Siden jeg skriver oppgave på engelsk, ble også denne teksten til på engelsk. Det kan være tonnevis av skrivefeil og grammatiske feil, og språket er nok ikke så akademisk enda. Jeg er klar over at kildehenvisninger mangler. Jeg håper noen vil lese, og så si hva de syns, på godt og vondt.
Empowering married women can make them able to earn money to live and survive on their own, which if necessary is of great importance. Psychologically, knowing that one is capable and independent is also very important.
However, the approach of men and masculinities may instead make the men stop their beatings, or – better yet – stop men from starting beating; from ever contemplating that it is a good idea in the first place.
Now, feminist theorists would perhaps never see it as a better option for a woman to stay in a marriage with an abusive husband, even if he has stopped beating her. Research, at least from the Western world, show that it is most likely that he will some day beat again. Women here are taught to always encourage their friends to leave abusive relationships because of this.
It is a dangerous thought that Western researches should want something else from women in for instance Sub-Saharan Africa or the Middle East. It may therefore seem that one should always encourage a woman to leave her abusive spouse, no matter the cultural environment they live in. It is very true that one should never use culture as an excuse for violence. Violence is abuse, no matter what. There are never any excuses for violence, but there may be explanations.
We need to see the importance of looking behind the abuse, to see what the reasons for it may be. Research shows that in many settings, tradition and culture both accept and expect women to be beaten. The same goes for men: even if they themselves do not personally like seeing their wife being hurt, many experience such an immense peer pressure from their community that they take to beating despite their personal morale against it.
Now, with this in mind, it is clear that one needs to target these harmful cultural traditions and destructive gender roles, because it will eliminate a lot of the current spousal violence. Sceptics may say that wives are still being beaten by husbands in the Western world even though people there generally believe it is wrong. That is very true, and this violence also happens in developing countries in relationships where both people are just as enlightened, empowered and educated as the couples in the Western world. These cases, all over the world, need a whole other approach in order to be dealt with. But as for all those couples experiencing violence solely because of social acceptance and expectance, tackling these cultural aspects of harmful gender roles is what needs to be done. Not, of course, instead of empowering the women, but in addition.
As many of my respondents highlighted, being part of a family is IT in Africa. If you as an adult is not married (or at least widowed) with children, you loose respect. You as a woman also normally want to be part of a harmonious family. This too, is most likely born out of traditional settings, but not all traditions are solely bad (the discussion that marriage may not be the right answer for all people is also an important discussion to embark upon, but does not fit here in this context).
So if you, in Kenya where this research took place – but also in many other parts of the world – have been beaten by your husband in the past, you might very well still not want to break away from him, even if you do happen to be empowered and have the necessary monetary means to do so. If your husband became enlightened and received information together with yourself on the importance of dialogue and that violence is both legally and morally – and religiously – wrong, and if your husband and yourself agree with this and are strong enough to stand up against your local community when they want one spouse to beat and the other spouse to be submissive, then who are we really to condemn the woman from believing in this change in both of them; to condemn her from giving their marriage and the raising of their children in one home instead of two a chance, when this has been an active choice by both?
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