Gender-based Violence – A Cultural Issue that Needs to be Changed

Jane Bennett

According to Jane Bennett, the issue of gender-based violence is cultural, a bad behaviour, that needs to be changed and will take a village to change.

Jane Bennett, Head, UWI Open Campus

“Most of the times, it is women and mothers that socialize our children and we socialize boys and girls so we have to be very careful of the things we say and do. But women don’t raise the children on their own; we are looking at society and there are certain stigmas and practices that women, we conform to these things because that’s where we life. And so the culture and the mindset has to change. If we want these statistics to go down, if we want to save lives, we have to really say gender-based violence is everybody’s business. And while we don’t want to step in and think it is personal, we don’t want to get into people’s lives, but when there is a death or something serious, there is an outcry. So why the outcry? Why don’t we just accept it as normal? So obviously we know deeply within ourselves that there is something wrong and we really have to address it. And recognising that gender based violence is not just physical; it is psychological, it’s emotional and those are the intangibles that you can’t put your finger on.”