The "Wrong" Gender

1 in 3 women experience physical or sexual violence at some point in their lifetime.
The prevalence of violence against women across the world is so vast that women aged 15-44 are more at risk from rape and domestic violence than from cancer, motor accidents, war and malaria.

Only 18 out of 173 countries have specific legislation addressing sexual harassment in public places.

Over 150 countries have at least one actively sexist law.

Somewhere in the world a child marriage happens every minute, which runs up a total of 15 million early marriages every year.

Women spend at least 2.5 times more time than men on unpaid care and domestic work, cooking, cleaning, fetching water and firewood and caring for children, the sick and the elderly.

At least 200 million living girls and women, form about 30 countries, have undergone female genital mutilation.

Lawful Discrimination

Millions of women from all parts of the world are trapped in lives where they are not allowed to attend schools, own property, vote, earn wages or control their bodies, and in which violence is a constant threat.

Here is a very partial list of lawful discriminations:
• The legal systems of India, the Bahamas and Singapore, permit nonconsensual sex in marriage as long as the wife is above a certain age (15 in India, 14 in the Bahamas and 13 in Singapore).
• In Lebanon and Palestine a perpetrator of rape, kidnapping, or statutory rape is not prosecuted if he marries his victim.
• In Cameron, Iran and Guinea a husband is allowed to forbid his wife from working.
• In Syria and Egypt men that kill or hurt their wife, sister, mother or daughter can get lesser punishment if they found them engaging in “an illegitimate sexual act”.
• In Russia, Beating of spouses or children that result in bruising or bleeding but not broken bones are punishable by 15 days in prison or a fine, if they do not happen more than once a year. Previously they carried a maximum jail sentence of two years.
• In Jordan and Lebanon the mothers nationality is not passed automatically to her children.
• In Nigeria it is legal for a husband to beat his wife “for the purpose of correcting” as long as it does not cause grievous bodily harm.
• In Algeria a woman cannot marry a non-Muslim and “needs” a male marriage guardian.
• In Afghanistan and Yemen a woman must not leave the conjugal home without her husband permission, unless it involved her duties towards him.
• In Mali, Sudan, Yemen and the Democratic Republic of Congo a woman must obey her husband.
• In the Democratic Republic of Congo women need the husband’s permission for legal acts.
• In Iran a women accused of adultery can be executed. In the past she would be stoned and now the supreme judges can use other methods of execution.
• In Saudi Arabia women cannot drive and in Iran women cannot ride bicycles.
• In Yemen a woman must have sexual intercourse with her husband.

Rape

The estimations are that one out of four women is forced to have sex against her free and full will at least once in her lifetime. One in three women is sexually attacked, and each and every one is sexually harassed.

The physical predominance of men puts women in a continuous worry. Women don’t feel safe. They don’t feel safe being alone in the streets, in some cases even in their own neighborhood. What can be more basic than that?

In many places in the world, rape within marriage doesn't even count. When a woman is married - "no" to sex is not an option. A woman is supposed to give in to her husband. She is his property, his belongings.

Inadequacies in criminal justice systems create an environment where it is easy to commit an offence of rape without any severe consequences. Rape has one of the lowest conviction rates of all serious crimes. Offenders frequently evade arrest and conviction, and continue to intimidate their victims and the victims’ families.
In the absence of effective witness protection services, women often withdraw or fail to report cases as they fear intimidation by the perpetrator. Sentencing tends to be so lenient, that it creates an impression that rape is not a serious crime.

Rape is one of the most devastating personal traumas. Many victims feel as if their lives have been shattered after their mental and physical privacy has been invaded. The emotional scars can take years to heal, if at all.

About half of raped women get genital injuries. Third get external vulvar bruising. Genital injuries are more common when anal penetration had occurred. Anal tears and bruising were seen in 75% of women reporting anal rape.

Almost one-third (31%) of all rape victims developed PTSD sometime during their lifetime; and more than one in ten rape victims (11%) suffer from PTSD their entire life. Major depression is a problem affecting many women, not just rape victims. However, 30% of rape victims had experienced at least one major depressive episode in their lifetime.
Rape victims with posttraumatic stress disorder are 13.4 times more likely to have serious alcohol problems and they are 26 times more likely to have serious drug abuse problems.

Domestic Violence

For tens of millions of women today, home is a place of terror. It is not the assault of strangers that women need to fear the most, but the everyday brutality at the hands of relatives, friends and lovers. Beating at home is by far the most universal form of violence against women.

Domestic violence is tragically commonplace. It occurs across education, class, income and ethnic boundaries. While there is not yet enough data to make accurate country-by-country comparisons, the prevalence and pattern of domestic violence are remarkably consistent from one culture to the next.

According to the World Health Organization 20% to 80% (depending on the country) of women are regularly beaten at home.
In the United States a woman is physically abused by her intimate partner every 3 seconds. In India, more than 8,000 women are murdered each year because their in-laws consider their dowries inadequate.

Poverty and Gender

Women have been the historic victims of political and economic exclusions and have suffered the ravages of patriarchy, sexism and discriminatory practices that have kept them outside of social, political and economic power structures.

Women are still the poorest of the world's poor, representing 70% of the 1.3 billion people who live in absolute poverty (incomes of less than $1.25 a day).
Women work two-thirds of the world's working hours, produce half of the world's food, and yet earn only 10% of the world's income and own less than 1% of the world's property. The association between gender inequality and poverty can’t be more obvious.

Poverty, particularly for women, is more than income deficiency. Women not only continue to lag behind men in control over the means of production such as cash, credit and collateral, but they are also disadvantaged by other forms of impoverishment such as literacy, education, skills, employment opportunities, mobility, political representation and the expectation from them to spend their time and energy only on taking care of the children.
These factors diminish women’s development capacity and affect their health status both directly and indirectly. For these reasons, women are often poorer compared to men of the same household and social group.

We live in a world where even most humans, the undoubtedly most privileged species on earth, do not have basic control over what happens with their lives.
How long would women have to wait until they won't be murdered for expressing their opinions? For looking at the “wrong direction”?
When will men understand that women belong only to themselves?
When will forced marriages stop?
When will women stop having sex with men they don’t desire?
When will the beating, the humiliations and the discriminations end?
When will be the last rape?

We are in the third millennium and half of the human population is systematically and automatically discriminated against.

What hope then, do nonhumans have?