GBV SYSTEMICALLY EMBEDDED

Despite the high levels of awareness, outcries and the interventions by government, non-government entities and citizens at large, the scourge of domestic violence and rape still features prominently in our society.

The bulk of the assaults are committed by a known person or intimate partner. Unfortunately, among those who believe that beating an intimate partner is allowable, the number of women who themselves believe that it is acceptable is not significantly less than men who hold those beliefs. Some of the rationalisations for the violence include arguing with partners, going out without informing their partners, failing to take appropriate care of the children or burning food. This demonstrates that gender-based violence, including domestic violence, is systemically embedded.

Its stubborn pervasiveness can be attributed to the fact that this phenomenon is deeper than psychology or sociology. While those factors are relevant, they are merely super-structural manifestations of a particular economic base, namely capitalism. Within this context, the emphasis is not on capitalism as a job creator or promoter of innovation, for those phenomena existed in feudal societies and currently exist in socialist societies.

And while the operations and adverse impacts of the system of capitalism on humanity and the environment are international in character, the emphasis in this context is on how it, as a mode of production, creates an environment conducive to the demeaning of human beings in general, and women in particular, to the extent that ill-treatment becomes acceptable.
Such demeaning conditions include unemployment, poverty, excessive materialism, inequality, gender norms and unequal power relations at an interpersonal level.

In a capitalist system, human beings are primarily valued, and power relations are generally defined in accordance with the amount of money that people have, as opposed to the value that is brought to society.  In the quest to accumulate material wealth, particularly in the sphere of production, profit maximisation becomes a necessity for those who own the means of production; and workers, who do not own the means of production, and are compelled to sell their labour for a pittance.

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