Saturday, February 10, 2007
Embracing Women
The following article is a contribution by the evO’love Committee from Taylor’s University College, PJ. These students will be running A Campaign about Love on selected campuses across the Klang Valley.
For years, there have been many campaigns about violence against women. However, many of these campaigns passed the responsibility to stop women violence to women, only! They taught women ways to avoid abuse, how to identify when women are in a violent relationship, where to go when they are being abused etc. Most campaigns lacked the education of why womanhood is to be celebrated and embraced by both the male and female race.
In Malaysia, the society is built upon a perception where males are dominant over women. Women are expected to serve the family, to be complacent to men’s request and if women are not performing such roles, they would be negatively seen as different. Such perception has long been embedded from generation to generation. Though youngsters now obtain a better and more modernistic education system, their perception towards gender issues is very much influenced by the older generation, especially their mothers.
Therefore, the committee set out a research study to understand more about the perception among youngsters these days. From the intensive interviews, the male respondents perceived females as objects of ownership – once in a relationship, girlfriends belonged to them. In addition, their answers also suggested that women should be weaker than men because to a certain extent, women were no better than men in sports and after some time, women needed to stay at home to take care of the family.
On the other hand, female respondents accepted the fact that women are generally perceived as sex objects, and because of this, they conformed to what men wanted them to do, how they should behave and look like. Though few of the female respondents were once victims of violence, they found it difficult to remove themselves from the relationship at that point of time because of one reason – females are naturally maternal and have higher tolerance to nurture their loved ones.
Most youngsters have been taught by their parents to play certain roles in the family and even in the society. Especially in the Asian culture, women are taught to follow the gender roles perception from young. Men, on the other hand, have been raised to take advantage of the maternal characteristics of women and therefore, women are suppressed.
Consequently, it is the committee’s belief that women violence will only be put to a stop when both male and female learn to respect and embrace womanhood. It is the committee’s mission to educate men on the importance of understanding and respecting womanhood – women should be embraced because they are mothers, teachers and advisers to the future backbones of the nation. Secondly, the committee is to educate women to respect themselves further by not following what the society expects them to do, but by respecting themselves as individuals who deserve women’s rights and not abuse.
A Campaign about Love focuses on highlighting issues pertaining to psychological abuse in an intimate relationship because it can be as harmful as physical abuse, especially when those hurtful words come from the mouth of an intimate partner. Words like “You don’t love me when you don’t make love with me”, “You should keep yourself fit” and so on would certainly pose as a negative effect on her emotions. So, part of our mission for the campaign is to highlight to men and women that unchecked words can also pass as abuse and violence against women. For the committee, behaviors’ that can be perceived as psychological abuse from men to women are as follows:
• Monitor what you are doing all the time
• Criticize you for little things
• Constantly accuse you of being unfaithful
• Prevent and discourage you from seeing friends or family, or going to work or school
• Humiliate you in front of others
• Persuade you to have sex even if the female disagreed or didn’t feel like having it
• Call his own girlfriend fat and thus influences her to keep fit, which could lead to physical disorder like anorexia nervosa and other health related problems
• Damage or destruct a woman’s personal property, and
• Other abuses which demean a woman’s self esteem
Finally, the committee works hand in hand with the Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development and Women’s Aid Organisation (WAO) to help disseminate the love message to younger generation in Malaysia. Youths were chosen as the target audience because they are prone to get involved in an intimate relationship and in the near future, they will become parents of the next generation. If a woman allows her husband to slap her, the children would equate love as slapping women. Similarly, if a father is allowed to hit a mother, it implies that hitting is a way of loving all women. It is crucial for the committee to educate youngsters from now on the importance of respecting and embracing women.
Also by attaining the support from Tun Dr. Siti Hasmah, the committee hopes that the level of exposure would garner great amount of attention by the media and thus the society to incur change.
It is a cycle. With more men respecting women through the understanding of womanhood, and, with more women who are empowered to educate and stop men from perpetrating the abuse, violence against women has a hope to end in the long run.
For years, there have been many campaigns about violence against women. However, many of these campaigns passed the responsibility to stop women violence to women, only! They taught women ways to avoid abuse, how to identify when women are in a violent relationship, where to go when they are being abused etc. Most campaigns lacked the education of why womanhood is to be celebrated and embraced by both the male and female race.
In Malaysia, the society is built upon a perception where males are dominant over women. Women are expected to serve the family, to be complacent to men’s request and if women are not performing such roles, they would be negatively seen as different. Such perception has long been embedded from generation to generation. Though youngsters now obtain a better and more modernistic education system, their perception towards gender issues is very much influenced by the older generation, especially their mothers.
Therefore, the committee set out a research study to understand more about the perception among youngsters these days. From the intensive interviews, the male respondents perceived females as objects of ownership – once in a relationship, girlfriends belonged to them. In addition, their answers also suggested that women should be weaker than men because to a certain extent, women were no better than men in sports and after some time, women needed to stay at home to take care of the family.
On the other hand, female respondents accepted the fact that women are generally perceived as sex objects, and because of this, they conformed to what men wanted them to do, how they should behave and look like. Though few of the female respondents were once victims of violence, they found it difficult to remove themselves from the relationship at that point of time because of one reason – females are naturally maternal and have higher tolerance to nurture their loved ones.
Most youngsters have been taught by their parents to play certain roles in the family and even in the society. Especially in the Asian culture, women are taught to follow the gender roles perception from young. Men, on the other hand, have been raised to take advantage of the maternal characteristics of women and therefore, women are suppressed.
Consequently, it is the committee’s belief that women violence will only be put to a stop when both male and female learn to respect and embrace womanhood. It is the committee’s mission to educate men on the importance of understanding and respecting womanhood – women should be embraced because they are mothers, teachers and advisers to the future backbones of the nation. Secondly, the committee is to educate women to respect themselves further by not following what the society expects them to do, but by respecting themselves as individuals who deserve women’s rights and not abuse.
A Campaign about Love focuses on highlighting issues pertaining to psychological abuse in an intimate relationship because it can be as harmful as physical abuse, especially when those hurtful words come from the mouth of an intimate partner. Words like “You don’t love me when you don’t make love with me”, “You should keep yourself fit” and so on would certainly pose as a negative effect on her emotions. So, part of our mission for the campaign is to highlight to men and women that unchecked words can also pass as abuse and violence against women. For the committee, behaviors’ that can be perceived as psychological abuse from men to women are as follows:
• Monitor what you are doing all the time
• Criticize you for little things
• Constantly accuse you of being unfaithful
• Prevent and discourage you from seeing friends or family, or going to work or school
• Humiliate you in front of others
• Persuade you to have sex even if the female disagreed or didn’t feel like having it
• Call his own girlfriend fat and thus influences her to keep fit, which could lead to physical disorder like anorexia nervosa and other health related problems
• Damage or destruct a woman’s personal property, and
• Other abuses which demean a woman’s self esteem
Finally, the committee works hand in hand with the Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development and Women’s Aid Organisation (WAO) to help disseminate the love message to younger generation in Malaysia. Youths were chosen as the target audience because they are prone to get involved in an intimate relationship and in the near future, they will become parents of the next generation. If a woman allows her husband to slap her, the children would equate love as slapping women. Similarly, if a father is allowed to hit a mother, it implies that hitting is a way of loving all women. It is crucial for the committee to educate youngsters from now on the importance of respecting and embracing women.
Also by attaining the support from Tun Dr. Siti Hasmah, the committee hopes that the level of exposure would garner great amount of attention by the media and thus the society to incur change.
It is a cycle. With more men respecting women through the understanding of womanhood, and, with more women who are empowered to educate and stop men from perpetrating the abuse, violence against women has a hope to end in the long run.
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