The men were acquitted of the charge of gang-rape but convicted of minor crimes. Throughout, she was pressurised to withdraw the case by members of the local community and politicians. The torture of women is rooted in a global culture that denies women equal rights with men, and legitimises the violent appropriation of women's bodies for individual gratification or political ends. In recent decades, women's groups and other human rights activists and non-governmental organisations around the world have made significant advances in preventing and combating abuses, providing support and redress for survivors of abuse and winning greater equality for women. Yet women worldwide still earn less than men, own less property than men, and have less access to education, employment and health care.
Pervasive discrimination continues to deny women full political and economic equality with men.
Violence against women feeds off this discrimination and reinforces it. When women are abused in custody, when they are raped by armed forces as 'spoils of war', when they are bought and sold as trafficked women, bonded labourers or in forced marriages, when they are terrorised by violence in the home, unequal power relations between men and women are both manifested and enforced. The torture of women will not be eradicated until discrimination on the grounds of gender is addressed. Violence against women is compounded by discrimination on the grounds of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, social status, class and age. Poor and socially marginalised women are particularly liable to torture and ill-treatment.