16 Days of Activism 2010

For the past five years, 67-year-old Joana Mathlombe has had a crash course in care work, a profession she embraces reluctantly.

The gendered status of the HIV and AIDS pandemic is obvious when we look at countless statistics showing that more women than men are infected À“ and many more women than men bear the brunt of caring for those infected.

Speaking out can set you free,What do you think of when you see a butterfly? Beautiful colours! Freedom after the struggle to break out of a cocoon! The sky is the limit! Reaching up; reaching out! These were just a few of the answers given by survivors of gender violence who have chosen to tell their stories through the GL “I” Stories project.

The 16 Days of Activism against Women campaign 2010 was carried out under the international theme of Structures of Violence: Defining the Intersection of Militarism and Violence Against Women. GL and GEMSA ran the campaign under the regional banner ‘Peace begins at home: Halve gender based violence by 2015’. This target responds to the tone of the 28 targets in the SADC Protocol on Gender and Development.

He looked me in the eye without a single flinch and said it, “I have done one of these things in the past. I have done things to scare or intimidate my wife on purpose by threatening to hurt her, yelling and smashing things. I have hit, kicked, dragged, beaten and choked her. I have physically forced her to have sex when she did not want to.À

The stories are powerful narratives of the pain of abuse, and very often the triumph of surviving and moving on. What they share – the slow realisation of a deteriorating relationship; social and cultural expectations; concern for children; feeling like there is nowhere to go; decisions to leave and the challenges of standing alone; demanding change and the overwhelming desire to speak out – echo thousands of more voices across the country and the region.

Click on the documents below to download the summaries to the 16 Days of Activism cyber dialogue discussions.

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) Protocol on Gender and Development calls on Member States to halve gender violence by 2015. Specific measures to be taken include legislation, where appropriate, to discourage traditional norms, including social, economic, cultural and political practices which legitimise and exacerbate the persistence and tolerance of gender violence with a view to eliminate them and in all sectors of society, introduce and support gender sensitisation and public awareness programmes aimed at changing behaviour and eradicating gender based violence.

Out of the 1956 speeches made by political leaders in South Africa between April 2009 and March 2010, only 1% specifically focused on Gender-Based Violence (GBV). A further 4% made passing reference to this daily violation of women’s rights.

Gender Links (GL) has called on the government to declare a state of emergency in the fight to end gender violence. In a press release to mark the close of the Sixteen Days of Activism Against Gender Violence GL said that countless research studies now show that the problem is overwhelming and the response is insufficient, especially when measured against the target of halving gender violence by 2015 in the SADC Protocol on Gender and Development.

GL will extend the Soccer 2010 theme, and the SADC Gender Protocol targets, to the Sixteen Days of Activism with the theme: Score a goal for gender equality: Halve gender based violence by 2015′ which is also the main target around gender violence in the SADC Protocol on Gender and Development.