Alcohol Abuse, Women, and Domestic Violence (Part 4).
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines intimate partner violence (IPV) as ‘any behaviour within an intimate relationship that causes physical, psychological or sexual harm’5 WHO recently estimated that the global prevalence of physical and/or sexual IPV to be 30% among ever-partnered women.
Most female victims of completed rape (78.7%) experienced their first rape before the age of 25, and almost half (40.4%) experienced their first completed rape before age 18 (28.3% between 11 and 17 years old and 12.1% at or before the age of 10).
Alcohol use, especially heavy drinking and drinking large amounts per occasion, is linked to male-to-female partner violence. Across different cultures, violence is more severe when one or both partners (most often the male partner) has been drinking. Research has clearly established that alcohol plays an integral role in domestic contexts of violent behaviour. In addition, across the globe, IPV is also a power issue, reflecting the disparities in the power relationships which
emerge between men and women.
The World Health Organization (WHO) describes the levels of violence experienced by the world’s women as ‘a global public health problem of epidemic proportions, requiring urgent action’.
We were in the midst of a crisis of injustice and inequity then, and we still are as far as domestic violence is concerned. As long as we fail to resolve the problem of alcohol abuse, we will have inadvertently preserved the ineluctability of drunken assaults on the women they call their wives or intimate partners, while pretending the spurious posture of a veritable partner of his loving wife. The time has truly come to extirpate the violent assaults of men who make their intimate partners suffer the terror of their alcoholic rage.
Women Health Open J. 2017; 3(3): e18-e20. doi: 10.17140/WHOJ-3-e012
