Violence against women and girls is a human rights violation. Violence against women occurs throughout the life cycle from prebirth, infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood to old age.

Predisposing Factors

• Men are more likely to perpetrate violence if they have low education, a history of child maltreatment, exposure to domestic violence against their mothers, harmful use of alcohol, unequal gender normsincluding attitudes accepting of violence, and a sense of entitlement over women.
• Women are more likely to experience intimate partner violence if they have low education, exposure to mothers being abused by a partner, abuse during childhood, and attitudes accepting violence, male privilege, and women’s subordinate status.
• There is evidence that advocacy and empowerment counselling interventions,as well as home visitation are promising in preventing or reducing intimate partner violence against women.
• Situations of conflict, post conflict and displacement may exacerbate existing violence,such as by intimate partners, as well as non-partner sexual violence, and may also lead to new forms of violence against women.

Causes

• Gender Disparity:is one of the deep rooted cause of violence against women that put women at risk of several forms of violence.
  • Discriminatory gender norms and gender stereotypesresults into structural inequality.
• Psychiatric Morbidity:Generally refers to the incidence of both physical and psychological deterioration as a result of a mental or psychological condition, generally caused due to the consumption of alcohol.
  • Regular consumption of alcoholby the husband has been strongly associated with poor mental health of women.
  • Alcohol operates as a situational factor,increasing the likelihood of violence by reducing inhibitions, clouding judgment and impairing an individual''s ability to interpret cues.
• Sociodemographic factors: Patriarchyhas been cited as the main cause of violence against women. Where women have a higher economic status than their husbands and are seen as having sufficient power to change traditional gender roles, risk for violence is high.
• Family factors:Exposure to harsh physical discipline during childhood and witnessing the father beating the mother during childhood is a predictor of victimization and perpetration of violence against wife in adulthood.
• Traditional and cultural practices:
  • Female genital mutilation:Can lead to death, infertility, and long-term psychological trauma combined with increased physical suffering.
  • Acid attacks:Acid attacks have emerged as a cheap and readily accessible weapon to disfigure and sometimes kill women and girls for reasons as varied as family feuds, inability to meet dowry demands, and rejection of marriage proposals.
  • Killing in the name of family honour:In several countries of the world including Bangladesh, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Turkey, and India, women are killed to uphold the honour of the family due to varied reasons such as-alleged adultery, premarital relationship (with or without sexual relations), rape, falling in love with a person the family disapproves, which justify a male member of the family to kill the woman concerned.
  • Early marriages:Early marriage with or without the consent of the girl, constitutes a form of violence as it undermines the health and autonomy of millions of girls.
• Judiciary and law enforcement machinery: An insensitive, inefficient, corrupt and unaccountable judicial system and law enforcement machinery fails to deter against various forms of crimes.
• Sociocultural factors disfavouring women: Stereotypes of gender roleshave continued over the ages.
  • The primary roles for women have been marriage and motherhood.
  • Women must marry because an unmarried, separated or divorced status is a stigma.
  • The custom of dowryis still prevalent in Indian marriages.