13.3: Gender-Based Violence
- Page ID
- 69668
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Gender-based violence, a broad category of violence that is directed at someone because of their gender, is a phenomenon that occurs in all parts of the world and across time. Often, gender-based violence refers to violence against women that includes sexual assault and rape, intimate partner violence (violence committed by a sexual/romantic partner or ex-partner), domestic violence (violence in a domestic/family setting), and femicide (the killing of women because of their gender). According to The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, 47% of women in the United States reported any contact sexual violence – including rape, sexual coercion, and unwanted sexual contact – physical violence, and/or stalking victimization by an intimate partner at some point in their lifetime (Leemis et al., 2022). Additionally, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that between 2003 and 2014, 55% of the homicides of American women involved an intimate partner, and non-Hispanic Black women had the highest rate of dying by homicide (Petrosky et al., 2017). Many cultural factors have been tied to these forms of gender-based violence, such as patriarchal structures and rape culture (Johnson & Johnson, 2021).
Gender-based violence can also include infanticide, which is the killing of an infant; honor killing, which is the killing of someone who has allegedly dishonored their family; female genital mutilation, which is the partial or total removal of female external genitalia; forced marriage; and human trafficking. Worldwide, girls and women are subjected to these types of violence at a disproportionate rate (UN Women, 2020).
Another area of focus regarding gender-based violence relates to hate crime victimization, particularly of transgender individuals. In a study that looked at violent victimization between 2017 and 2020, the rate of violent victimization against transgender persons was 2.5 times the rate among cisgender persons (Truman & Morgan, 2022). Relatedly, “corrective rape,” or rape that is intended to force the victim to conform to a heterosexual or cisgender identity, is a form of sexual violence often perpetrated against women and members of the LGBTQ+ community. The issue of gender-based violence, in all its forms, is not unique to the United States and is in need of continued criminological study.