A question that society asks when it hears that there is an international day to combat violence against women. yes, woman is being subjected to violence, when she cannot participate in public discussions under the pretext that she is unable to understand that she is being subjected to violence, and when she is married without caring about her opinion because she does not know her interest, this is violence and of course the examples go on…

Women are the foundation of life since creation began on earth, and no matter how much men or patriarchal societies try to belittle them by restricting them to customs and excluding them by legislation and laws, but their pivotal role in human life makes the man cannot dispense with her presence in his life,  as she is his mother, wife, sister and daughter, and society cannot be healthy and renewed by men alone, but the desire for exclusivity and domination, made males take advantage of their muscular superiority to abolish, exploit and transform the opposite sex. Through the practice of violence against her, which has taken many forms throughout the ages, including societal violence, which includes verbal, physical and psychological violence, and the negative impact that such violence has on the roles of women entrusted to them.

Violence against women has been perpetuated through mythology and selective interpretation of religious texts, popular proverbs, in addition to the role of writers and poets who framed women with love and lust only, in addition to the opinion of philosophers, which did not differ from the above by portraying them inferior to men.

Turning to another form of violence, which is economic violence, which is the best example of restricting women to specific jobs because they are women, and discrimination between them and men on the basis of gender in the field of work in terms of wages, women in this field may also be subjected to sexual exploitation in exchange for continuation,  but the most common in our societies is the husband’s deprivation of his working wife of her wages, as he allows her to work, moreover, our societies look at working women inferiorly, since in their work Mixing with men, or it causes the man to take the opportunity to get this job, and of course this ensures that the woman remains under the guardianship of the man economically.

By virtue of the above, women have suffered and continue to suffer from political violence, meaning their exclusion from all decision-making positions, and even if they exist in one of them… they are deprived of powers and marginalize opinions and decisions.

Of course, in this article, I do not want to be melancholic, but I wanted to talk about the general reality of women in society, although I did not address all aspects of violence, but I want to say  that there are exceptional women  who were able, despite the difficulties, to prove that women are capable of playing all roles and succeeding in them,  and history bears witness to that. (The society represented by men knows that women are capable of playing all roles and that activating their role will accelerate the development of country, but patriarchal society insists on keeping women away, thus exclusivity and control over all aspects of life, including women as objects).

At the end of the talk, I emphasize that the will of women is the only one that makes them able to overcome social, economic, and even political challenges, as well as the will of women is what makes them satisfied with the image that men have drawn for them, it is not enough to enact local or international laws and conventions that combat violence against women if women themselves are not satisfied with getting out of this stereotype, as we often find women who justify violence against them as a man’s right, and women must realize What does it exist and what does human life mean without it, when a woman thinks that if she stops representing that stereotype and takes her natural place as a human being, what will happen? And how this will reflect positively on society, and only then will you realize that it is not a follower but an active partner, with which a real balance is achieved in any society.

Zabiya Al Nasser

Civil activist defending women’s rights from the Syrian city of Raqqa.