In the first four months of 2004 there were 1,054 cases of domestic violence reported to El Salvador's office on women's affairs. Almost 94 percent of the victims were women. The UN Development Program reported 238 women were murdered by their husbands in El Salvador in 2003, and there are concerns this number is climbing.
El Salvador’s high violent crime rate is the legacy of a 12-year civil war. The war claimed 75,000 lives in a small country of six million. As many as 8,000 others disappeared. And women bore a particularly heavy burden during the fighting.
El Salvador’s strong patriarchal social order and civil war legacy makes change difficult. Violence is still considered an acceptable form of domination over women. And any woman who breaks out of traditional family roles or speaks out against injustices risks further aggression.
Violence and poverty oppress women
El Salvador continues to endure a painful process of post-conflict reconciliation. There are ongoing investigations of war atrocities, many of which targeted women and girls, and questions about the impunity of likely war criminals.
But it has proven more difficult to confront the constant level of violent crime against women and girls now tolerated by El Salvador’s society.
There were over 2,105 cases of violent crime against women reported in 1996, and over 4,672 in 2000, according to a UN Development Program report released in 2000. Although some of this increase is due to better reporting, social pressures against women, and fear of publicity and reprisal means that hundreds of other cases go unreported.
Official attitudes toward such violence are evolving slowly--it was not until 1996 that El Salvador repealed a law exonerating a rapist if he offered to marry a victim, and she accepted.
The current economic situation doesn’t help either. The nation’s unemployment rate is 50 percent. Half of the country lives in poverty. Many women can only find informal jobs with low pay and no benefits. Factory or domestic worker jobs in the cities are not well compensated and working conditions are poor. And because many men leave the country to seek work, women lead more than a quarter of the households.
Overcoming violence against women
With women representing such a large sector of the poorest part of society, it is essential to stop violence and discrimination against them in order for the men and women of El Salvador to escape poverty.
Oxfam America is funding a coalition of organizations seeking to reform El Salvador’s laws and institutional practices, and change society’s attitudes towards women. One of their first tasks is to firmly establish women’s rights as a priority for the government, improve the coverage of women’s issues in the media, and help women defend their rights.
One of these groups, the Association of Salvadoran Women (AMS), concentrates on redressing the inequalities of political power in El Salvador. Less than 10 percent of seats in the Legislative Assembly are held by women. And political representation at the local level is not much better.
“I’ve always been convinced that it’s necessary to give a voice to those who are not heard,” said Yanira Argueta, director of AMS. “We’re expecting to see a strong mobilization of women and of advocates of women’s rights emerge from our campaign. Given the high rate of murder of women—we call it ‘femicide’—we can see that it’s affecting all women in the society, they’re all feeling vulnerable.”
AMS is helping women establish “tribunals,” a forum for women to organize their concerns about local issues affecting their safety, health, and rights. In one town, members of the tribunal criticized the local health clinic for the way it treated women victims of violence. Argueta said the situation changed quickly when they approached the head of the clinic. “His mind has totally been changed now,” she explained. “He’s one of the strongest advocates for women and their health concerns.”
Shifting attitudes away from violence
In another case, a tribunal approached the police with information about public safety. “They showed that in one neighborhood there’s a greater incidence of women getting assaulted on the street,” Argueta said. “And the mayor actually informed the national police in that jurisdiction, and made sure they did extra patrols in those areas. First, it diminished violence in areas where there’s an increased police presence. But secondly, we’ve actually used the police to create greater sensitivity among males. The police help convince men not to perpetrate violence against women, and to ensure that others don’t either.”
The women’s tribunal in this area was so successful that it helped promote noticeable change in local attitudes against violence. “There’s a network of men against gender violence that’s formed there and it’s starting to work,” Argueta said. “We think that is really great. The mayor is saying there are 50 men that are already members of this network in this one municipality. I’m happy because it shows that with a little time, and a lot of work, that there’s a real proposal for municipal policy on gender there.”
“We’re really trying to make a huge shift of mentalities in our society, and it’s easier to do that on a local level,” said Argueta, who fought during the war as a teenager and came out of the conflict committed to improving women’s rights in El Salvador. “But we have our eyes on the prize nationally. So we’re starting in these local instances, and we’re trying to create the conditions necessary so it can rise to the national stage.”