Religion, culture, and stereotyping fueling gender-based violence

OPINION

The issue of gender-based violence, especially against women and children, is on the lips of almost every well-meaning member of society.

Nations, including Uganda, have undertaken stringent legal measures and affirmative action initiatives to address this vice. Local, regional, and international Conventions and Statutes have been ratified in this regard, all in the spirit of addressing gender-based violence, promoting equity and social justice for women, and of course, uplifting their status in society so as to increase their contribution to the socio-economic transformation of their nations. No doubt, a lot has been achieved in this regard, yet still, most women around the globe are still marginalized.

The New Vision of Friday, March 6, on page 3 published a headline, "President Museveni condemns violence against women, girls." This was after he (President) hosted a delegation of United Nations (UN) and European Union (EU) officials where they briefed him about the UN and EU Spotlight Initiative aimed at eliminating violence against women and girls by 2030.

The President described violence against women and girls as an "act of cowardice and criminal." As such, he pledged his support to the initiative to eliminate such gender-based violence. Quoting the 2016 Uganda Demographic Household Survey, the New Vision reported that in Uganda, "56% of women and girls between the ages of 15 and 49 experience spousal violence, while 22% are subjected to sexual violence."

However, when discussing the issue of gender-based violence against women, it is imperative to look at the entire ecology and histology of gender-based violence and marginalization of women in communities.

Right from the time of creation, one would wonder why God did not create the woman independently of man as he did for man. In other words, did God have to make the man (Adam) asleep and then get out one of his (man's) ribs to create the woman (Eve)?

Already, this puts the woman in a feeble position for she partly owes her existence to man as if to imply that without a man's rib, there would be no woman. No wonder, Ephesians 5:24 stresses that "wives must submit completely to their husbands just as the church submits itself to Christ."

According to the Oxford Advanced Leaner's English Dictionary, the word ‘submit' and hence submissive means, "too willing to accept somebody else's authority and willing to obey them without questioning anything they want you to do." In this, a woman is painted as a voiceless being whose freedom of expression and speech are denied from the beginning. In the Christian Bible, there are many verses and scriptures that clearly ridicule and demean women.

For instance, Proverbs 9:13 defines the word ‘stupidity' as "a loud, ignorant, shameless woman who sits at the door of her house or on a seat in the highest part of the town, and calls out to people passing by, who are minding their own business: ‘come in, ignorant people!' To the foolish she says, "stolen water is sweeter. Stolen bread tastes better.'

Her victims do not know that the people die who go to her house, that those who have already entered are now deep in the world of the dead." Clearly, proper critical discourse analysis of this verse paints a woman as a murderer, a killer.

Even in Genesis chapter 3, it is the woman (Eve) who "took the forbidden fruit, first ate it, and then gave some to her husband (Adam), who also ate it." Indeed, when God asked Adam whether he had eaten the fruit he (God) told them not to eat, Adam replied, "The woman you put here with me gave me the fruit, and I ate it."

Here we see a woman being painted as rebellious, disobedient, and an evil person. Still in Mathew 15:38, Jesus fed "4000 men with seven loaves of bread and a few fish not counting women and children."

Again in Mark 6:44, Jesus fed "5000 men with five loaves of bread and two fish not counting women and children." Remember, in all these instances women and children were among the crowds that Jesus fed but the apostles decided to make women and children insignificant as if dehumanizing them.

In many other religions, there is sheer marginalization and bullying of women, and often operating at the periphery while the key core duties are left to men. This divine bullying and stereotyping of women cannot be ignored. For it has an implication of how society perceives women and girls.

Likewise, in many of our traditions and cultures, women have been subjected to bullying and stereotyping. In many of our cultures, women were denied certain foodstuffs such as chicken and such were reserved for men and considered a taboo for women.

In fact, in many of our communities, even up to now if one had a journey to travel and in the morning the first person they meet is a woman, they spit, cancel the journey, or perform certain exorcist rituals as the journey might be ominous for just meeting a woman.

In this case, a woman is considered a curse, a bad omen. Such cultural misogynies and stereotyping cannot be overlooked when dealing with the issue of gender-based violence against women, not to mention the effect of bride price that a man has to give to the parents of the woman (bride) for traditional marriages, as though a woman is a chattel to be exchanged for material gain.

In the English language, culture is a complicated word. It is used to describe high art (classical music, theater, painting, and sculpture) and it is often used to contrast these forms with popular art. However, more broadly, Rice defines culture as "the values, attitudes, beliefs, artefacts and other meaningful symbols represented in the pattern of life adopted by people that help them interpret, evaluate and communicate as members of society."

Therefore, culture both affects and describes human behaviour. Geertz states that culture is seen not as complexes of concrete behaviour patterns-customs, usages, traditions, habit clusters-but as a set of control mechanisms-plans, recipes, rules, instruction for the governing of behaviour. This means that humankind is dependent upon the control mechanisms of culture for ordering its behaviour.

However, Hofstede gives a broader meaning when he defines culture as "the collective mental programming of the people in an environment. Culture is not a characteristic of individuals; it encompasses a number of people who were conditioned by the same education and life experience."

By this conceptualization, it means that culture is learned, not inherited. It derives from one's social environment, not from one's genes. Hence, culture is different from human nature and still different from personality. As such, Hofstede distinguishes four manifestations of culture: symbols, rituals, heroes, and values.

Symbols are words, gestures, pictures, or objects that carry a particular meaning recognized only by those who share a culture. For instance, the words of a language or a particular kind of jargon belong in this category.

Heroes are persons, alive or dead, real or imaginary, who possess characteristics that are highly prized in a society, and thus serve as role models for behaviour. Rituals are the collective activities considered socially essential within a culture.

They are carried out for their own sake. Examples include ways of greeting, ways of paying respect to others, and social and religious ceremonies. Values are broad tendencies to prefer a certain state of affairs over others.

On the other hand, stereotyping means mentally placing people in categories. Stereotypes can be functional or dysfunctional. Stereotyping is functional when we accept it as a natural process to guide our expectations. Stereotyping is dysfunctional if we use it to judge individuals incorrectly, seeing them only as part of a group.

Article 32 (2) of the Uganda Constitution prohibits "Laws, cultures, customs and traditions which are against the dignity, welfare or interest of women or any other marginalized group to which Article 32 (1) relates or which undermine their status" and Article 246 (1) provides for the institution of traditional leader or cultural leader who may "exist in any area of Uganda in accordance with the culture, customs and traditions or wishes and aspirations of the people to whom it applies." In my opinion, I do not think we need a unique piece of legislation to deal with gender-based violence.

 Irrespective of the gender and age that is subjected to violence, already this is catered for under the various sections of the Penal Code Act, be it assault, battery, severe bodily harm, murder, manslaughter, etcetera, are all catered for under the Penal Code Act of the laws of Uganda.

Therefore, whoever subjects another person to any form of violence, he or she should be subjected to the due legal process. Perhaps, if the intention is to address marginalization of women and children, the affirmative action should be broad enough to address cultural and religious practices that dehumanize women.

Otherwise, although affirmative action is aimed at addressing injustice against women, the phenomenon cannot be fully remedied with affirmative action because the deep structures in society that generate the marginalisation of women are left undamaged; thus, the affirmative action approach ends up creating injustices of recognition rendering it self-contradictory, as if a medicine that harms its patients.

To avoid this double whammy, I would advocate for transformative remedies which will reduce social inequality without creating stigmatised classes of vulnerable people perceived as beneficiaries of special largesse, and have the twin effect of addressing distribution and recognition.

Basically there are two deficiencies inherent in the use of affirmative action— class differentiation and stigmatization of the disadvantaged— which adds the insult of misrecognition to the injury of deprivation, which can be addressed with the transformative approach, which has the strength of blurring the class differences, promoting solidarity and helping with the problem of misrecognition.

Despite the obvious benefits of an affirmative action policy, its blanket application is often discounted since it has the potential to give undue advantage to undeserving segments of the society leading to the phenomenon of arbitrary favouritism. For instance, there many girls from economically powerful families who enjoy the 1.5 points added to every female student who joins university, yet many boys from severely impoverished families are left out.

There is need for civic awareness about the rights and freedoms as well as dignity of humanity, religious, cultural and political leaders must all get involved first by stopping forthwith the religious and cultural practices that marginalize women and children. Otherwise, government and civil society efforts to fight gender-based violence without addressing the histology and entire ecology of this social injustice is to buy a pig in a poke.