The cycle of violence:
Women are kept trained, yoked and tied
By Bertha Shoko
Two years ago the Ugandan nation was shocked when its Vice President Dr Specioza Kazibwe revealed that she divorced her husband because he beat her. This confession by a high-profile person illustrates how domestic violence is not just confined to those who are poor and uneducated.
Domestic violence cuts across class, education, race and other categories. According to social commentators and psychologists, one in three Zimbabwean women of all classes are abused in their lifetime.
Statistics obtained from the Contact Family Counseling Centre in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, reveal that some 300 women sought counseling services because of relationship problems between January and June 2003. Of these women, 100 cited physical abuse by their spouses, and 250 of the women who sought counseling were professional women.
The now well-publicised example of how hidden domestic violence is among professional women in Zimbabwe is last year's murder of Rutendo Jongwe. A graduate of the University of Zimbabwe’s Law Department, she was killed by her husband, the late Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) Member of Parliament and also a lawyer, Learnmore Jongwe. He died in remand.
After her death, the Musasa Project, an organisation that counsels women who are abused by their partners or spouses, revealed that Rutendo had been their client.
The stories of her abusive relationship and her subsequent death, illustrate how women, despite their education, profession and even having knowledge of their rights, are still vulnerable to gender-based violence.
Why does domestic violence cut across educational and social boundaries? Because from a young age, women are socialised to persevere and safeguard their marriages at all costs.
This form of education is far more powerful than the formal education girls and boys, women and men receive later in life. Sociologist Nomsa Nkala explains that women stay in abusive relationships because socialisation produces " the woman in you and this is nothing you can begrudge women for".
We are nurtured to be mothers. We are 'trained' to be kind, loving and submissive. We are socialised to put everyone's feelings, especially a man's, before our own.
Once we learn how to be 'good women', we teach the same to our daughters, even though we want a better life for them. If a girl shows 'boyish' traits such as speaking out, not letting others knock her around and fighting back when provoked, mothers waste no time crushing such behaviour. A young girl's spirit is quickly reined in and she is admonished with warnings like: ''no man will want to marry you"!
As the young girl grows, at every step along the way, the messages on how a woman should behave are reinforced by every institution she passes through on her way to adulthood, until she is finally crafted by society into a woman. Pre-marriage counseling, whether within a religious institution, or culturally by the aunts or older sisters, reinforces the woman's role of preserving the marriage.
Society is not satisfied until a woman is trained, yoked and tied to the values that keep her in her place within the home and in society.
As a result, married women remain in abusive situations to protect their husbands and families. This is what they have been taught to do. Stepping out of a marriage means the woman has failed. Women in African societies also can pay a high price for initiating a divorce and divulging the secrets of their homes. Rutendo Jongwe paid with her life when she decided to end her marriage.
Socialisation's hold on a woman's mind and heart is strong. And it is this unlocked door which keeps women in the cycle of domestic violence.
This social ill must be curbed through stronger legislation that protects all of women's rights and which makes domestic violence a punishable offence. It also must be tackled by more and more voices which push it into the public, and by a vigorous campaign within the homes to raise differently the women and men of tomorrow.
Bertha Shoko is a Zimbabwean journalist. This article is part of the Gender and Media (GEM) Commentary Service which provides views and perspectives on current issues.