The outline of the story sounds familiar. A couple files for divorce. The split is anything but consensual. The woman asks authorities for protection after receiving threats from her husband. The woman in question? All we know is her name – Duenya – daughter of Mosse Haim, a Jew from the town of Daroca in the Kingdom of Aragon. The estranged husband was Jafuda Xucra and this particular divorce occurred more than 700 years ago, in the spring of 1381.
The point is that this could easily be Canada in 2010 or anywhere else in the world for that matter. Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn have recently made us painfully aware about how common violence against women still is. The statistics listed in their book are staggering. According to the World Health Organization, physical or sexual violence at the hands of a husband or boyfriend is the experience of 30-60% of women worldwide. Perhaps even more “numbing”, to use Kristof and WuDunn’s words, is that “[i]t appears that more girls have been killed in the last fifty years, precisely because they were girls, than men were killed in all the wars of the twentieth century.” More girls are killed in any decade, than “people were slaughtered in all genocides of the twentieth century.” As a former historian of genocide, I can assure you the numbers are indeed numbing.
The issue is not just violence. More girls die in poorer families around the world simply because their families are not willing to spend the little resources the family has to seek health care early enough when the sick child is a girl. Often, if all the children are ill, priority is given to the treatment of the boys.
In my world history class this semester, the students read about the development of patriarchy in ancient societies. In their posts in the class blog, most expressed relief that “we have moved so far” and women are now equal to men. This prompted a discussion in class about whether equal rights has really erased discrimination against women or eliminated patriarchy. Most of my students want to pursue careers in business. I showed statistics of the number of women at the top in the corporate business world. I didn’t want to discourage them but they also need to learn that women’s rights are still a pressing matter all over the world. Particularly when we live in a world in which more women are killed or maimed at the hands of men than from cancer, malaria, traffic accidents, and war combined. Seven hundred years after Duenya became concerned for her safety for seeking a divorce she was legally entitled to, women all over the world face the same choices and concerns.
This post is my contribution to the 16 Days of Activism against Gender Violence.
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This is true, the world hasn’t changed that much since the old days and domestic violence is still painfully common, no matter where in the world.