Men’s Violence Against Women: An Overview

Abstract

Men's violence against women is a widespread problem across cultures, socioeconomic groups, and religions, resulting in more damage and death than several major diseases (including all cancers) and accidents combined. And, of course, killing and maiming are only the 'tip of the iceberg,' as men's violence victimizes women in a wide variety of other ways, including intimate partner violence with less serious injuries, rape and other sexual assault, stalking, sexual harassment, public harassment, human trafficking, forced labor, and female infanticide. In many cases, this violence has a distinctly gendered component. In other words, the offender attacks the victim in part because she is a woman or girl. The pervasiveness of this phenomenon is due, in large part, to the indisputable fact that women as- a-group are strongly disadvantaged compared with men-as-a-group. For the purposes of this chapter, i am defining violence as a violation of human rights through intentional physical and/or psychological harm. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)