Last week, Instituto Maria da Penha (IMP), a non-governmental organization that opposes violence against women in Brazil, released a new website called Relógios da Violência, or Violence Counters in English. This platform will allow people to share statistics about violence against women in their own countries with people around the world.
The website displays this information on “clocks,” or graphics that tell how often a certain action occurs. For example, one clock says that every 2.3 minutes, a woman in America falls victim to sexual assault. Another says that every 5.3 hours, a woman in America is the victim of femicide, a term that refers to the killing of women simply because they are women.
As of now, the Violence Counters site only offers information for the United States and Brazil, but it also offers the option to add a clock. This can be a new clock for one of the already-established countries or a clock for a country that is not yet involved with the project.
To create a new clock, someone must some provide personal information, including their name and country of residence, and links to credible research on the topic. They also supply the statistic they wish to see tracked on the site. The platform itself then displays these numbers in real time, updating the numbers to reflect what is happening in the country.
The data displayed on the American page comes from a report done by the National Organization for Women (NOW), as well as findings from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
The American website can currently be viewed in either English or Spanish, while the Brazilian page has English and Portuguese as options.
IMP decided to work on this project in order to demonstrate the fact that violence against women happens worldwide, not just in specific countries or regions.
“In Brazil, a woman is a victim of physical of [sic] verbal violence every 2 seconds,” the Violence Counters website says. “These numbers make [it] the fifth [sic] violent country in the world to women, but we know that this is not a Brazilian-exclusive [sic] problem.”
UN Women estimates that 35 percent of women across the globe have fallen victim to some type of physical or sexual violence at some point in their lives, whether by a romantic partner or someone else. Women who have been abused by partners are more likely to suffer from depression and, in some areas of the world, are 1.5 times more likely to contract HIV than women who have not been victims of partner violence.
“To end violence against women and girls we must educate men and women and change gender stereotypes, attitudes and beliefs that condone violence and harmful constructions of masculinity,” a 2013 statement from several heads of United Nations organizations says.
That is exactly what IMP aims to do with the Violence Counters site, Markets Insider reports. The organization hopes that the information on their website will help educate people worldwide and inspire women to report cases of violence against them, thus “stopping the clocks” of violence against women.
Featured Image by Dineshraj Goomany on Flickr
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