Tackling Violence Against Women
During yesterday’s Assembly plenary session I replied to our debate on tackling violence against women.
The statistics are worrying when we consider that 70% of domestic violence victims are women and that on average a woman suffers 35 attacks before even seeking help. As a nation we cannot ignore the fact that we have a higher proportion of attacks against women compared to the UK average.
Whilst there was a huge amount of agreement about the issue and the challenge to produce a strategy which combats this, there is still a lot of work to do in tackling the cultural issues.
For all the strategies to help women who have been attacked, in the provision of immediate help whether in protection, housing, health or counselling, this does nothing to address the route causes. Prevention has to be the goal.
We need to start addressing gender stereotyping and issues in the home. We need children to understand what it means to respect another individual. Ultimately unless we understand and challenge what it is that persuades a man to attack a woman then we won’t succeed in bringing the number of assaults down. We’ll just carry on dealing with the consequences instead.
For us, violence against people because of their sexuality, race or religion is unacceptable, so why are we so sluggish when that person is female?