Talking about domestic violence: A handbook for ... - Engagingmen.net

3.3. Session 3:
The impact of domestic violence
Introduction
The impact of domestic violence can be severe. Apart from injury and pain, victims can also suffer
economic losses. Domestic violence causes serious consequences for women’s health and well
being, ranging from anxiety to physical illness. Victims fear for their lives and the lives of their family
members. Such fear affects confidence, sense of safety, ability to solve problems or to plan for
the future.
Domestic violence is of public concern and has a negative impact on family members, including
children, victims, others in the household and the perpetrators themselves. It also has a negative
impact on communities and the broader society.
Impact on women: Violence has significant economic, physical and psychological effects on women.
It can cause women to lose the ability to work and earn income. It can destroy women’s confidence
and impair their ability to function. They may also experience feelings of isolation and fear.
Impact on children 14 : Violence has many physical, mental and emotional consequences for children. It
can harm their development and hurt the ability to become a healthy adult and useful member of
society. A child’s survival and development is also affected by depression in a mother, and aggression
in a father.
Children exposed to domestic violence also experience difficulties in sleeping, eating, physical
complaints without a clear medical cause, delays in development (not developing at the normal
rate for their age), social withdrawal, problems with school work due to missing days of school and
difficulties or inability to concentrate in school, depression and anxiety. It also causes behavioural
effects such as: aggression, depression, poor performance at school, cruelty to animals, copying
aggressive behaviour and language, running away, lying to prevent violent behaviour and, worst of
all, using violence to solve problems.
Domestic violence also has a great impact on how children contribute to society when they
are older. Children who are regularly exposed to violence do not learn how to deal with conflict
properly. They also often copy the behaviour of their parents: boys can become the future abusers
of their wives or girlfriends, and girls learn to be submissive and tolerate violence from men, as if this
is the natural thing to do. Studies in Cambodia have shown that many street children were subject
to abuse at home and/or were exposed to domestic violence.
Impact on community and society: Violence against women has a serious impact on the country’s
social and economic situation. In a community in which violence occurs, the social atmosphere
becomes abnormal; the health and well being of its members are affected; anxiety, fearfulness
and depression hinder the social harmony. Children miss school and women and men miss work,
thus losing income in several ways. These economic losses have impacts on the development of
the community and society as a whole. Domestic violence affects all in the community.
14 Partly adapted from German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) and the Ministry of Women’s Affairs of the Royal Government of Cambodia (2005), Domestic Violence:
A training manual to raise awareness, Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
Talking about Domestic Violence
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