authority to punish domestic violence. Studies showed that the law had some positive impact by creating refuges and forcing the judicial system to deal with domestic violence. But as daily newspapers reported, it didnt stop violence against women in private or in public - at home, at universities, on streets and in parks.
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The idea that violence against women was a violation of their human rights began gaining new legitimacy - within the US and around the world. At the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights, held in Vienna, women from every continent testified about the distinct forms of violence they experienced at home. The Conference issued a Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women, which the UN General Assembly adopted. Just six years later, the UN designated November 25th as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women-- a day to raise the worlds consciousness about violence against women. These resolutions were viewed as complementary to the UNs Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
In 1995, Hillary Rodham Clinton famously declared, at the Beijing UN World Conference on Women, If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are womens rights and womens rights are human rights once and for all. Let us not forget that among those rights are the right to speak freely - and the right to be heard.
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http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/09/09/we-will-not-be-beaten-thoughts-20th-anniversary-violence-against-women-act