By Lori Adelman • @ladelman • 14 years ago

Sad Stats on Women’s Attitudes Towards Domestic Violence Internationally


A new post on Akimbo displays this graph of women’s attitudes towards domestic violence. As you can see, in many cases a disturbingly high percentage of women say it is sometimes OK for their husbands to hit them.
The graph depicts figures as high as 90% (Jordan) of women aged 15-49 responding in the affirmative when asked if a husband or partner is justified in hitting or beating his wife under certain circumstances.
The information in the graph comes from the UNICEF site Child Info: Monitoring the Situation of Women and Children and was collected between 2001 and 2007. There’s no info on attitudes of women in the U.S. in the study, but I’d be really interested to know if the U.S. figures were very different (based on the amount of “she deserved it” that went on during the whole Chris Brown/Rihanna escapade, I somehow doubt it).
You can view a chart with more country info and sources here.

Brooklyn, NY

Lori Adelman started blogging with Feministing in 2008, and now runs partnerships and strategy as a co-Executive Director. She is also the Director of Youth Engagement at Women Deliver, where she promotes meaningful youth engagement in international development efforts, including through running the award-winning Women Deliver Young Leaders Program. Lori was formerly the Director of Global Communications at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and has also worked at the United Nations Foundation on the Secretary-General's flagship Every Woman Every Child initiative, and at the International Women’s Health Coalition and Human Rights Watch. As a leading voice on women’s rights issues, Lori frequently consults, speaks and publishes on feminism, activism and movement-building. A graduate of Harvard University, Lori has been named to The Root 100 list of the most influential African Americans in the United States, and to Forbes Magazine‘s list of the “30 Under 30” successful mediamakers. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Lori Adelman is an Executive Director of Feministing in charge of Partnerships.

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