“Violence against women is endemic in every country and culture, causing harm to millions of women and their families, and this has been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. But unlike Covid-19, violence against women cannot be stopped with a vaccine.”

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director general, quoted on BBC News, March 09 2021.

Here are the key facts, as issued by the World Health Organisation, to be found on the WHO website:

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• Violence against women – particularly intimate partner violence and sexual violence – is a major public health problem and a violation of women’s human rights.
• Estimates published by WHO indicate that globally about 1 in 3 (30%) of women worldwide have been subjected to either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime.
• Most of this violence is intimate partner violence. Worldwide, almost one third (27%) of women aged 15-49 years who have been in a relationship report that they have been subjected to some form of physical and/or sexual violence by their intimate partner.
• Violence can negatively affect women’s physical, mental, sexual, and reproductive health, and may increase the risk of acquiring HIV in some settings.
• Violence against women is preventable. The health sector has an important role to play to provide comprehensive health care to women subjected to violence, and as an entry point for referring women to other support services they may need.

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Sometimes I am beginning a blog entry with a soft opening. This time I thought the statement should speak for itself, first. I am repeating it: “Violence against women is endemic in every country and culture.” This is a global statement, and it is deeply worrying. If the arrow of time is being added, then the full dimension is disclosed: “Violence against women is, and always was, endemic in every country and culture.”

Of course, there will be those who will say: “But we have made some progress, or may be even significant progress, haven’t we? After all, we are not the same people like, say, in the stone age”, they will say. And I would respond that I am not sure that such an argument is carrying any significant value. I suspect that it will be a tough exercise attempting to qualify, with hard facts, whether there is some sort of lasting cultural improvement. How do you apply measurements to constantly moving targets? Or, may be, we would not find significant improvement at all: May be we don’t use axes and headbangers made from mammoth bones any more, but our means of violence, abuse, and subjugation have become more subtle, but by no means less severe. But I would especially say that any such argument distracts from the worrying fact which is carried in the central sentence of this blog entry, which I repeat for the third time now: “Violence against women is endemic in every country and culture.”

Since a few years I feel there are visible tendencies of male supremacy fighting back against achievements making sure that all gender and gender related identification have equal rights, and chances, and that there shall be no male domination of any form, including, of course, male violence. Sometimes these backlashes were subtle, sometimes hidden under seemingly rational arguments. I remember reading about male resistance against increasing gender balance in ranks and files in Silicon Valley companies, a few years ago. I also saw how the rude and radicalised cultural and political discussions under President Nr 45 in the United States led to bluntly open visibility of male arrogance. I would also say that this male arrogance is a main driver behind cultural supremacy (yes, globally there is not only something like white supremacy), and phenomena like these thrive in times when nationalism and fascism begin to seek opportunities to dominate a political and cultural discourse, again. For me, there are visible connections.

Like with many other topics, development of extreme ends on a scale is depending on what shifts are being registered in the so-called mainstream part of that spectrum: The more mainstream misogyny, the more likely not only structural, but also emotional abuse and physical repression and violence. So the cultural and societal shifts which are nagging and biting and chipping away at achievements that we managed over the past many decades, on values of humanity, human rights, principles such as democracy and the rule of law, these profound shifts in mainstream society, they naturally affect the extremes. There are paths from shameless misogyny towards brutal violence. These are the same paths which lead from systematic replacement of truth with lies to violence.

The German newspaper “Der Tagesspiegel” recently published an opinion piece from Armin Lehmann: “Wie wir heldenhafter werden koennen“. A brilliant piece on right-wing nationalism and re-ocurring fascism in Germany, and the connection between “manlihood” or “manhood” and nationalist archetypes of “heroism” on the one side and the restoration of “natural gender order”, meaning men first, women second, and labeling anything else as deviant, weak, or sick. Did we not think these times were long gone? We are back, full circle. And since political parties such as the German AfD find more and more support, and do actively infiltrate society by hiding those attitudes which still may lead to a powerful outcry, we shall not be surprised about the consequences on the extreme ends of any societal spectrum. But at the extreme ends and in the middle portions, male supremacy is a leading reason for the changes which we experience. Since the referenced article above is in German, here a very profound analysis in English, a long piece from the German magazine Der Spiegel: “The Dark World of Extremist Misogyny”. Introducing into their analysis, the authors state: “Hatred against women is fostered online, but increasingly often, it erupts into real-world violence. The problem extends all the way into German parliament. Some experts describe it as a new form of terrorism.”

And then there is Covid-19. I recently wrote about the context between the pandemic and mounting evidence of violence against vulnerable groups, such as women and children.

So, what can I say? Simply the same as I do since many years: As long as we may have the discussion about gender rights, equality, gender mainstreaming, zero-tolerance against violence, the glass-ceilings preventing women from having the same chances and paychecks as men, it does not mean that we can slow down. Rather, we need to double down. Because, like in the case of other values, currently things are rolling back.