Women and Power: Education, Religion and Identity

5. The Violence of Power: Power Relations and Women’s Experience of Violence

5 The Violence of Power: Power Relations and Women’s Experience of Violence Violence against women involves the physical and verbal (both subtle and overt) coercion of women of all age groups, ethnic/racial backgrounds, religious persuasions, and socio-economic background. Violence against women is the profane treatment of women and total disrespect for them. It is a reflection of the inferior social position of women and the outrage that men feel towards them. Physical and verbal coercion of women have adverse implications on women’s physical, psychological, emotional and economic well-being. It affects women’s reproductive rights, their progress (both at work and in institutions of learning) and their ability to function fully as citizens. Although many well-meaning scholars, activists and religious leaders are comfortable with the psychological model of explanation of the abuse of women, violence against women is actually an inevitable consequence of the unequal relations of power between men and women in many societies. Freire (1993), Foucault (1980) and Hooks (1984) offer illuminating views of the relationship between power and violence. Hooks (1984) captured the relationship between power and violence as follows: The Western philosophical notion of hierarchical rule and coercive authority is … the root cause of violence against women, of adult violence against children, of all vio lence between those who dominate and those who are dominated’ (p. 118). Foucault compels us to take a deep and broad view of power. Mejiuni and Obilade (2004) observed that Foucault alerts us to the fact that individuals see power in terms of apparatus of state alone; and so, they think an analysis of power that does not focus on economic issues is unimportant, and individuals also believe that ‘they’ do not exercise power, ‘others’ do. Foucault believed that power is ‘present in the smallest, apparently most inconsequential human 108 Women and Power: Education, Religion and Identity interactions’ (Brookfield 2001:7), and it is exercised through the body, sexuality, family, kinship, knowledge, technology and so on. Violence against women is therefore both a means by which men preserve their power, and a habit. In this respect, Hooks stated that whatever group is in power would likely use coercive authority to maintain that power if it is challenged or threatened. It is therefore not surprising that when women put up resistance to their oppression and domination by men, men visit violence on them to maintain their authority and their dominant position. Freire (1993), also stated that ‘violence is initiated by those who oppress, exploit, fail to recognize others as persons – not by those who are oppressed, exploited and unrecognized’ (p. 55). It is for the reason of maintaining dominance over others that victims of violence who have, through their own oppression, imbibed the view that the powerful need to maintain their authority over the powerless through coercion, also mete out violence to others less powerful than they are. Violence becomes a habit when the powerless do not resist violence in a productive way because of a variety of reasons. And although macabre, the powerful then enjoy meting out violence to the powerless, especially where the environment is conducive – for instance, where the culture of silence and the culture of impunity are pervasive. This explains why men hit, rape, sexually harass and exploit women who are ‘gentle’, ‘meek’, ‘good’ and ‘feminine’, and also socially, economically, culturally and politically less powerful than they are. This is also the reason why men mete out violence to babies, children and mentally retarded persons who trust them and or who do not have the capacity to object to their violation. Foucault (1980) hypothesized that resistance to power is to be found at the point where power relations are exercised. He said: There are no relations of power without resistances; the latter are all the more real and effective because they are formed right at the point where relations of power are exercised: resistance to power does not have to come from elsewhere to be real, nor is it inexorably frustrated through being the compatriot of power. It exists all the more by being in the same place as power; hence, like power, resistance is multiple and can be integrated in global strategies (p. 142). Unfortunately, violence against women as a means of preserving men’s power and as a habit continues to thrive in the context of a distorted view of God and God’s will, and an unfair and inequitable insistence on adherence to what we have been told are God...