One in three women around the globe endures domestic violence, is coerced into sex, or is abused psychologically during her lifetime. Surveys from around the world show that between 10 and 50 percent of women are victims of physical abuse by their intimate partners sometime during their lifetimes. In the United States alone, an estimated 1.5 million women are battered by their partners each year.
Physical aggression is usually recurrent and accompanied by sexual and psychological abuse.
Gender-based violence includes female infanticide, incest, rape, child abuse and prostitution, and such harmful traditional practices as forced early marriage, and female genital mutilation. Between one and two million girls in Africa, for example, undergo female genital mutilation every year. A 1999 study in Uttar Pradesh, India, found that the wives of sexually abusive husbands were more likely to have unplanned pregnancies and to contract STIs, partly because they feared negotiating sex or condom use due to the threat of violence. The children of abused women are more likely to experience low birth weight, malnutrition, behavioral problems, and higher mortality. Gender-based violence also has significant economic consequences, reducing family income and increasing health care costs, job absenteeism, and costs related to law enforcement.