International Women’s Day: Rape And Violence A Worldwide Problem

International Women’s Day was first commemorated when American women demanded the right to vote in the United States. Now, International Women’s Day is celebrated worldwide, but the major problems of rape and violence against women still persist.

As previously reported by The Inquisitr, President Obama recently signed an updated version of the Violence Against Women Act. Women in the US military are even being allowed to apply for combat position in the US military. Research on the gender salary gap reveals that women might be able to close the gap with a little training in salary negotiations.

Rape and abortion are still two hot topics in American politics because of the crazy history underlying the issues. A 1996 study in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology claims the number of pregnancies from rape is as high as five percent based upon surveys. It’s even claimed by RAINN.org that “1 out of every 6 American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime.” There is also the common claim that one in four female college students are raped and 90 percent of rapes go unreported. Some even claim that rape results in more pregnancies than normal sex.

Rape victims are also sometimes getting punished. Amanda Collins made the news when she spoke on Concealed Carry Laws and Democrats insisted that a gun would not have prevented her rape. A rape victim in the Maldives received 100 lashes. This blame the victim attitude even led Swaziland to ban mini skirts.

The bad news is that the situation for women on an international scale are even worse. The gang raping of women in India has been making the news regularly now. Islamic nations tend to deny basic human rights to women. Besides the traditional clothing, women are beat, drowned, stoned, and not even allowed to work, vote, or drive.

V-Day put the spotlight on rape and violence against women, bringing “broader attention to stop violence against women and girls, including rape, battery, incest, female genital mutilation and sex slavery.” Based on the premise put forward by the National Institute of Crime Rehabilitation that only one in twenty rapes are reported, it is estimated that worldwide 494,000 women are raped per year. This means that on average approximately 1,300 women can be expected to be raped a day in South Africa, which amounts to a rape every 17 seconds.

Back in the United States, there persists the idea that these US rape statistics might be overestimated:

“The survey, conducted in the spring of 1997, found 2.8 percent of college women experienced rape or attempted rape, based on definitions provided by the FBI Uniform Crime Report, during almost 7 months that made up the 1996-1997 school year. To get a statistic for the entire year, the study’s authors simply doubled the quantifiable results. To get a statistic for a student’s entire college career, they extrapolated the 5 percent over four to five years, arriving at a 20 to 25 percent chance of rape…. Researchers generally agree that rape and sexual assault are historically underreported crimes. But even allowing for a tenfold increase in each of the three government surveys, the number of rapes and sexual assaults would still fall significantly short of the SVCW projections.”

The US public perception of rape is altered by women who lie about rape. For example, Norma McCorvey of Roe vs. Wade initially fabricated her account of being raped at a circus in order to circumvent the Texas laws of the time. More recently, a woman cried wolf about rape 11 times and was jailed for her compulsive lying. These types of stories are regularly reported in the media. Still, whatever the true numbers, even one rape is more than enough.

Do you think International Women’s Day should be used to put the spotlight on rape and violence against women, or should it remain a celebration of accomplishments?