Understanding Gender-Based Violence: A Global Perspective

Every day, women and girls around the world face a harsh reality that knows no borders or boundaries. From homes and workplaces to public spaces and digital platforms, violence rooted in gender continues to undermine fundamental human rights. Gender-based violence affects approximately one in three women globally, making it one of the most widespread human rights violations worldwide. Understanding what gender-based violence is, how societies have fought against it, and why stronger policies are needed remains crucial for creating a safer world for everyone.

What is gender-based violence? 🔗

Gender-based violence refers to harmful acts directed at individuals because of their gender. The United Nations defines violence against women as any act that results in physical, sexual, or mental harm or suffering, including threats, coercion, or arbitrary deprivation of liberty. While anyone can experience gender-based violence, women and girls are disproportionately affected.

Forms of gender-based violence 🔗

Gender-based violence takes many forms across different settings. Physical violence includes acts like hitting, slapping, or any form of bodily harm. Sexual violence encompasses rape, sexual assault, and any sexual act obtained through coercion regardless of the relationship between perpetrator and victim. Psychological violence involves emotional abuse, threats, intimidation, and controlling behaviors that harm mental wellbeing. Economic violence occurs when someone controls another person’s ability to acquire or use economic resources.

Specific manifestations include intimate partner violence, child marriage, female genital mutilation, sexual harassment, stalking, and human trafficking. In recent years, technology-facilitated gender-based violence has emerged as a growing concern, with 59.9 percent of women with internet access experiencing some form of online violence.

Who is affected? 🔗

Gender-based violence cuts across all social, economic, and national boundaries. However, certain groups face heightened vulnerability. Women in crisis settings, those with disabilities, indigenous women, LGBTQI+ individuals, and women from marginalized racial and ethnic groups experience compounded risks due to intersecting forms of discrimination.

The statistics are sobering. Almost one in four adolescent girls aged 15 to 19 who have been in a relationship have experienced physical or sexual violence from a partner. Every ten minutes, a woman or girl is killed by an intimate partner or family member. These numbers represent real lives cut short and countless others living in fear.

How movements fought against gender-based violence 🔗

The fight against gender-based violence has deep historical roots in feminist activism and social movements that refused to accept violence as a private matter.

Early feminist organizing 🔗

The modern movement against domestic violence emerged in the early 1970s, when feminist activists and survivors began establishing the first shelters and support services. In the United States, Women’s Advocates in Minnesota became the first shelter in 1972. These pioneers used the rallying cry “we will not be beaten” to bring domestic violence out of the shadows and into public consciousness.

The movement gained momentum as activists challenged the notion that violence within families was a private issue beyond government concern. They established hotlines, crisis centers, and advocacy networks that provided immediate support while pushing for systemic change.

Global recognition and UN action 🔗

The international community’s formal recognition of gender-based violence as a human rights issue came gradually through several landmark moments. The 1993 Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women was the first international instrument explicitly addressing the issue, providing a framework for national and international action.

The 1993 UN World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna marked the first time women’s rights were explicitly recognized as human rights. This recognition set the stage for the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, where 189 countries adopted the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.

The Beijing Platform for Action identified violence against women as one of twelve critical areas requiring urgent attention. It called for comprehensive measures including legal reforms, survivor services, prevention programs, and systematic data collection. This landmark agreement transformed how governments and organizations worldwide approach gender-based violence.

Grassroots movements and regional contributions 🔗

Beyond international conferences, grassroots movements have driven significant change. Latin American feminists made important contributions to understanding gender-based violence. During their first regional meeting in Bogotá, Colombia, they declared November 25 as a Day to End Violence Against Women, honoring the Mirabal sisters who were assassinated for their political activism in the Dominican Republic in 1960.

In recent years, movements like Chile’s “Un Violador en tu Camino” (A Rapist in Your Path) have spread globally, shifting blame from survivors to perpetrators and state actors who fail to protect women. Such activism demonstrates how local movements can catalyze international awareness and action.

Current policies and the need for stronger protections 🔗

While significant progress has been made in establishing legal frameworks, substantial gaps remain between policy and protection.

Legislative progress since Beijing 🔗

In 1994, only around 12 countries had legal sanctions against domestic violence. Today, UN Women’s Global Database lists 1,583 legislative measures across 193 countries, including 354 specifically targeting domestic violence. Countries with domestic violence laws report intimate partner violence prevalence rates of 9.5 percent compared to 16.1 percent in countries without such legislation.

Major legislative milestones include the Violence Against Women Act in the United States, first passed in 1994 and reauthorized multiple times, which provides funding for services, training for law enforcement, and legal protections for survivors. In Europe, the EU adopted Directive 2024/1385 in May 2024, establishing the first EU-wide law to combat violence against women and domestic violence.

Implementation challenges 🔗

Laws alone cannot eliminate gender-based violence. According to the World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law 2024 findings, countries have established less than 40 percent of the frameworks necessary for effective implementation of laws addressing child marriage, sexual harassment, domestic violence, and femicide.

Effective implementation requires comprehensive mechanisms including specialized services for survivors, training for judicial and police personnel, dedicated budgets, and coordinated multisectoral approaches. Many countries lack adequate funding, trained personnel, or political will to enforce existing laws consistently.

Gaps in protection and services 🔗

Survivors need access to immediate safety, healthcare, legal support, and long-term assistance to rebuild their lives. However, many countries lack comprehensive support systems. Shelters may be scarce or inaccessible, legal aid unavailable, and healthcare providers untrained in trauma-informed care.

Cultural barriers compound these gaps. In some contexts, harmful social norms excuse violence or shame survivors who seek help. Dominant gender norms often perpetuate systemic violence and act as barriers to legal redress, meaning that laws alone cannot achieve behavior change without addressing underlying attitudes.

Emerging challenges 🔗

New forms of violence require updated responses. Technology-facilitated gender-based violence, including cyberstalking, non-consensual sharing of intimate images, and online harassment, affects millions of women and girls. Climate change and humanitarian crises increase vulnerability to gender-based violence as protective systems break down and gender inequalities intensify.

The path forward 🔗

Ending gender-based violence requires sustained commitment on multiple fronts. Governments must not only pass comprehensive laws but also allocate sufficient resources for implementation and enforcement. This includes funding for survivor services, training for justice system actors, and prevention programs that address root causes like gender inequality and harmful norms.

Comprehensive national action plans, like the U.S. National Plan to End Gender-Based Violence released in 2023, provide frameworks for coordinated government-wide approaches. Such plans recognize that ending violence requires addressing economic security, housing access, healthcare, education, and social norms simultaneously.

Critically, the presence of strong and autonomous feminist movements is the most critical factor in driving change. Yet in 2022, countries spent less than one percent of development aid on addressing gender-based violence, with only a fraction reaching women’s organizations doing frontline work.

What do you think? How can your community better support survivors of gender-based violence? What role can individuals play in challenging harmful norms that perpetuate violence?

References

1. https://www.unfpa.org/gender-based-violence
2. https://www.who.int/health-topics/violence-against-women
3. https://www.unhcr.org/what-we-do/protect-human-rights/protection/gender-based-violence
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5. https://www.rescue.org/article/what-gender-based-violence-and-how-do-we-prevent-it
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