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Overcoming Discrimination, Persecution, and Violence Against Women

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Toward a Socially Responsible Psychology for a Global Era

Part of the book series: International and Cultural Psychology ((ICUP))

Abstract

This chapter addresses how silence gives consent to conditions that are oppressive, and examines how voice is liberatory, providing an antidote to the power of oppression that survives through silence. Additionally, we focus on psychology’s responsibility to confront more proactively and systemically the interlinked issues of oppression, discrimination, and violence against women.

Oppression can only survive through silence. Martin Luther King, Jr.,

…imposed silence about any area of our lives is a tool for separation and powerlessness. Audre Lorde (1980, p. 9).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For example, the international “One Billion Rising” demonstration/strike/dance on February 14, 2013, to protest violence against women, occurred on almost every continent. The United Nations UNiTE campaign to end violence against women and girls launched in 2008, and numerous NGOs and INGOs also organize to end violence against women and girls.

  2. 2.

    With the exception of substance use disorder where men predominate.

  3. 3.

    This mixed method study is funded by AusAid, the Australian aid agency, through an Australian Development Research Award (ADRA).

  4. 4.

    As noted already, 354 women participated in the survey interviews. They were aged between 18 and 45 years with a mean age of 31.7 years (sd = 8.3). Just over three quarters of the sample had ever attended school (76.5 %). Of the 23.5 % who had never attended school, women with disabilities predominated. For women who had some schooling, more than two-thirds (68.8 %) had only attended primary school. Just over 60 % reported that had ever been married or partnered.

  5. 5.

    Psychological distress was measured by the SRQ (Beusenberg and Orley 2004) which is a 20 item, well-validated measure of psychological distress with a minimum possible score of 0 and a maximum score of 20. Higher scores on the SRQ indicate an increased level of psychological distress and lower scores indicate a decreased level of psychological distress.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies, Western Washington University, 516 High Street, Bellingham, WA, 98225, USA

    Dana C. Jack

  2. School of Social Sciences and Psychology, Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia

    Jill Astbury

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  1. Dana C. Jack
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  2. Jill Astbury
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Correspondence to Dana C. Jack .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Health Realization Psychotherapy & Consulting, Arlington, Virginia, USA

    Elena Mustakova-Possardt

  2. Dept. of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA

    Mikhail Lyubansky

  3. Dept. of Psychology, Suffolk University, Lexington, Massachusetts, USA

    Michael Basseches

  4. Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

    Julie Oxenberg

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Jack, D.C., Astbury, J. (2014). Overcoming Discrimination, Persecution, and Violence Against Women. In: Mustakova-Possardt, E., Lyubansky, M., Basseches, M., Oxenberg, J. (eds) Toward a Socially Responsible Psychology for a Global Era. International and Cultural Psychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7391-6_9

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