This course focuses on women’s health and human rights issues from infancy through old age, including information about positive interventions relating to those issues. Learners are encouraged to interact with each other through interactive discussions. It is important to us that this course be available to all learners. We encourage you to apply for Coursera's financial aid (see link to left) if the cost of the course certificate is difficult for you to afford. Please note that you may view all materials in this course, and participate in it, without purchasing a certificate. The course was co-created by Consulting Professor Anne Firth Murray and Kevin Hsu. Anne Firth Murray is the Content Director of the course; Kevin Hsu is the Design Director of the course.
From Fear to Freedom
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Del curso dictado por Stanford University
International Women's Health and Human Rights
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Conoce a los instructores
Anne Firth Murray
The main resource,
that I ask you to watch, is a video from the Women's Learning Partnership.
On violence against women entitled From Fear to Freedom.
It provides an informative overview of the problems of violence against women
worldwide.
>> [FOREIGN] >> I could not sleep.
>> Marrying a seven-year-old girl.
>> I did not want this man to touch me.
>> Harassment, street harassment, it's a gateway.
>> You're walking on the street and some person hollers at you.
>> Words can hurt, it's a little scary, intimidating.
[NOISE] >> Women of all ages are enduring brutal,
physical, and sexual abuse in their own homes.
>> In your county alone last year, police answered about 25,000 calls,
all pertaining to domestic violence.
>> Violence against women and girls is on the rise.
>> Shocked and raped a 15-year-old girl.
>> How many millions of women are sold into sexual slavery around the world?
>> Chancey Hussein was on her way to school when a man threw acid in her face.
>> Police say she was repeatedly raped and beaten for two and a half hours.
>> Women are killed by their own relatives for the sake of honor.
[MUSIC]
>> Worldwide at least one in three women are victims of violence in their homes,
in their communities, in their workplaces.
The most pervasive human rights violation on earth.
Violence against women is present in every culture, every religion,
every class, every ethnicity.
The perpetrators are often family members or someone the victims know.
And rarely are they ever prosecuted.
Protected by deeply entrenched cultural traditions,
violence against women is rampant.
Insulated by the silence and complicity of local communities,
the states and the legal systems that govern them.
But in every corner of the globe women are joining forces and
speaking out to raise awareness.
Advocating for new laws and
developing successful strategies to eradicate gender-based violence.
The challenges are many but the mission is clear.
Bring an end to the culture of violence, and
forge a new path to a culture of peace and human rights for all.
[MUSIC]
>> [FOREIGN] >> The brutalities I have endured,
not just once but hundreds of times, it's like fire burning inside my chest.
I have spent half of my life in abuse.
I wanted to kill myself.
>> Sosan is 35 years old and has seven children.
Her husband accused her of having an affair, a charge she denied.
And tried to electrocute her more than once, a charge he doesn't deny.
>> [FOREIGN] >> I tortured her with my son.
>> Sosan's husband was never punished for his crime.
[MUSIC]
>> Domestic violence is devastating not only for the woman but
also for families, for children.
Children of families where domestic violence prevails
often become perpetrators of violence themselves.
And it has a huge psychological impact on them.
[MUSIC]
>> Domestic violence is not limited to any one culture or country.
In the United States, every nine seconds a woman is assaulted or beaten.
In Britain, one-third of all female murder victims are killed by an intimate partner.
And in Brazil, at least 40% of women have suffered domestic abuse
at some point in their lives.
>> [FOREIGN] >> My arm was broken, my leg was broken.
I feel devastated, my life is devastated.
>> Working in collaboration, women's right groups pushed for
comprehensive legal reforms.
And in 2006, Brazil adopted legislation that changed domestic violence
from a misdemeanor to a serious crime.
And provided protective measures and social services for the victims.
Forces opposed to the law, however, continue to challenge it.
[SOUND] >> [FOREIGN]
>> The day I was kidnapped all five raped
me and then I was taken to the camp.
Every day I was raped, sometimes up to ten times a day.
[MUSIC]
[SOUND]
>> Conflicts in the former Yugoslavia,
Rwanda, and the Congo have tragically demonstrated that
wars are often not fought on traditional battlefields.
But in villages and nearby forests.
And increasingly, the primary targets are women and children.
>> How many women has he raped?
>> [FOREIGN] >> [FOREIGN]
>> [FOREIGN]
>> [FOREIGN]
>> [FOREIGN]
>> [FOREIGN]
>> [FOREIGN]
[MUSIC]
>> In Rwanda one-third of the women who were raped, eventually died of HIV.
And so, it's really an act of aggression that destroys all her life for
the rest of her life.
>> [FOREIGN] >> When my sister ran away with a man,
I had to cleanse our family's honor.
I decided to hunt them down.
I found them hiding in his uncle's house.
I had to kill them both to finish this problem.
>> [FOREIGN] >> I killed them with a rifle, and
I don't regret it.
[MUSIC]
>> Honor killing is a long held tradition that allows and
even encourages family members to severely brutalize or murder female relatives.
For what they deem as immoral behavior.
What constitutes immorality can be anything from adultery
to simply being seen on the street with a man.
And for many men, they see it as their duty.
>> [FOREIGN] >> You became caught between your honor
and your sister.
You must choose one of them.
Either you're going to destroy your sister or your honor, there is no other way.
[MUSIC]
>> [FOREIGN] >> Family members attacked her when she
was seven months pregnant.
She had three operations at the hospital.
Her skull was crushed, she survived for seven months.
She resisted while the baby was alive.
When her baby died she lost the will Will to live.
[MUSIC]
>> 5,000 women a year are known victims of honor killing.
But because many disappearances are not reported,
activists believe the number is significantly higher.
[MUSIC]
>> [FOREIGN] >> She told me he was okay,
so I trusted him.
>> Deserted by her husband,
24 year old Sushma was sold to a trafficker and brought to India.
She is one of hundreds of thousands of girls and
women who are victims of trafficking.
Treated like commodities, they are often sold by someone they know to traffickers.
>> [FOREIGN] >> They said she wasn't very good looking,
so they only gave me 10,000 rupees.
[MUSIC]
>> [FOREIGN] >> Human trafficking is a well
established business, and mainly these women are forced into sexual servitude.
>> Many are seeking jobs to help support their families or
find a better life, often tricked or abducted.
What they find is a nightmare from which there is no escape,
threatened and tortured.
They are forced to endure as many as 10 to 20 men a day.
[MUSIC]
>> A man was detained in
accusation of marrying
a 7 year old girl.
>> World wide, 60 million girls under the age of 18
are forced into marriage, some as young as 8 or 9 years old.
Vasana was married off at the age of 15.
She is now the mother of two children.
>> [FOREIGN] >> It hurts me.
It hurts me a lot, because I wanted to study and make a life for myself.
[MUSIC]
>> We don't want our daughters to be like us.
We don't want them to experience what we've been through.
We want our daughters to study as much as they wish to and
handle their responsibilities, become teachers or whatever they want.
[MUSIC]
>> The spectrum of violence against women is wide and far reaching.
It's not just barbaric acts like stoning, acid attacks,
female genital mutilation, and rape.
It's also degrading acts of sexual harassment on the street or
in the workplace.
Acts that cause fear and
intimidation and threaten a woman's ability to earn an income.
The statistics are staggering, the human impact,
enormous, and the process of change, frustratingly slow.
The issues are complex and emotionally charged.
And while cultures vary from country to country,
there are many common challenges that women face.
[MUSIC]
>> It's called patriarchy.
It's men having power and women being subject to that power.
And this is ruling every aspect of people's lives.
Women have been relegated to the private sphere, men to the public sphere.
Being relegated to the private space means that you
don't have access to political power and to economic power.
You are much more likely to be subject to abuse.
[MUSIC]
>> I think any unequal relationship, and gender being the most universal and
fundamental one, is sustained on both consensus and force.
And what is unique about violence against women
is that it is socially approved in almost all cultures,
at least historically, it was approved.
And many women also internalize this, and
they feel they must have done something wrong to deserve the punishment.
[MUSIC]
>> Within religion, there is a very strong historic
sensibility that women are inferior to men.
And it plays itself out in almost every religion.
And reason most people would say Adam and
Eve were kicked out of paradise was because Eve tempted Adam.
Women are sexual temptresses.
Men are weak and therefore subject to these temptations.
And therefore, women need to be controlled.
And this conception of how sin originated, the relationship of sin to sexuality.
And women as the source of sexual temptation has, throughout history,
justified efforts to control women's lives.
And the use of violence is not excluded from those methods of control.
[MUSIC]
>> Fundamentalists of all faiths tend to focus on a very immutable idea of culture
and religion and tradition that they have kind of written in their own image.
And that then really serves to limit women's choices, to put women in boxes.
So for example, nothing in the Koran says that women have to cover their heads.
And certainly there is no mandate to wear specific kinds of garments,
like the hijab, all the way up to the horrendous burka.
But if people do not have a full awareness of the teachings of their own religion and
the range of teachings and interpretations,
they may be in a very difficult situation to combat those kinds of arguments.
>> It's very difficult to get women to
do things that they consider outside of their religious context.
And so we have to use what I call a feminist
interpretation of the Bible and of the Koran.
So that women will see that those rights are there and
that it is the practice of internalizing myths perpetrated by men,
that are making you participate in your own suppression.
>> If you look at the political power of the world, it's masculine.
If you look at the wealth of the world,
it's basically on men's hand.
And I believe that we women, we also
contribute to the perpetuation of this because it's cultural.
It is so embedded in the creation of the stereotype of masculinity and
femininity that sometimes you just don't perceive, but it is there.
I have met women who are PhD, plus,
plus, plus and very capable in their own area.
And yet in their personal relationships with husbands or
with boyfriends, they are very much in
a position of less value, less power.
So this is all very complex.
[MUSIC]
>> Throughout history, patriarchal beliefs have strongly influenced how laws
are written and how they are enforced.
>> Crimes against women, sexually oriented crimes, were not defined as crimes against
women per se, but they were crimes against public morality.
They were crimes against the family and so forth.
So if, for example, a woman was raped, the penalty depended
on whether the woman was married, single, a prostitute, etc., etc.
So it was not the harm done on the woman that determined the punishment,
but the harm done to those who are related to that woman.
So she was very much perceived sort of like the property of a man
whose property rights have been infringed upon.
>> Traditionally, what happened within a family and between a man and
his wife was considered private and not the purview of the state.
Consequently, in many countries, even today, laws concerning spousal abuse,
rape, and even honor killings either don't exist or are not enforced.
And often, when women are violated they are forced to seek mediation
through the families before turning to the courts.
In countries strongly influenced by conservative interpretations of
religious law, not only are women not legally protected from violence,
they often face a harsh reality when trying to bring a perpetrator to justice.
In Mauritania, West Africa, a woman who wants a man to be brought to justice for
rape runs a high risk of imprisonment for making the accusation.
This is 18 year old Baddia, not her real name.
Baddia was raped and then became pregnant.
Her lawyer tried to convince her not to prosecute, but she did.
Baddia was accused of zina, sex out of marriage, and
was convicted and sent to prison.
>> The judges are very closed minded and, most importantly,
using the Islamic Sharia against woman just because they think they should do so.
So always they are on the side of the men, regardless.
And I witnessed many, many cases in this part.
Women are really seeking help, advice, but nobody listens to them.
>> Even in more progressive, multi ethnic countries like Malaysia,
women know all too well the law is not always there to protect them.
>> When women are faced with harassment,
they do not believe in any system that can address the issue.
Personal embarrassment stops them from talking to other people, as well.
So different forces have made them, so
just keep quiet, go back home, find another job.
So to that effect, it's really a violation of a person's right to work,
a person's right to safety.
So these are issues which we are trying to impress on women that it is your right.
You should speak up, address the issue.
>> During the 1970s the women's
movement gained strength globally.
And in 1979 the UN signed The Convention on
the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women.
For CEDAW, it marked a major turning point in the struggle for equality and
justice, and opened the door to make violence against women a crime.
>> This convention builds evidence
of the possibility to reach unanimity despite differences.
>> The passage of CEDAW was a very important moment.
It gave women the support,
the encouragement, the solidarity of the international community.
And obligated governments to actually change, alter, bring new legislation so
that they confront violence against women in a serious way.
>> Turkey ratified CEDAW in 1985, and
there was very little public awareness on the part of women.
But as local women started lobbying and
organizing themselves internally, as the demand for
rights started becoming a public voice in the Turkish public discourse.
Then women's engagement with CEDAW became more of a reality, brought CEDAW home.
Because they started using CEDAW in requesting the government or
demanding accountability on the part of the government.
So it's this internal demand that can make the international
mechanisms a reality at the national level.
>> In 1993, the UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women
gave grassroots organizations added leverage to advocate for legal reforms.
While many countries have yet to make meaningful changes,
activists in countries such as Brazil, Jordan, and Malaysia have succeeded
in getting laws passed making honor killings and domestic violence a crime.
But the obstacles were many.
First and foremost, traditional patriarchal beliefs that contend a man has
a right to beat his wife or commit murder to cleanse his family's honor.
>> How do you educate the public on an issue that
traditionally is seen as that's a man's right?
It's a family matter.
And we're saying, no, it's not a family matter, it's a criminal matter.
[MUSIC]
>> Before the Domestic Violence Act was passed,
activists in Malaysia spent more than ten years educating the public,
and dispelling religious myths used to just violence against women.
>> I think the public education part of the work is extremely important to
build public support.
We were very lucky in Malaysia because when we decided to campaign for
the Domestic Violence Act,
we already had a shelter for survivors of domestic violence.
And so therefore, we were able to get the women who had been in the shelter,
who's also been counselled and empowered, to speak out and
to take action about their situation.
To be able to speak to the press.
So the real faces and real lives of women who have suffered domestic violence
being out there in the public space, in the media, was extremely important
In getting people and the policy makers to realize that this is a real issue,
that women are suffering and discriminated against out there.
And that something needs to be done.
[MUSIC]
>> It is important to use a scientific way in raising awareness.
It is not just talking, but collecting data, information, to see the issue
from Different angles, the health angle for example, in case of domestic violence.
It is a economic problem, it is a productivity problem,
it is a health problem, it is a safety problem.
So it has to be seen from different angles and
different specialists need to contribute to the work.
So it's important to use all means available and
to accept small steps in the beginning because you cannot always say
we want it complete 100% or nothing.
[MUSIC]
>> Unfortunately,
people who suffer most from violence are the people who are least empowered.
[MUSIC]
They are marginalized groups,
refugees, the poor, people who don't have a recourse,
don't have access to the power of the first responders very often.
So that is the area where most help is needed.
And of course, our most important
resource in this area is the organizations who have the networks on the ground.
So, strengthening and building the capacities of those organizations.
And also, educating and
training the people who deal with cases of violence is most important.
>> We have done instead a lot of work training.
Training police officers, working with police officers.
And if for an audience of 200, you reach 20,
this is great, because they can make the difference.
[MUSIC] >> New technology is sparking social
change, and revolutionizing public awareness efforts.
Innovative sites like HARASSmap, can now even identify specific locations in
Cairo where women are experiencing various forms of harassment and assault.
>> There's several trainings that will be coming out looking towards
ending violence against women.
[MUSIC] >> And activist groups worldwide
are discovering the power of social media to build support for their causes.
[MUSIC]
>> [FOREIGN].
It allowed us to reach a much wider audience.
It allowed us to reach and mobilize young people.
One of the things that happen is that when we have an advocacy event,
a demonstration, whatever, and we advertise it on Facebook,
all of a sudden you have all these young people who show up.
Who actually tell each other.
We take action.
>> [FOREIGN] >> Getting
laws enacted is a vital first step.
But getting them enforced and providing the type of social services that
victims of violence need to escape their suffering is an ongoing struggle.
[MUSIC]
Still, laws send a powerful message.
[MUSIC]
>> The message is very clear out there now, to men.
If they beat up their wife, they are liable, to shame,
to police report lodged against you, to being prosecuted for domestic violence.
So that's important, to set that standard that this is wrong.
>> In Jordan, where activists pushed for
stricter enforcement of honor crimes, the message is getting out.
>> We can see that a real change is happening.
And now you can read in the front pages of the newspapers that a man who killed
his sister gets 10 years imprisonment, 15 years imprisonment.
This is a very important message to the public.
>> The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia is now in session.
>> Please call the case.
>> We've seen the prosecutions at the International Criminal Tribunal for
Rwanda, and the International Criminal Tribunal for
the former Yugoslavia, and all of those prosecutions have been after the fact.
So then when you get to the question of prevention, you have to ask yourself,
how much are we really preventing?
Well, as a human right's activist,
I have to believe that the prosecution of sexual violence and conflict leads to
future prevention, as well as strengthens accountability in the current system.
[MUSIC]
>> I believe it's extraordinarily important that women have the role in
peacekeeping that will make peace come about much more effectively.
>> The UN Security Council Resolution 1325 calls for
parties in conflict to respect women's rights and to support their
participation in peace negotiations and post-conflict reconstruction.
>> When women are involved in the army, in the police,
that there are in countries like Liberia now, it makes a big difference I saw
a statistic that about 2.4% of the signatures on peace treaties are women.
Somebody did a count, so what happens, and
women on the ground know this too well in conflict situations.
Peace processes, they get a lot of television and
they're in nice hotels are bad men talking to bad governments and other bad men.
And they get all the attention.
And it's women who are building the pieces of a peace process behind the scenes.
And who don't get to the table, don't get the credit and the recognition.
And that has to change.
And we're proposing that a quota
of at least 30% in all peace negotiations has to be women.
And then we'd be told, but there aren't any women trained.
And you know what we'll say?
They're there, we've trained them, we'll find them, they have to be at the table.
>> Perhaps when there is a parity of demand for change on men, we will achieve
or be closer to achieving that parity in contribution to our societies.
And perhaps the United Nations should contemplate a commission on
the status of men to bring about achievement of that parity.
>> [APPLAUSE]
>> [LAUGH] >> [APPLAUSE]
>> We have succeeded in bringing the issue
on the agenda but in many countries, although the legislation has changed,
in practice things have not changed much.
Because I think the mentalities are still pretty much unchallenged.
And the only way we can really shake the boat, if I may say,
is with a strong demand on the part of women themselves.
[MUSIC]
>> The most effective is to educate the women at the grassroot level.
Not only to educate women but also men.
It's very important, because they are the ones who are doing this and
are involved in it and support the perpetrators.
[MUSIC]
>> We began first by encouraging the spouses of some of our colleagues,
some of our services providers, some of our media allies and
organize gender awareness training programs with them,
in order to ensure that they were sharing the right message to the public.
And from there, it's evolved to more like a network.
>> [APPLAUSE] >> [INAUDIBLE]
were mostly by men in our societies.
[INAUDIBLE] against girls.
>> We adopted the youths manner that's developing, developed and
trained a group of young boys from selected secondary schools in Nigeria.
And at the beginning of the workshop most of them were coming from the perspective
that they were more important than girls, because that's what they were taught.
Some of them in their homes, some in schools, and so
the training helped to really deconstruct that Stereotype in their minds.
So for us it was really a good outcome because they are also peer educators.
>> Because real men will not abuse women.
>> Right now we have what I'll call a green movement of boys and
men working towards eliminating gender-based violence.
>> Against our will it's against the law.
>> If people are able to respect one another,
know that gender is the way we are being socialized,
and therefore tackle the issue from the root itself,
our young, we should be able to make changes.
[MUSIC]
>> People make culture and people can change culture.
But it does take contesting the values that are wrong, dialoguing and
bringing about community to sit together and look at these issues,
and then to say how do we move together to bring about this change?
There are very good things in culture that can be utilized to bring about change,
and that this change has to be towards human rights.
[MUSIC]
>> In African societies, all African societies,
it's completely unheard of to attack an elder.
It's completely unheard of to slap your mother.
But, if a man gets provoked by his wife, it's completely all right for
him to beat his wife because she has provoked him.
But when he's provoked by his parents why is not all right for
him to beat his parents?
Why is it mandatory that the man observes self-control and
self-mastery even when he's provoked by his parents, but
it's all right for him to lose control when he is provoked by his wife?
So in this way we're trying to help them see that a culture that allows women to
be respected should also remove women from having violence visited upon them.
>> One of our dilemmas is how to deal with the stigma of
reporting violence, and the fact of self-respect and
self-reliance that people seem to lose in cases of violence.
And so the learning process, the communication process that
makes people realize that the only way to confront this evil is by reporting it,
by going to the places where help is available, and
to being able to bring about change.
[MUSIC]
>> In the rural areas they are still quite in the dark.
So a lot of work has to be done in terms of reaching out to the rural area
outside of the city to bring about more awareness about frequent
like in terms of the violation of their bodies, the space.
So that art is a continuous process.
[MUSIC]
>> A thing that I think we should never do is to detach women's issues from
national issues, from social issues.
Because women's issues are not women's issues.They are not women for
women by women.
[MUSIC]
They are central issues of social justice, of democracy, and of human rights.
[MUSIC]
>> My dear friends,
I would like to welcome you all to this really historic event.
[MUSIC]
>> The spaces that were created by the UN Conferences and
the possibility of networking helped us to work together across
international lines and to be able to clarify our purpose.
To hone our strategies, and to create a shared vision across our diversities,
so that we could advocate, we could lobby, we could bring attention to abuse,
and to suggest legislation, to suggest policies.
And to be sure that they became law, and that we were able
to use that law to change the lives of people on the ground.
>> What we have learned so
far is that working together is the key to empowerment.
And despite our differences, how do we use the commonalities in our
experiences as a basis on which we collaborate?
I think that's the key.
[MUSIC]
>> I think training women's groups is so important.
And what I like to bring home when I'm talking to women who are in
difficult situations is what you're doing is important.
Because very often, women underestimate the value of getting organized,
of getting a voice out, of having a way of reaching out.
The message to the women of the world is, arise.
[MUSIC]
>> Commit these to action, this is the mission in.
[MUSIC]
>> Between Beijing and
the of women I think there's been kind of a sea change with regard to activism,
which is that wherever you go around the world you are going to find some number of
women who are committed to the universality of women's rights.
That it is no longer an alien concept.
[MUSIC]
>> So I do think there's been a sea change with regard to finding more like-minded
people willing to put their lives on the line to defend their rights and
the rights of others.
>> When we believe in this as a mission in life,
this give us in the organization the energy and
also the courage to do so until the end.
[MUSIC]
>> When you're committed, when you're passionate.
You are rewarded by what you see.
The transformation.
That is Is the thing you cannot buy, that's what we want.
[MUSIC]
>> It was said at the beginning that first they gave us a day, and
then they gave us a year.
And then they gave us a decade of women.
So we've done a lot, we've come a long way.
And there's still a long way to go.
[MUSIC]
But with the tools that we have created together and
the strategies that we have created together, one woman at a time,
one organization at a time, we are getting there.
>> [APPLAUSE] >> So
this is really a place of hope where we are.
[MUSIC]
And a place of hope for
the next generation and the next.
[MUSIC]
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