Of course, male and fe­male re­la­tion­ship is­sues pre­date of­fen­sive so­ca lyrics, bac­cha­nal be­hav­iour, so­cial me­dia and even Eve’s labour pains. Back in her time, she wasn’t on­ly pun­ished for life, hav­ing com­mit­ted the “orig­i­nal” sin of dis­obe­di­ence, but every woman since then. She blamed Sa­tan’s de­ceit and was pun­ished to en­dure sor­row and pain in child­birth and her hus­band giv­en pow­er over her. As for Adam, he blamed Eve, who was cre­at­ed from his rib, for his sin­ful ac­tion, and de­pend­ing on in­ter­pre­ta­tion, that was, per­haps, the first case of psy­cho­log­i­cal abuse. God was just. Adam, Eve, and Sa­tan the ser­pent were ban­ished from Eden, and men con­demned to live by the sweat of their brow.

In re­li­gious doc­trine, the sta­tus of a woman is as­cribed pri­mar­i­ly as the helper to her hus­band, giv­ing birth to his chil­dren, look­ing af­ter them, and be­ing a du­ti­ful and sub­mis­sive wife, and he would take care of them. Laws, ed­u­ca­tion and so­cial struc­tures have re­in­forced that pa­tri­ar­chal cul­ture, which has pro­found­ly in­flu­enced male/fe­male re­la­tion­ships. It sup­ports the be­liefs that vir­tu­ous­ness is sub­mis­sive­ness and sub­or­di­na­tion, and that men have a (di­vine) right to hold pow­er over women. Mil­lions of women through­out the ages had vowed to obey their hus­bands. Al­though, some re­li­gious text speaks to equal­i­ty and part­ner­ship. Yet, some men treat them as their prop­er­ty and feel so deeply about their sub­servience, they can’t rea­son be­yond their fists to pun­ish and con­trol them. It’s a doc­trine span­ning hu­man ex­is­tence and un­der­scores pa­tri­archy, which is male pow­er.

One may ar­gue that pa­tri­archy isn’t an over­ar­ch­ing cul­prit, but it’s a sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor dis­tort­ed by men­tal ill­ness­es. Pow­er over women man­i­fests in a va­ri­ety of ways, but be­fore we get there, let’s pause to re­flect. There’s a gap in the treat­ment of women and men’s ed­u­ca­tion and health is­sues. Since the six­ties, in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies and gov­ern­ments had recog­nised the crit­i­cal roles of women in hu­man and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment and had fo­cused on the ed­u­ca­tion and health of girls and women as strate­gies to al­le­vi­ate pover­ty and com­bat en­trenched cul­tur­al at­ti­tudes to­ward the ed­u­ca­tion of girls rel­a­tive to boys. Great strides have been made in the ed­u­ca­tion of girls, their re­pro­duc­tive health and over­all well­be­ing. It’s a long jour­ney, but women are now out­num­ber­ing men in uni­ver­si­ties, out­per­form­ing them, ris­ing to se­nior lev­els in the work­place in­clud­ing in pre­vi­ous­ly male-dom­i­nat­ed jobs, and in­creas­ing­ly be­com­ing fi­nan­cial­ly in­de­pen­dent.

Equal em­pha­sis hasn’t been placed on de­vel­op­men­tal and men­tal health is­sues of boys and men. They dom­i­nate school drop-out rates, un­em­ploy­ment, crime and par­tic­i­pa­tion in crim­i­nal gangs. One may well ar­gue that men as the dom­i­nant play­ers eco­nom­i­cal­ly and po­lit­i­cal­ly, in­stead of be­ing blind­sided by hubris and pow­er, they should be lead­ing the charge to ad­dress the se­vere and en­dem­ic is­sues af­fect­ing males.

A warped sense of pow­er com­bined with drugs and al­co­hol ad­dic­tion—brain-eat­ing mar­i­jua­na, anger, nar­cis­sism, emo­tion­al pain, de­pres­sion, patho­log­i­cal pos­ses­sive­ness, men­tal ill­ness­es, ig­no­rance, and do­mes­tic and in­ti­mate re­la­tion­ship prob­lems, is dead­ly. Women die. Crime spi­rals. Vi­o­lence against women hap­pens across all so­cio-eco­nom­ic, eth­nic, and re­li­gious groups.

We know why women don’t leave af­ter the first slap: the chil­dren, lack of fi­nan­cial sup­port, lack of em­pa­thy from friends and fam­i­ly, fear and nowhere to hide, love—she thinks he wouldn’t do it again, or he’ll change, and sub­mis­sive­ness. She’s in de­nial and trapped.

Provo­ca­tion isn’t an ex­cuse. Both par­ties pro­voke each oth­er, but women are phys­i­cal­ly dis­ad­van­taged. There’s no ex­cuse for brutish and dead­ly force against women. There are an­tecedents, learned be­hav­iour, lifestyles, and the ten­den­cy to vi­o­lence. Do­mes­tic and in­ti­mate-re­la­tion­ship vi­o­lence doesn’t hap­pen in iso­la­tion of over­all crime. There are com­mon threads. What­ev­er form it takes—phys­i­cal, sex­u­al, or psy­cho­log­i­cal, it’s about us­ing pow­er to pun­ish and con­trol women.

Vi­o­lence against women is not on­ly a women’s is­sue. It’s not on­ly about the vic­tim. It’s about pub­lic health and safe­ty and the fun­da­men­tal right to life and lib­er­ty. It’s about ed­u­ca­tion and so­cial jus­tice. It’s about the per­pe­tra­tors. The po­lice can’t stop do­mes­tic vi­o­lence. As a mat­ter of pri­or­i­ty, a se­ri­ous in­ter­ven­tion is nec­es­sary on the men­tal health and ed­u­ca­tion needs of boys and men. Ini­tia­tives to help and pro­tect women will not be suc­cess­ful un­less there are pro­duc­tive in­ter­ven­tions in the lives of po­ten­tial per­pe­tra­tors of vi­o­lence.