Minister of Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities, Sindisiwe Chikunga, says that the inaugural Gender-Based Violence (GBV) Study has given insight into how profound the problem is in South Africa. The Human Sciences Research Council released the results of the study in Pretoria yesterday.
They revealed that more than seven million South African women had experienced physical and emotional violence in their lives.Chikunga says this is a worrying revelation.
She said: “What we didn’t anticipate, is that women who are cohabitating are more exposed to sexual abuse, to physical abuse than women who are in permanent relationships such as married women.”
“We thought maybe the study under normal circumstances will expect women who are in marriages or permanent relationships will be more exposed, and will endure more gender-based violence than the others,” she shared.
Chikunga adds: “So, yes that actually says again, we’ve got therefore to go to our policies, to go to our national strategic plan, on gender-based violence, look at how best do we strengthen that portion of our work.”
Story credit: SABC News
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