Everywhere on the planet, women are killed, maimed, raped, silenced or confined in roles and places that deprive them of their full humanity. Contexts change: slums in São Paulo, villages in the Sahel, Afghan mountains, war-ravaged Congolese campaigns, American digital platforms saturated with hate speech, but the deep logic remains the same: a social order that gives men an implicit right to look, control, or even possession of the body and life of women.
Violence against them is not a one-time malfunction: it is a political language, a technique of government, a method of regulating social relations.
Examining in its diversity allows us to understand thatIt forms a continuum, from domestic slap to mass rape, from early marriage to femicide, from excision to digital harassment campaigns orchestrated by the "manosphere".
Global, massive, structural violence
Data produced in recent yearsUN Women andUnited Nations Office on Drugs and Crime show that violence against women is not a marginal phenomenon but a structural factor in the global social order.
In 2024, about 50 000 women and girls were killed by an intimate partner or family member, on average 137 victims a day, almost one every ten minutes.
These homicides represent the most extreme form of a continuum of gender violence that includes physical abuse, sexual violence, harassment, economic constraints, forced marriage, genital mutilation, digital control, legal discrimination.
What strikes internationally is the transversality of the phenomenon.
Violence against women affects rich and poor countries, liberal democracies and authoritarian regimes, predominantly Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and secularized societies.
Crude rates, forms and intensities vary, but everywhere the home, this supposed protective space, concentrates the majority of the most serious violence. United Nations data thus show that while men are more victims of homicide in public spaces, women are massively killed in the private sphere, by those who should be their protectors.
The question, therefore, is not whether violence exists, but to understand why it is so widespread, so persistent, and why, despite an increasing legal arsenal, it is falling so slowly.
The patriarchal matrix: domination, control and implicit "right" over the female body
At the heart of this reality is what one can call patriarchal matrix : a system of representation and practices which attributes to the men of the positions of authorityand to the women of the junior positions.
In this configuration, women are defined less as autonomous subjects than as relational resources: wives, mothers, daughters, sisters, whose social value depends on their compliance with standards of respectability, availability and sacrifice.
Violence is not outside this architecture: it is an instrument of regulation. Threats, beatings, rapes, humiliations, enforced disappearances or murders occur when women violate the expected order, seek divorce, deny a relationship, claim their rights, access public space or positions of power.
In this context, femicide is not an isolated act, but the extreme end of a chain of micro-violences, controls and blackmails that have often started well upstream.
The example of Brazil, where femicides reach an alarming level despite a strengthened legal framework, illustrates this mechanism. The official figures record more than 1,000 victims a year, and the specialists point to an increase in the brutality of crimes: women crushed and dragged by cars, ex-companies shot in the street, armed attacks when separation is refused.
Behind these facts, we find the same logic: the idea that a man "lost" something of his identity and honour when the woman escapes his control, and that violence can restore an order deemed natural.
Honor, silence and "internal management"
To understand why such violence remains so largely invisible, the value systems surrounding it must be taken seriously. In Senegal, as in other West African societies, the standard of « Massla » is emblematic. The « Massla » values the fact of supporting, containing the conflict, avoiding the public breakdown of family disagreements. In itself, this standard refers to an ethics of restraint and preservation of the link. But in the field of domestic violence, it becomes a powerful mechanism of invisibility.
Violence, when it emerges, is treated internally by extended families, in-laws, uncles, aunts, and sometimes religious guides. The priority objective is to safeguard the honour of the home and the lineage, not to guarantee the safety of the victim. Making a complaint, "bringing out" the case of the family circle, is perceived as a serious transgression, almost more serious than the violence itself. The woman who speaks "explains" the husband, the in-laws, and endangers everyone's reputation.
Family honour then functions as a collective moral economy where the body of the woman becomes the surface on which the respectability of the group is played. The « Massla » Turns the victim into a culprit: not for what she suffered, but for breaking the silence.
This configuration, far from being anecdotal, illustrates a control regime that goes beyond Senegal. In many societies, the primacy accorded to the honour and cohesion of the group results in a systematic refusal to "judice" violence, in favour of mediations that reintegrate women into a violent system, without questioning the male position.
Excision, early marriage, polygamy: structural violence under the guise of tradition
In several regions of West, East and Central Africa, Excision, on Early marriage and polygamy form a triptych of practices that organize, over the long term, male domination and female vulnerability. It's not just "coutums." These devices produce deep violence, embedded in the body, the law, the temporality of life and the distribution of resources.
Female genital mutilation a radical attack on body integrityoften done without consent, sometimes on children. It causes chronic pain, obstetric complications, increased risks of maternal mortality and lasting psychological trauma. But it also conveys a symbolic message: The girl's body is not hers. It belongs to the community, which shapes it to adjust to its norms of chastity and control of sexuality. The honour and "respectability" of families are indexed to the young girl's acceptance of this initial violence.
Early marriage follows this logic. By giving still teenage girls, sometimes children, into marriage, their ability to build a clean project is confiscated. The school stops, economic autonomy becomes unlikely, early pregnancy, with its risks, occurs in a body and a psyche still in training. The young wife finds herself placed in a relationship of almost absolute dependence on an older husbandsupported by his own family and, often, by religious or customary norms.
Polygamy, finally, organizes a hierarchy between co-wives and consolidates the man's position at the top of a fragmented domestic device. It intensifyes rivalries between women, weakens their solidarity, fragments access to resources and strengthens the idea that a wife is replaceable. Men, on the other hand, have their social status enhanced by the number of women and children they "assume", even when such care is partial or precarious.
These three practices structure violence that is not spectacular as a street crime, but just as devastating. They limit women's possibilities, naturalize suffering, legitimize male control and lock emancipation attempts.
Instrumental religions: Afghanistan and patriarchal theocracy
Afghanistan is an extreme example of what gender violence becomes when it is erected in principle of government and dressed in religious legitimacy. Since the return of Taliban, women are gradually erased from public space. Prohibition of school beyond a certain age, closure of many university courses, exclusion of most jobs, bans on travel without male guardians, restrictions on access to places of leisure or even care: we are dealing with a systematic undertaking of domestic confinement and social removal.
Sociologically, it would be reducing to see there a mere "product of Islam". Instead, the Taliban regime is proceeding the religion of an ancient tribal patriarchate, the Pashtunwali, a Pashtun honour code that values women's seclusion, control of their mobility and revenge in case of "dishonour".
By selecting certain verses, ignoring the diversity of Muslim legal and theological traditions, by excluding any history from scholarly or powerful female figures in Muslim societies, the Taliban used to build a theology of male domination.
Violence: beatings, forced marriages, kidnapping, symbolic or real executions of "deviant" women, then becomes a tool of sovereignty. It manifests the ability of power to impose its vision of the world. It disciplines the men themselves, called to embody a warlike and authoritarian manhood. She sends, inside and outside the country, the message of an uncompromising, unwavering order where women are no longer a subject, but an attribute of male and religious power.
This limited case sheds light on the way in which certain religious configurations can serve as a vector for patriarchal violence, not because the texts would require it, but because political, military and religious actors have an interest in merging patriarchy and sacred to lock up any challenge.
Women's body as battlefield: war rape in DRC and Sudan
In Central Africa, in particular in Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Sudan, Rape has become a full-fledged weapon of war, recognised as such by the United Nations and by many research.
Successive reports on sexual violence in times of conflict show that armed groups, and sometimes some elements of the regular forces, systematically use the Rape, Collective rape, atsexual slavery to achieve military, economic and political objectives.
In eastern DRC, this strategy is linked to the struggle for the control of mineral-rich territories. Attacks on villages are accompanied by massive sexual assaults aimed at terrorizing populations, breaking their resilience and causing forced displacement.
Rape becomes an instrument of strategic displacement: a few incursions are sufficient to permanently depopulate coveted areas, facilitating the control of resources.
To Sudan, years of conflict in DarfurThe recent civil war was marked by sexual violence targeting specific ethnic groups. United Nations and NGO reports document collective rape, abduction, sexual slavery, deliberate attacks against women from communities targeted for their ethnic identity or supposed political loyalty.
In these contexts, sexual violence is not a matter of "dreading" or simply a license granted to soldiers. It is thought as a tool. It terrorizes, dislocates family ties, stigmatizes survivors, and alters the capacity of communities to rebuild. It is part of what some call a "social destruction strategy", where women's bodies become the place where the enemy prints his domination in depth.
The paradox is cruel: the survivors, already physically and mentally broken, carry also the burden of shame and silenceBecause their societies still associate family honour with female sexuality. The war thus exploits pre-existing patriarchal structures and radicalizes them, transforming a "ordinary" control system into a weapon of mass destruction.
Modernity, digital and masculinism: the hatred of women in the manosphere
Violence against women is not only manifested in contexts of open war. In so-called developed companies, and in particular United States, an increasing proportion of the attacks take the form of psychological, digital and symbolic violence brought about by contemporary masculinism.
For several years, research has documented the development of themanosphere", this set of online communities that proliferated anti-feminist discourse, incels, "red pill" groups, "men going their own way" and influencers that make male domination a profitable political identity.
The movement MeToo, which has enabled thousands of women to make sexual violence and harassment visible in the professional and media spheres, has acted as a trigger. For some men, especially those already socially or culturally weakened, MeToo has been interpreted as a global aggression, a challenge to "male freedom", or even proof of a "feminist conspiracy" against men.
The masculinist reaction is organised around some great ideas: denunciation of feminism as a hate ideology, accusation of generalized "false accusations", staging of a male victimization ("the real discrimination is men"), nostalgia for an order in which women were dependent and silent.
These discourses combine with the algorithm of large platforms, which promote polarizing content, and give rise to an ecosystem where hatred of women is not only normalized but monetized.
The effects on violence are multiple.
First in the intimate sphere, where some men, fed by discourses about the domination and "cadre" of women, refuse separations, suffer from loss of control and can switch into extreme domestic violence.
Then in Digital public spacewhere women journalists, academics, activists are subjected to mass harassment, rape threats or murder, orchestrated from these communities.
Finally, at the margin, by the shift to radicalized individuals who claim to be incels or followers of masculine figures, and commit murderous attacks specifically motivated by the hatred of women.
This masculinism is neither marginal nor purely American. Recent research shows that the manosphere has become a global phenomenon, with declines in Europe, Asia, Latin America and even connected urban Africa. Violence against women is thus "modernized": it circulates via memes, videos, podcasts, online trainings, giving patriarchy a second digital youth.
Developed societies, underdeveloped societies: different forms, the same logic
Compare contexts: Brazil, Senegal, Afghanistan, DRC, Sudan, United States, Europe, allows to go beyond simplistic explanations.
On one side, Countries with Povertywar, the weakness of institutions, the dominance of family structures.
Other, rich societieswith sophisticated legal systems, rule of law, well-established egalitarian discourse. Yet gender violence persists everywhere.
In countries under severe economic and political constraintsviolence is often more visible, more brutal: forced marriages, war rapes, mass femicides, genital mutilation, almost total impunity. Where the State is failing, where weapons are readily circulating, where armed groups control portions of territory, patriarchal control is combined with armed violence to produce terror regimes.
In Developed Countriesviolence is no less real, but more dissonant with official equality standards. It is more evident in the intimate sphere, in working relationships, on social networks, in structural discrimination. Femicides remain regular, rape is widespread, domestic violence is commonplace, even though there are more instruments of protection and reparation. Violence is sometimes more sophisticated, more legal, more psychological and often better concealed.
What is common is the structure. In all these spaces, dominant masculinity is defined by attributes of control, power, ability to impose its will. In all, the autonomy of women: sexual, economic, political, is perceived, by some men, as a statutory threat, a relative downgrading. In all, violence becomes a possible response, sometimes legitimized, sometimes tolerated, sometimes simply excused.
The law is not enough: the limits of symbolic policies
In the face of this reality, States adopt laws: criminalizing femicide, strengthening protection mechanisms, national plans to combat violence, criminalizing genital mutilation, forced marriage and harassment. These advances are crucial, but they face two major obstacles.
The first is that of Implementation. In many countries, dedicated budgets remain derisory, underfunded specialized services, self-delivered field associations, undertrained magistrates and police officers. The mechanisms exist in the texts but only marginally alter the reality experienced, for lack of means and political will.
The second is deeper: the law acts on the consequences, but struggles to transform the causes. As long as the models of masculinity value domination, possessivity, the ability to be feared, as long as the symbolic savings of honor, reputation, status remain tied to the control of women's bodies, violence will continue to reoccur, sometimes in new forms.
The Manosphere This point is well illustrated: even in States where sexual violence is clearly penalized, new spaces are created where it is standardized and encouraged, on the margins of formal institutions.
What Violence Against Women in Society Health Says
Violence against women is a indicator, a barometer of the health of societies. It indicates the degree of real recognition of women as autonomous subjects, not as family annexes or reproductive instruments. It also measures the quality of institutions, the capacity of the State to protect the most vulnerable, the strength of the social contract.
In countries at war, she pointed to the level of brutalization of social relations and the level of destruction of minimum standards for the protection of civilians.. The systematic practice of war rape in the Democratic Republic of the Congo or Sudan speaks of the way in which modern conflicts use women's bodies to achieve military, economic and identity goals. In societies like Afghanistan, it reveals the failure of a political project to integrate half of its population into citizenship.
In Western societies, it shows that proclaimed equality is not lived equality. Femicides, rapes, harassment at work or online recall that patriarchy is able to reconfigure itself, which it adapts to new technologies, which it can integrate for its benefit the tools of digital capitalism and the economy of attention.
Finally, worldwide, the persistence of such violence shows the strength of a patriarchal order that crosses borders, religions and political regimes.. Forms change, but the logic remains: making the body of women a territory to be monitored, a resource to be exploited, a symbol to be controlled.
A continuum of violence, a global challenge
This journey, from Brazil to the DRC, from Senegal to Afghanistan, from Sudan to the United States, highlights the same architecture: violence against women is neither an archaic residue that will disappear naturally, nor a succession of isolated facts. It is a continuum, ranging from the most "banal" practices: insults, humiliations, blackmails, threats, to the most extreme forms: femicides, rapes of war, mutilations, social erasure.
Everywhere, it expresses the resistance of a patriarchal order to the rise of female autonomy. Everywhere, it reveals the will of some of the men, and the social structures that support them, to reaffirm their primacy, by coercion if necessary. Everywhere, it tests institutions: police, justice, health, school, digital platforms, and exposes their weaknesses, ambiguities or complicity.
To think of this violence as a global sociological object is to refuse to cultivate it by assigning to such continent, such religion, such "tradition". It is to see that it forms a transnational political language, which circulates from the most isolated villages to the most connected spaces.
It is a recognition that its reduction requires more than laws: a profound transformation of masculinities, economies of honor, modes of socialization, in the very way we define what is A life worthy for a woman.
In this sense, violence against women is one of the great tests of our time. It says whether the democratic project, in the North as in the South, in times of peace as in times of war, really includes half of humanity, or whether it continues, behind the proclamations, to tolerate that it be sacrificed, in silence, on the altar of male domination.
