How is tyranny, abuse or exploitation committed against women?
Some may think of abuse and exploitation as merely confi ned to physical, sexual, psychological harm or suffering, battery, assault, coercion, harassment or arbitrary deprivation of liberty but actually it can range from discrimination, psychological manipulation and even deprivation of economic or material support or other forms of economic abuse including threats of such acts.
To understand the extent of tyranny against women one must, among other things, know the implications of psychological violence as against physical violence.
Psychological violence under the law is defined as an act or omission causing or likely to cause mental or emotional suffering to a woman such as intimidation, harassment, stalking, damage to property, public ridicule or humiliation, repeated verbal abuse and marital infidelity. It includes causing or allowing the woman to witness the physical, sexual or psychological abuse of a member of the family to which she belongs, or to witness pornography in any form including abusive injury to pets or to unlawful or unwanted deprivation of the right to custody or visitation of common children.
Economic abuse seems to be the most unfamiliar to most people especially since it may not be looked upon as abusive when inflicted by a husband to one’s own wife, mistress or common-law wife, or a woman with whom a man has or had a dating or sexual relationship, or with whom he has a common child. The act of or even the attempt to make a woman financially dependent to the man is considered by law as a form of economic abuse.
One specific example is when a man withdraws financial support or prevents his wife from engaging in any legitimate profession, occupation, business or activity, of course with the exception of cases where the other spouse or partner objects on valid, serious and moral grounds as defi ned in Article 73 of the Family Code. To be more specific, this includes actual deprivation or threat to deprive the woman of financial resources or the rightto use and enjoy the conjugal or property owned in common, destroying household property and even when the man tries to control the woman’s own money or property as well as when he solely controls the conjugal money.
It is my belief that women still remain in the realm of the private sphere because of their inherent function as child bearers and providers of care.
This tacit division of labor within the family structure helped to maintain women in their place mostly outside of civic life. It must have been pointed out by men from the past and even up to the present that a woman’s proper functions were assigned by nature, and should not be altered. But laws have been passed to liberate women to gradually expand their horizons of freedom.
It is not good enough to have rights enshrined in law, if people are not aware of those rights. In the creation of a better society, the government must exert effort to educate people on what their rights are. Laws for the protection of women (under RA 9262) are important development but they would be meaningless if unknown to the women populace and not enjoyed by them. There has also been a number of reforms to labor legislation and a number of significant rights have been won by the working women of our country. The challenging task is to ensure that these rights serve to fundamentally change the lives of women.
I can say that some progress has been made, but much still has to be done.
