Daily Times

November 25 to December 10 was marked as 16 days of activism against gender-based violence with this year’s theme being ‘From peace in the home to peace in the world’. This year marks the 24th year of the campaign, initiated in 1991 and coordinated by the Centre for Women’s Global Leadership.

The UN metastasised the initiative and launched its own campaign called UNiTE to End Violence against Women (VAW) by inviting ‘you’ to ‘Orange the World’. It is a colourful feel-good awareness campaign that gives the illusion of meaningful impact by simply sporting an orange garment and trending a hashtag. In Afghanistan, expats and civil society posed in photo-ops wearing orange scarves in front of their highly maintained and largely secluded gardens. The ubiquity of social media contends people to pride themselves in orange and think they have done their part.

Perhaps they raise awareness but what kind of awareness and at what cost? There is nothing orange about the banality of evil that sentimentalises gender-based violence. VAW is too important a matter to be left to be branded into another wristband cause or worse: a Kony 2012 campaign. Instead of handling such a significant epidemic at such a crucial time to ‘slacktivism’, we must have a real conversation about VAW and the ever-encompassing system of patriarchy.

A conversation about VAW must begin by discussing the notion of domination that is ingrained in every society and made possible by the logic of subjugation of men over women. The key problem with VAW is its pervasiveness among women and girls across cultures, classes and ethnicities.

The prevalence of VAW all around the world is simply staggering and yet it is largely perceived as a private matter. Hence, it is a crime of secondary severity. This results in callous handling by authorities and victim blaming in the few incidences that are actually reported. According to the UN, nearly 35 percent of women worldwide have experienced intimate partner violence. Can a campaign to orange the world address the culture of impunity for those who commit VAW or only further enable a conspiracy of silence?

We must move on from gender constructed arbitrary roles for men and women to an understanding of the relationship between the different conditions and obstacles faced by women. Gender prescribed roles are a form of VAW. We are playing certain prescribed gender roles, as if we are actors in a social drama. While it can differ individually, culturally and nationally, it exists nonetheless in some form or another everywhere. These gender-based roles become inscribed in the cultural narrative and thus are tolerated.

Gendered division of labour exists around the world. All around the world, the domestic, sexual division of labour has not changed significantly. Women still comprise the majority of the informal sector and their work at home is not accounted for in conventional socio-economic structures. The role assigned to women must be considered a global ‘epidemic’. It must be understood culturally, global patterns must be tracked and a gender specific interpretation must be provided.

The violent conflicts of today are transforming into wars. In the modern landscape of warfare, women are often regarded as mere strategies of war. As an Afghan whose devastated country is entering the fourth decade of protracted conflict, I can see that war is a gendered activity. Although many Afghans come from a strong matrilineal and matrilocal family structures, they are dominated by the universal patriarchal structure.

Women have multiple roles in war and these aspects are multifaceted. The undeniable fact is that war costs women differently than it does men. Very often, women play narrow identity roles. That role is ultimately of victims and there is empirical evidence on how predominately men are perpetrators in conflict. But it is necessary to not consider women just as victims as it takes away their agency. In some cases, women are found to be perpetrators in the conflict, albeit that is an anomaly.

A particularly brutal element that is found at the intersection of gender and conflict is sexual violence. Sexual assault is the cornerstone of patriarchy and it is hyper-intensified in conflict whether in public or private. In public, a woman’s body becomes a theatre of war, a terrain of war where sexual assault, slavery, rape and abduction become not symptomatic of war but a systematic strategy of war. The silence and the shame of sexual violence are very intense for women who become ostracised for having ‘submitted’ themselves to enemy males. It is, however, predominantly in the domestic sphere that women are subjected to sexual violence at an alarmingly high rate in the midst of war.

Just as it is mainly men who wage wars, it is also men who negotiate peace. The peace process and the subsequent reconstruction very often neglect the role of women in a narrative that marginalises them into voiceless victims. The post-conflict scenario is conceptualised through the patriarchal paradigm as it only refers to the termination of ‘official’ war that is conducted by men. This formal ceasefire does not account that often in post-conflict reconstruction; women still endure rampant insecurity. The return to normalcy tolerates high levels of violence against women, for, as long as men formally put down their weapon and do not kill each other, the conflict is over.

The central obstacle is how institutions such as the courts and social services address VAW, and the way in which emergency shelters for women operate is an example of how institutions enable VAW. Why is it that if a woman is a victim of abuse by her partner, the woman is forced to seek an emergency shelter and leave home? Why put the onus on the victim to seek shelter? Hence, it is no coincidence that despite the fact that 50 percent of women experience some form of sexual or physical abuse, less than 10 percent of sexual assaults are reported to the police.

This year, the focus of the VAW awareness campaign has been the relationship between militarism and the right to education. Militarism being the cornerstone of patriarchy and power, and its intersection with conflict and gender is a timely theme. The role of power is at the epicentre of militarism. Military thrives on hegemonic masculinity. Women are to serve their country not by becoming soldiers but by keeping their purity, which is the honour of their men. This is most evident in how the mother is symbolised before and in the midst of war.

There is an urgent need to have an understanding of VAW globally, an awareness that goes beyond a 16-day orange campaign comprising of celebrities, bracelets, scarves and viral social ads. We must do away with the essentialist argument that sees gender roles as inescapable and shows that it is gender construct rather than anatomical or psychological differences that have resulted in the formation of strict gender norms, and ultimately the global subjugation of women. It is absolutely critical to mainstream experience and the expertise of women into the reconstruction efforts. This point is a poignant necessity in the war-ravaged nation of Afghanistan. A post-conflict reconstruction effort with a return to normalcy must not expect women to relinquish gains made and jeopardise the gender inclusive future.

It is significant to incorporate a gender analysis into our worldview instead of feeling good about an orange event. A conversation that illuminates the oft-neglected national and international structures of power and institutions that breed subtle, systematic gender based socio-economic injustice.

The writer tweets @ndrshb