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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Dalia*: [QB] [b]Domestic Violence[/b] III.1 Woman Battering The dominance of men over women is accepted to varying degrees among Egyptians of both genders. For example, the 1995 Egyptian Demographic and Health Survey found that a significant number of women, especially among lower and middle income women and those residing in rural areas, believed that wife beating was justified under certain circumstances. Another study - carried out between January and March 1997 on a sample of 100 women aged between 14 and 65 years old (married or having been married) from Manshier Nasser, an informal settlement located ten minutes from the city of Cairo - reveals that 30% of the women questioned admitted to being subjected to domestic violence on a daily basis, 34% on a weekly basis, 15% on a monthly basis and 21% occasionally. [b]For 75% of these women, the main reason for this domestic violence was found to be sexual. Women are beaten, raped or abused for having refused to have sex with their husbands. Other reasons cited were spending (65%), visiting (32%), housework (25%), religion (8%), jealousy (6%) and disobedience (5%).[/b] Sixteen percent of the women suffered injuries necessitating hospitalisation, such as broken arms, broken ribs, internal bleeding and wounds in the head or the arms requiring stitches, while 9% of them attempted to commit suicide. [b]Following this violence, most of them (53%) suffered in silence; 13% went to the police, although all of them subsequently withdrew the charges[/b], the objective being only “to teach the husband a lesson”, not really wanting to cause him any harm. Only 6% of these women demanded a divorce. Of the remainder, 26% called their neighbours; 25% tried to leave their homes at least once; 23% got help from family members (either their own or their spouse’s), while 15% responded to the violence. [b]The fact that 87% of these women did not mention the violence to the police is due to embarrassment (65%), for the children’s sake (32%), fears for their husband (19%), fear of their husband (13%), and fear of their own families (7%).[/b] Four percent felt that it was a waste of time, while 11% cited other reasons. The researcher specified that although this study is not representative of Egyptian society as a whole, she feels that “the instances of violence even among different social classes within Egyptian society is widespread.” OMCT welcomes the promulgation of Law No. 6 of 1998, mentioned in the fifth and fourth government report on page 15, which criminalises the phenomenon of intimidation and the threat of the use of force or violence against a wife, offspring or parents. However, it believes that this measure does not provide women with sufficient protection from domestic violence as [b]wife battering in Egypt is only dealt with as a crime if it exceeds the accepted limits of disciplining or if it results in certain injuries. Social and other interpretations of religious values reinforce the wife’s duty to obey and serve her husband, a role reinforced by the media.[/b] Moreover, the custom of a man paying a dowry for his future wife also perpetuates the idea that a wife is her husband’s property. [b]Domestic Violence[/b] III.2 Marital Rape [b]In Egypt, a husband who forces his wife to have sexual intercourse is not considered by the law to have committed a criminal offence[/b], “because the woman is legally obliged due to the marriage contract to obey her husband and to follow him to his bed each time he asks her, and she can only refuse for a legally valid reason.” A study conducted by the New Women Research Centre and El-Nadim Centre has found that 93% of the women in the sample considered intercourse under such conditions as rape. However, 46% of the men in the sample said that they were entitled to force their wives to have intercourse. III.3 Crimes against Women Committed in the Name of Honour As already discussed above, there is a notable difference in the penalty for the murder of one’s spouse upon discovery of adultery. [b]Whereas men are given a light prison sentence of not more than three years for murdering an adulterous wife, women are often sentenced to hard labour for life for murdering an unfaithful husband. This difference is justified by the widespread attitude that a man’s honour is dependent upon his wife’s virtue. Consequently, his violent reaction to his wife’s adultery becomes excusable, especially if committed in the heat of the moment.[/b] Moreover, although under the penal code, only the husband is “afforded” a lesser sentence for “provocation”, the woman’s family is often given a provocation defence by lenient court officials. Judges allegedly impose light sentences in such cases as an appreciation of the family’s suffering. [URL=http://www.omct.org/pdf/vaw/EgyptEng2001.pdf]www.omct.org/pdf/vaw/EgyptEng2001.pdf[/URL] Most (87.4%) of the women surveyed in the 1995 Egyptian Demographic and Health Survey subscribe to the view that husbands are justified in hitting their wife sometime (El-Zanaty et al., 1995), whereas women between the ages of 20 and 29, according to El- Zanaty et al.’s (1995) study, agree that violence was justified if a woman “talked back” to her husband (70%), for talking to another man (65%), for neglecting children (50%), for spending too much money, (42%), and for burning dinner (26%). Yount (2005) reports that “only 27% of respondents reported that a husband is never justified in beating his wife, whereas 52% reported that a husband is seldom or sometimes justified, and 21% reported that a husband is often justified” (p. 587). Other research conducted in rural Egypt (Forman & Ghosh, 2000) shows that 80% of women surveyed have said that beatings are common and often justified, particularly if the woman has refused to have sex with her husband. [b]Even though Egyptian women are not unique in their belief that the battered wife deserves it, cultural values and the criminal justice response make it a more pervasive issue. Although women possibly do report the violence to their family or their neighbors (Tadros, 1998; Yount, 2004), the prevailing attitudes that tolerate wife battery as “well-intentioned discipline” or as the fault of the victim lead to a more passive acquiescence in its inevitability.[/b] The prevailing social norms, which lead to such understandings of the nature of spousal abuse, are at issue here and need to be addressed systematically. http://tva.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/7/4/244.pdf [/QB][/QUOTE]
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