"Girls get special treatment"

Con, I am not saying that you do not have basic math skills, and neither was it my intention. However my point was that you contradicted yourself by saying a majority of women were harmed, but your statistic did not support that claim. As to why you used UK numbers, I did understand why you chose them, but I live in America, a totally different country with different people. UK numbers, while valid, are not universal. As, to the clarity of your point, I would have thought you would have expounded more on a main point than simply one sentence. It is impossible for a statistic to encompass all women. Yes, it was from a select group. Sorry for my earlier mistake. I was curious about Con's own statistic, so I looked at it again. (http://www.womensaid.org.uk...) First it establishes that "1 in 4 women experience domestic violence over their lifetimes and between 6-10% of women suffer domestic violence in a given year." Then it says, "When the researchers asked women about the last incident of rape experienced since the age of 16, they found that 45% were raped by current husbands or partners," So, this is 45% of the 1/4 of the women interviewed, which equals .5%. So, out of all the women interviewed, only .5% reported abuse from their partners. But reading the article in detail, I found this interesting quote: "However the figures of 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 men experiencing domestic violence fail to identify patterns of abuse over time and the coercive control which typifies intimate partner violence. Using these statistics to establish a picture of the prevalence of intimate partner violence is therefore not recommended." The last sentence is the most important. Unfortunately, Con, you are using the data provided to draw a conclusion that the people who collected the data are hesitant to do. Therefore, since the experts themselves recommend we not use their work to draw such conclusions, I propose that we drop our use of statistics to draw the conclusion of men mistreating women. I would now like to move on the the subject of whether or not women get special treatment. Firstly, if 1 in 4 women are experiencing abuse, that leaves three women who are fine. Secondly, women's rights have improved in the last century or so. (http://americans-world.org...) It is not perfect, but it has been improving. Even in places where it has been bad in the past, it is beginning to improve. (http://www.gulfoundation.net...) Many agencies, especially the UN, are working hard to make sure all women will be well treated. One thing that makes it difficult is, as I mentioned before, the news only publishes the horror stories because they are much more interesting and get more viewers than the good news does. So, other than personal experience, it is impossible to prove without doubt whether women get special treatment or not. As the statistic I mentioned above, we cannot accurately use statistics to draw conclusions as to the real state of things. The statistics of domestic violence presented only focused on the UK. The US has a lower statistic: "One in 4 women will experience domestic violence during her lifetime." (http://www.safehorizon.org...) We cannot universally apply statistics in the UK to the entire world. As for abuse behind closed doors, that is an unknown, so we cannot base decisions or draw accurate conclusions off of it. I am not denying the fact that many women do experience domestic violence, and I am not saying we should not help them, I am contesting the claim that most women experience these dreadful things.