Working for Change

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HealthWiki > Where Women Have No Doctor > Chapter 19: Rape and Sexual Violence > Working for Change

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In this chapter:

 

In this chapter:

Women who have been raped can have long-lasting problems. But sexual violence affects everyone in a community. Almost all women and girls, whether they have been asssaulted or not, learn not to trust men. They learn not to attract men’s attention, not to walk alone, and not to talk to men they do not know.

To create a world without sexual violence, we must work for:

• communities with open and flexible gender roles, none of which include violence as a way to control others.
• laws, justice systems, and individual actions that protect people against violence.
• media that do not portray women as objects or as people who enjoy violence against them.
• an equal chance for everyone to participate in the community.
• more people being able to talk honestly with their partners about what they each expect from a sexual relationship.

Until we achieve these goals, we need to help victims and survivors of sexual violence. We can:

• educate elected leaders, clergy, teachers, and others about sexual violence, and ask them to participate in ending it.
• train health workers how to treat people who have been raped and how to care for both their physical and mental health needs with kindness and respect.
• encourage health workers to find out what is required to punish a rapist and to help victims fill out legal forms.
• teach women and girls how to defend themselves.
• teach young people about sex and sexuality and how to express their wishes clearly and respect the wishes of others.
• learn about laws in your country that protect people who have been raped and educate others about those laws.

In a small town in El Salvador, the police refused to stop a known rapist because he was the son of a wealthy man. So the women of the town began painting the word “rapist” outside his house. This raised awareness about the rapist in town and the whole community, including his family, forced him to leave.

How a community in South Africa organized against rape

Early one Saturday morning, a 59-year-old woman was raped and stabbed by a man who had raped other women in the past. The victim survived and identified the rapist to the police. He was arrested and the woman was taken to the hospital. But the police released the rapist the same afternoon. He walked free.

We women of the township were very angry. The police had protected a man who hurt women and made us afraid to walk alone on the street. So the women’s organization of our township decided to organize a protest.

Most of us work as domestic servants for rich white women who live in a nearby city. All of us stayed away from our jobs, demanding that the police charge this man with rape and assault, before we would go back to work.

We also asked the women we worked for to come speak with us. We wanted to talk to them about our problems. We know that all women, black and white, fear rape. We felt the white women might understand and be sympathetic to us. We also wanted the women whose husbands worked for the police to explain our problems to them and how bad it was for them to release a violent rapist back into the township.

But the white women were not sympathetic—they just got angry. We think they were upset because they had to do their own housework. When the Employers’ Federation came to see about the protest, we told our men, “Please do not speak for us. This is a women’s problem. Men are not being raped.” The Employers’ Federation would not meet with us, but after a week, a group of white women came to talk to us. We called off the protest, even though the rapist was only charged with assault, not rape. But people in the township were so angry that the rapist could no longer stand to live there.

The police arrested several of us who had organized the protest. They did not believe that women had organized the protest. They think men are behind everything that women do. But we women had become very strong.

We raised our voices to make people start to talk openly about the problem of rape. Most people don’t talk about rape—they feel ashamed. Often the family of the raped girl or woman does not want to talk about it and does not want others to either.

But here it is different. We started organizing in the community for education, child care, pensions, and so on. We started talking about all the problems and things that we need to change. So we talk about rape and any sexual assault. People now see sexual assault as another kind of oppression. All the people in the township think the same about this; we are united in the struggle.

Anyone who was raped is trusted. If a woman says she was raped, we support her, no matter who she is. Even if she has a drinking problem, a rape is still a crime. In fact, it is worse because she was in a weak position. We do not blame a woman for a rape. We do not say that the rape was the woman’s fault. So women can talk about sexual violence openly and they will get support.

This page was updated:13 Nov 2023