Vol. 2 No. 3 (2022): Violence against women and other urgent problems to be resolved
The United Nations defines violence against women as "any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life".
Intimate partner violence refers to intimate partner or ex-partner behaviors that cause physical, sexual or psychological harm, including physical aggression, sexual coercion, psychological abuse and controlling behaviors.
Sexual violence is "any sexual act, attempt to consummate a sexual act or other act directed against a person's sexuality through coercion by another person, regardless of their relationship to the victim, in any setting.
In Peru, the Ministry of Health (MINSA) through the National Center for Epidemiology, Prevention and Disease Control (CDC Peru) reported more than 17 thousand cases of violence against women during 2022. The entity reported that, from January to October 2022, cases of violence against women within the group of family violence, accounted for 86% of total notifications nationwide.
Thus, this is a daily and highly prevalent problem in our society, as well as serious and urgent to solve. Official reports indicate that 7 out of 10 adult Peruvian women have been victims of psychological, physical and/or sexual violence at some point in their lives and, after the confinement motivated by COVID-19, this situation has worsened.
For this reason, it is important to study this problem in greater depth and this issue explores resilience in women who have been victims of violence, teenage pregnancy and other socially relevant topics.
María Gabriela García
Published:
2022-09-01
