Shout-out to Tanya for sharing this with me! Unfortunately, the State Department has not released this op-ed. It is available only at The Guardian, so I cannot provide the entire text here. If the DOS publishes it, I will put the whole article here. For now, you will have to migrate to read the rest.
It's time to get tough on violence against women
Violence suffered by women around the world has a devastating impact: not just physically and emotionally, but economically too
Picture a woman. She might live anywhere in the world. She could be part of any socio-economic group, of any ethnicity, of any religion. On a typical day this woman starts her day before the sun rises. She works for 8-12 hours in a store or on a farm or at a factory or in someone's home for a small wage, but her children and elderly relatives depend on her income for survival. When she comes home, she asks her children what they learned that day at school and what they want to be when they grow up. She spends hours bent over a small stove or fireplace preparing meals for an extended family. In many parts of the world, she also grows the food that feeds everyone at her table.Now picture what happens when that woman is unable to do any of these things because she is a survivor of gender-based violence. The cost of her medical care further strains her family's tight budget. If she can no longer work or care for her children due to physical or psychological injury, her children drop out of school and take jobs to support their family. The local shopkeepers she did business with lose a customer, and their incomes also go down.
