High bride price aiding marital violence

High bride price or dowry has been cited as one of the possible causes of violence against women in the Ghanaian society. The Commissioner for Human Rights and Administrative Justice Francis Emile Short who said this added that the issue of marital violence is on the ascendancy and has called on all Ghanaians to help curb violence against women in general.

Justice Short said as at the end of October, wife-battering cases had risen to 400 percent over the total figure for the whole of last year. Commissioner Short was speaking at the launching of “Break, the Silence” an advocacy campaign aimed at encouraging women to report domestic violence by the African Women Lawyers Association (AWLA) in Accra. He said some people have laid the issue of marital violence at the doorstep of the institution of marriage itself.

“In all parts of Ghana, the transfer of bridal wealth from one family to the other under customary marriage tends to reduce women from active participants to passive recipients, ” Commissioner Short said emphasizing “In Ghanaian society where bride price is unsympathetically high, the man after painfully paying this price is likely to treat the wife more as a possession than a partner in marriage.”

He said in such a case the initial and very important contract seems to establish the ground rules by which unequal power relations are nurtured in the home.

According to the World Bank, in 1993 alone violence against women was ranked as high as cancer as the cause of death and incapacitating women of childbearing age. It was also a greater cause of ill health than road accidents and malaria combined.

According to Short, the unequal distribution of power between the sexes in a society that emphasizes male dominance and female subordination may partly account for women being mostly victims of violence. WHO estimates that at least 20 percent of the world’s women have been physically or sexually abused by a man. In Ghana, studies show that 30 percent of women have experienced domestic violence.

In the USA alone 700,000 women are raped or sexually assaulted while two million girls aged five to 15 are trafficked, sold or forced into commercial sex.

Physical aggressive acts between husband and wife range from marital rape, battering, punching, biting, hurling objects and using deadly weapons.

“I dare that the Ghanaian home is gradually becoming an environment for nurturing violence,” Commissioner Short said adding “Studies and Media reports show that marital and domestic murders account for majority of murders that occur in Ghanaian society.’’

Husbands he said undertake more than half of such murders. Married women are however reluctant to report sex which takes place under coercion and threat of death due to the resultant consequences.

“Rape is likely to occur unreported within marital relationships in which there are distinct unequal power relations and where the woman is completely economically dependent on the man resulting in the woman not having any in put in decisions concerning the house.

Again Short said sexual violence may not be reported due to the stigma that is attached to the perpetrator and the victim.

“There have been media reports of children as young as three months who have suffered rape by their fathers,” Justice Short said adding “Recent years have seen a rapid escalation of reports of assault of children by their parents especially their fathers.

Again domestic helps or maidservants have suffered violence and faced threats from their madams and mistresses.

“Elderly members in many families in Ghana have also suffered torture and inhuman treatment at the hands of their own relatives for allegedly being the cause of misfortunes in the family. “In 2001, in Northern Ghana, a suspected witch was compelled by her children to drink DDT and die.”

Again Commissioner Short said other people on consultation with a prophet, mallam or soothsayer tend to be violent towards a close relation when some misfortune they have suffered is blamed on these relations.

In addition, Commissioner Short said the upsurge of female-headed households due to the increase in divorce cases brings about tensions, which sometimes results in violence.

“Tensions associated with family break-ups may increase the chance of an adult family member acting violently towards a child or another family member.”

Supporting Short, the Executive Director of AWLA Edna Kuma said it is sad to note that the world is not free from gender based violence, ten years after a UN resolution on the issue.

“The rights of women to live lives free from violence is still a mirage and the rape, defilement, assault, sexual abuse and harassment of our sisters still continue,” she said.

AWLA she said is currently training 165 senior police crime officers’ prosecutors and investigators of domestic violence.

“We are supplying all the 647 police Stations, Units and Posts with a copy each of a compilation of national, international and regional laws on domestic violence,” Kuma said.

The Danish Ambassador to Ghana Ole Blicher Olsen said poverty in Ghana is by far highest among food crop farmers, which is dominated by women. He said gender differences also exist with respect to women’s and men’s legal status and protection and rights and protection under the law.

“Some socio-cultural factors continue to re-enforce the gender inequalities and harmful customs such as female genital mutilation, the persecution of widows and the trokosi system which still prevails,” he said.

Blicher said by mainstreaming gender into the sectors of health, transport, water, good governance and the private sector support where each sector programme is striving to promote equity and women’s active participation under the programmes, the issue of women’s development would be enhanced. Representative of the Leadership and Advocacy for Women in Africa (LAWA) Ohenewaa Owoo said since the inception of LAWA, the NGO has done a fair share of parliamentary lobbying to get members of parliament to support the draft Bill on demestic violence.