Part 2 of yesterday’s blog

Hope you watched that video.  Let’s just consider those statistics again.  According to the UN Women’s estimations, 6 out of 10 girls and women globally will be subject to violence or abuse in their lifetime.  6 in 10, that is 3 in 5, more than half.  More than half!

The next statistic – 60 million girls are sexually assaulted on their way to school each year.  60  million.   That’s the population of the UK.

How many girls worldwide are child brides, married before the age of 18? More than 60 million.

The opening discussion yesterday was about how society managed to get to this point.  Or has society always been at this point, it has just not been talked about? There is endless scope for discussion on this topic, on the violence within society which seems to have been accepted as the norm within many societies, often due to the patriarchal nature of communities, and subordinate position of women.  Forced marriage, FGM, honour-based violence; it is everywhere, but only seems to come to the attention of the masses when there is one, high-profile case.  Yet women and girls worldwide are being affected by violence EVERY DAY. 

There has been a lot of coverage in the media recently about FGM, thanks to the hard work of organisations like FORWARD (who I used to work for), 28 Too Many and amazing individuals such as my colleague at Guy’s, Comfort Momoh MBE, but to many, FGM is still an unknown concept which people don’t realise is being organised in the UK.  If you don’t know what it is, look here.  This is a societal issue, of which more people need to be made aware.   It is estimated that 140 million girls and women have experienced FGM across the word.  140 million. 

But there are many other types of violence: emotional, financial, sexual, physical, and this is happening across the world, all the time.  Increasingly, rape is used as a weapon of war.  It is widely acknowledged that in a warzone, it is more dangerous to be a woman, than to be a soldier.  Think about that for a minute. 

But it's not just happening in warzones.  Violence against women and girls is happening all over the world.  WAGGGS is calling on its 10 million members to sign up to the Stop the Violence campaign, to make their voices heard. Add your voice here today.  If you are involved with Guiding, raise awareness of this within your unit.  There is an army of In4mers (peer educators) to help you with this - they are trained to deliver sessions about issues such as violence against women.  Get in touch with your District Commissioner or Senior Section Adviser, and they can let you know who your local In4mers are.