The state therefore shares responsibility for the suffering these women have endured, whether the perpetrator was a soldier, a police officer or a violent husband. Torture of women is rooted in a global culture which denies women equal rights with men, and which legitimises the violent appropriation of women's bodies for individual gratification or political ends. Women's groups and other human rights activists around the globe have fought courageously in recent decades to prevent and combat abuses and to win greater equality for women. In many countries they have achieved enormous advances, and internationally they have altered the terms of the human rights debate irrevocably. However, for all the gains that women around the world have made in asserting their rights, 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 serves to reinforce it. Violence against women is compounded by discrimination on grounds of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, social status, class and age. Such multiple discrimination further restricts women's choices, increases their vulnerability to violence and makes it even harder for them to gain redress. Sometimes the perpetrators of these acts of violence are state officials, such as police, prison guards or soldiers. Sometimes they are members of armed groups fighting against the government.