Hello, my name is Kathryn Yount, and

I'm on faculty in the departments of

Global Health and Sociology at Emory, and
I've been doing research on violence,
primarily against women and
children, over the past 20 years.
I'm delighted to be with you today,
and I'll be covering four main topics.
First, we'll talk a little bit about the
global scale of intimate partner violence.
Second, the global scale of
attitudes that are accepting of
physical partner violence against women.
Third, the global scale of
non-partner sexual violence.
And finally, global trends and
laws criminalizing partner
violence against women.
There's some very recent estimates
that have become available.
Regarding the percentage of ever partnered
women experiencing physical and or
sexual partner violence.
These estimates are based on
the best available data that we
have from nationally
representative samples and others.
And as you can see from the slide,
levels of partner violence against women,
either physical or sexual,
are extremely high, globally.
We have countries on the left hand side,
and as you can see, globally in 2010,
roughly 30% of women ages 15 years or
older have experienced physical and or
sexual partner violence in their lifetime.
I will underscore that most of
the estimates I'll be talking about
today are probably some
degree of underestimate of
the levels of violence experienced
by women around the world.
So roughly one third of women having
experienced partner violence of
either a physical or
sexual nature over their lifetime.
There've been a number of surveys
around the world that have
also looked at attitudes
about violence against women.
Interestingly, asking men about their
attitudes about violence against women,
and women themselves about their
attitudes about violence against women.
And the slide that you see here,
shows the percentage of women
who argue that a husband
is justified in hitting or
beating his wife if she
refuses to have sex with him.
These are women 15 to 49 in
countries around the world,
primarily lower income countries.
And as you can see, the percentages above
the red line indicate that fully 30%
of women or more, in 7 of 29 surveys
argue that physical violence
against a woman for refusing sex with
their husband is, in fact, justified.
And one of the oddities that we actually
see in surveys around the world.
Particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, is
women themselves sometimes more often will
justify violence against women,
more often than will men.
And we're trying to understand
the reasons for that, and
we believe that in settings where the
opportunities for women are fairly low.
And levels of violence are fairly high,
that women may actually report what
they perceive the community norm to be.
Rather than their own personal points
of view, for reasons of safety or
for reasons of fear of the consequences
if they make their own attitudes known.
And people believe that may be possible
that men understand quite well.
The kinds of attitudes that
should be reported and so
may in fact underestimate their favorable
attitudes about violence against women.
So we're really trying to understand
attitudes around the world better, but
suffice it to say,
there are a large number of countries
around the world, where violence and
particularly physical violence against
women is still considered justifiable.
In the next slide, we see the prevalence
in non-partner sexual violence,
so this would be sexual violence
that occurs by teachers,
by strangers, by anyone who is not
an intimate partner of a woman.
And these estimates just recently became
vail, available from data collected again
around the world both in resource-poor and
resource-wealthy countries.
And the best estimates that we have of
non-partner sexual violence globally
are that approximately 7.2% of
women report that they have
experienced some form of
non-partner sexual violence.
There is some uncertainty
about these estimates.
And so we believe that,
the margin of error for
the estimates
are approximately 5.3 to 9.1%.
And these estimates have been generated
for different regions of the world and
I've just noted a couple of regions
marking the lower bound and
upper bound for these estimates.
The lower bound, purportedly,
is in the area of South Asia where 3.3%
of women have reported some form
of non-partner sexual violence.
And the upper bound,
purportedly sub-Saharan Africa and
the Central Region, where 21% of women
have reported non-partner sexual violence.
I do want to caution about
ranking regions around the world.
Because questions about non-partner sexual
violence, have different sensitivities and
different context.
And there may be quite a bit of
variation in levels of underreporting.
And so the authors of this
particular paper have suggested that
the estimates are probably subject to
some form of differential underreporting.
But nonetheless, the main point is
that levels of non-partner sexual
violence are very high, unacceptably high
on human rights grounds around the world.
And that we need more effort invested
into trying to get a handle on
probably what are higher magnitudes of
non-partner sexual violence
in regions around the world.
Now I'd like to talk a little bit about
changes in policies and laws around
the world with respect to various forms
of violence against women and children.
And, what we see is that
over the last 50 or
so years there have been really
remarkable changes in policy.
For example.
What we know about laws and
policies with regards to rape and
child sexual abuse worldwide,
between 1945 and
2005, primarily there have been
an expansion in scope of reform.
Providing stipulations for protection, or
criminaliz, criminalization of rape and
child sexual abuse.
And there have been rel,
there's been relatively less contraction
in terms of coverage of those policies.
And so we are seeing dramatic
change in the policy arena.
With respect to rape and
child sexual abuse.
We're also seeing dramatic
change in terms of
the number of policies around the world
that address intimate partner violence.
Perhaps more recent, and so
for example from 1975 to 2010.
The number of policies addressing
intimate partner violence,
in some capacity, primarily against women,
has increased to over 250.
And so we are seeing, in response to
the increasing availability of data,
suggesting very high and in fact endemic
levels of violence against women.
Efforts to try to criminalize various
forms of violence against women and
children, and to provide varying degrees
of protection for women around the world.
In addition to changes in policy,
interestingly, we're always,
also seeing changes in attitudes,
and so I had mentioned earlier.
That a fairly high percentage
of women find reasons to
justify violence against women.
Well you act,
if you actually look at surveys over time,
we are seeing an increasing percentage
of women who are actually rejecting
all reasons to justify various
forms of violence against women.
And there are scholars who
would argue that there has
been essentially a global sea change.
That diffusion of global cultural
scripts about women's rights,
about gender equality.
And the ills of violence against women,
has been an important macro level factor.
That's influenced national policy makers
as well as people at the grassroots level.
And, so, although we're seeing very
high levels of various forms of
violence against women, we are also
seeing substantial policy change,
as well as increasing change in
the attitudes of laypeople on the ground.