The murder of Ashling Murphy in January 2022 elicited a nationwide debate about the culture of violence against women in Ireland. Dr Monica O’Connor, UCD, maintains that although there have been major strides towards ending the “legal impunity” of violence against women, wider societal and cultural change is taking longer. In this essay, I will discuss my reasons why I think wider societal and cultural change is taking longer and what needs to be done to eradicate the culture of violence against women.

Gender stereotypes and clichés are a very common cause of gender-based violence. The media has altered views through representing gender unrealistically and inaccurately. Creating a set-image of “masculinity” or “femininity” has led to the image being normalised in society. Dominance, power, and strength are seen as masculine traits, but qualities such as submissiveness, passiveness, and indulgence are assigned feminine traits. These extremely patriarchal, sexist views of society legitimise violence to ensure the superiority, dominance, and power of men. These typical stereotypes are dangerous as they can make men feel as though they are in control, that they have more power over women and can make both parties in a situation feel as though the woman is weaker than the man and incapable of defending herself or speaking out, making it more likely that violence will occur against women. An example of this misrepresentation done by the media is a recent article from the BBC written about New Zealand’s former prime minister, Jacinda Ardern. While the headline has since been changed due to backlash from the public, the original headline read: “Jacinda Ardern resigns: Can women really have it all?” This is an example of blatant sexism by the media as they questioned women's capability of being a leader while being a mother, whereas for Jacinda Ardern’s replacement, Chris Hipkins, who also has kids of his own, no similar headlines were written. This shows how the media has created a perception of the role of caring for children to be a mother’s job and not a father’s and that a woman with children could never handle having an important job of her own. I personally feel as though it is ridiculous of the BBC to question Ms. Ardern’s capability considering she effectively led her country through a global pandemic and other difficult tragedies, such as the Christchurch Mosque shootings that occurred on the fifteenth of March 2019.

Another cause of gender-based violence is sexist religious and historical traditions. According to biblical narratives from Abraham, Israel was indubitably and undeniably a patriarchal society; the family structures and marriages from that time have shown that. women were largely seen merely as commodities for men to use for their own benefit. In Jewish legends, the main characters are always male, while women, along with animals and land, were possessions of these men. Even the most important women in biblical literature such as Miriam, the sister of Moses, and Sarah, the wife of Abraham, had very minor roles. Even the way they were referred to, “sister of Moses,” “wife of Abraham,” indicates that they were possessions of these men, as if they were objects these men had complete control over. Even in our own Irish culture, surnames in Irish show that the family members were possessions of “the man of the family,” for example, Miss Casey in Irish is “Iníon Ní Chathasaigh”, which literally translates to “daughter of Casey”, and Mrs O’Donnell would be “Bean Uí Dhomhnaill”, which directly translates to “wife of Donnell”. This shows, along with the media distorting the meanings of masculinity and femininity, that these misogynistic ideas of women being seen as inferior to men have been in our society for centuries.

Not only does the idea of men having control over women contribute to gender-based violence, but it also contributes to the normalised acceptance and justification of it. There is a disturbing general acceptance of violence towards women as part of the public sphere. An example of this is sexual harassment in the streets, or “catcalling.” According to the HSE, “Sexual harassment is when a person engages in unwanted behaviour of a sexual nature”. Street harassment can have many effects on victims. These effects include physical effects (muscle tensions, trouble with breathing, dizziness, and nausea), emotional reactions (fear of being attacked or raped and a feeling of intrusion to their privacy), and psychological effects (problems with self-esteem, self-worth, and appearance). In the United Kingdom, the End Violence Against Women Coalition commissioned YouGov to conduct the first national poll on street harassment in 2016. They found that 85% of women between ages 18 to 27 had faced sexual harassment in public spaces and that 45% had experienced unwanted sexual touching. Despite the countless number of different studies done on the effects of “catcalling” on women and the shocking statistics, street harassment is often justified with common remarks such as “he was only being friendly” and “what was she wearing?” Although studying why street harassment is such a big problem is important to help educate people, the continued prevalence of street harassment indicates that it will remain an issue until the disgusting justification of it is put to an end.

To conclude, gender stereotypes and clichés, sexist religious and historical traditions, and the extremely common normalisation and justification of violence and harassments are just a few of the reasons why wider societal and cultural change that would accomplish an end to an end to violence towards women is taking longer. But how do we eradicate this violence towards women? One thing that could be done is empowering young girls and educating children about equality. Another thing that could be done is making street harassment punishable. By doing these things, young girls will believe they have equal opportunities as their male counterparts and will be more likely to achieve powerful roles in society, and over time street harassment will be less common, making it less normalised. This will eradicate the typical stereotype of men being superior to women, as not only would women have power and control, but women would fear the violence of men occurring less, making them less submissive and more likely to speak out and defend themselves.

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