Sunday 24 July 2011

Women in El Salvador

Today in El Salvador, the same number of people will be killed as during the height of the Civil War. Yet, even this shocking comparison overlooks an unrecognised problem here; gender based violence and abuse.

We met a leading Salvadorian feminist, Morena Herrera, who shed light on the position of women in Salvadorian society and the problem that issues affecting them are seemingly invisible to the state. For instance, the number of sexual abuses reported each year is equal to the number of murders reported (3,600 cases). However, a survey conducted by Morena Herrera suggest that because of the stigma attached to sexual abuse in El Salvador, with the suggestion victims “deserved it,” only around 10% of cases are reported. This means sexual abuse is a far greater problem in El Salvador, one which targets women and one which could claim 36,000 victims a year in silence.

On the surface El Salvador is rated as a medium income country, which many countries in the world do not believe is in need of significant development assistance. This is a dangerous assumption to make; a recent UN Women report placed El Salvador top in the world for rates of femicide, after an increase of 197%. Murders against men have remained stagnant. The massive division between the few rich and the many poor in El Salvador has exacerbated the violence and the unequal position of women in society has seen them targeted. Women earn on average $3,043 per year, while mean earn $7,543 per year. Women have more savings accounts than men, but men have double the amount of savings. Women have a long way to go.

The rights of women in El Salvador went unrecognised until the Civil War; when a small number of feminists, including Morena Herrera, began to press for change. A turning point came during the war, when an intervention attempting to bring an end to the conflict introduced a programme of land redistribution. Beneficiaries of the land distribution should have been those who fought on both sides and those who had contributed to the war effort. Women however, were not equal beneficiaries; land they earned was signed over to their husband or eldest son and had women’s organisations not intervened it is unlikely any women would have benefited. In the end 5% of the beneficiaries were women; a far cry from the 30% of women who made up the guerrilla army and the 60% of women supporting the guerrillas though farming and delivering supplies.

Another area where there is significant room for improvement is sexual and reproductive rights; this forms a significant part of our work here with the Salvadorian organisation IMU. Abortion is illegal in El Salvador and as such a criminal offence, with no exception even if the mother’s life is at risk, the foetus is dead or the conception was a result of rape. The Salvadorian Government has signed up to many international agreements on sexual and reproductive rights but has always entered significant exceptions. This means today there are at least 124 women in adult prisons with sentences up to 30 years. Morena Herrera was not allowed access to the juvenile prison, but with teenage pregnancy making up 30% of conceptions the number of young girls imprisoned is likely to be shocking.

Some progress is beginning to be made in El Salvador, notably with two new laws passed by the Government and due for implementation in 2012. The first recognises violence against women is a problem and sets out provisions to outlaw it. A significant step in that it acknowledges that gender based violence is not isolate to the private family sphere. The second is a law of equality to eradicate discrimination against women. Morena Herrera acknowledges that these are steps in the right direction but notes that El Salvador has a very long way to go.

One last statistic to leave you with; 19% of the Salvadorian Parliament is made up of women; in the UK it is 20%. Worldwide women have significant hurdles to jump and in the UK we must press our Government to examine both the position of women in our own country and to put pressure on El Salvador to address their gender divide, as women do after all make up 50% of the world’s population.

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