Gender-based violence
Gender-based violence, also known as GBV, is any violence or harm perpetrated against a person because of their gender. Often, the term violence against women is also used. Violence against women means women and girls are targeted because they are female. Also, transgender and non-binary individuals experience gender-based violence. GBV originates from:
- Structural inequality between genders,
- Discrimination,
- And the unequal power relations that still exist in our societies.
On average in the world, every 11 minutes, one woman or a girl is killed by their intimate partner or someone in their own family. As boys and men are clearly overrepresented in the homicide statistics worldwide as victims, those killings are mostly done in the public sphere, and include killings done by people outside their family.
Most often, a killing carried out by a family member is a continuation and escalation of earlier domestic violence, representing the worst-case outcome. Violence includes different types of violence: physical violence, psychological or emotional violence, sexual violence, economic violence, digital violence, religious or spiritual violence, honour-related violence, disciplinary violence, stalking, maltreatment, and neglect. Violence against women can specifically include, for example, forced abortion, forced pregnancy, forced marriage, virginity testing, and FGM.
Women and girls are also overrepresented in human trafficking statistics. The terms gender-related killing, femicide, or feminicide also include killings targeting women that are perpetrated by people who are not family members.
