Stop violence against women

SO we made international headlines over the long weekend on yet another unresolved “wicked problem” in our country – violence against women.
This time an athlete Debbie Koare endured grievous body harm at the hands of her elite military officer husband.
I have heard of the expression “silence is violence” before but never understood its meaning until I saw it being displayed by millions of protestors worldwide against racism in the “Black Lives Matter” marches across the globe these past weeks.
Experts advise that at the heart of racism lies those that keep ignoring that it exists, thereby slowly embedding the practice until it becomes unwittingly “normal”.
Our women, including our daughters, sisters, mothers, wives, cousins, female colleagues etc are forever vulnerable to domestic violence when we men are silent about this.
We come up with so many excuses to further embed our belief that women are inferior to us by our culture.
This is further embedded by our cultural practices of bride price, where we literally sell off our daughters to be used or abused.
Most religions including Christianity place women below men, further validating our purview and cultural practices.
Most of our leaders in politics, the public and private sector institutions and businesses, community and the churches, do not even publicly condemn such acts, perhaps in fear of being in a position of “casting the rock” on domestic violence.
All this contribute to the “silence’ that has perpetuated the violence to the point that it, (a) has become acceptable and normal, and (b) gravely endangers 50 per cent of the population in our country who are women.
Women’s advancement and involvement in society and economy has seen countries such as China, Korea, Singapore, Vietnam, Costa Rica and Rwanda, prosper exponentially.
It seems in PNG, women’s advancement has been a threat to our cultural and religious beliefs and values and to our personal ego as men.
It seems less educated, lower employed or less popular husbands than their female partners resort to violence to get even.
Such imbalance challenges our ego and status as man in the home, thereby we feel threatened or intimidated to the point where we met it out like what happened to Koare. We do not see birds nor do aircrafts fly with one wing.
PNG needs both wings to fly and soar as a nation.
It will be difficult to progress as a country if the dominant wing (men) continue to clip the other wing (women) by denying them opportunities and not appreciating their worth as equal partners in development at home, in organisations, community and the country.
We men now need to condemn such violence against women and not sell our daughters in marriage so that they can be treated as equals by men that marry them.
For leaders (men) to remain silent and not publicly condemn men who are violent against women in our country, we are condoning continuous violence against them.
To this end, Koare has done PNG proud and truly did not deserve to be physically mistreated, especially at her home.
Hope justice for her comes swiftly.

G Bopi,
My daughters are NOT for sale