I'm going to tell you something really
shocking today around the world at least
one woman in three will be beaten or
raped by an intimate partner in her
lifetime
that's almost 700 million women sounds
incredible doesn't it you might even
think that somebody made that figure up
but they didn't and I know that because
I helped collect those numbers and I'm
going to tell you the story of where
they came from I grew up in an activist
household and by the time I got to
college I was really fed up with
studying felt like college was getting
in the way of my education and what I
really wanted was to be out in the world
making a difference so in 1979 when the
Santa Anas sandanista revolution
overthrew a brutal dictatorship in
Nicaragua I dropped out of college in my
senior year to be a part of it
and I never looked back I stayed there
for almost 20 years more working first
as a community health activist and then
as a women's rights activist it was an
amazing time we eradicated polio we
eradicated illiteracy we felt that we
were making history but after 10 years
of contra war US trade embargo and
thousands of young people who died
defending their beliefs
the Sandinistas were voted out of power
in 1990 by that time Nicaragua was my
home and I stayed on I hadn't thought
very much about domestic violence before
that the Revolution had proclaimed
equality between men and women and women
had made huge advances in education
in employment and political
participation this is one of my favorite
photos from the Sandinista period it's
kind of the Nicaraguan version of Super
Mom caring for her family and defending
the fatherland at the same time but
behind closed doors something very
different was going on and I came to
understand this when I visited a shelter
for battered women in Managua hearing
the stories of these women made me
realize that domestic violence had to be
a lot more common than I realized I
started working with a network of women
activists who were campaigning to end
violence against women they had drafted
a law to criminalize domestic violence
and provide protection for survivors of
violence but when we presented it to the
political parties to get their support
they pretty much laughed in our faces
they told us that nobody would pay
attention to this law that it would
never pass unless we got some hard
numbers to show that domestic violence
was really a problem in Nicaragua well
talking to the politicians got me
thinking about going back to school
which had not even crossed my mind until
then in fact I really barely graduated
from college the first time around the
only reason I did get my degree in the
end was that I promised my mother that I
wouldn't get married or have children
until I finished college thank you mom
I know she was okay with the Revolution
thing but it totally flipped her out to
think that I wasn't going to finish
college so although being an
epidemiologist was the last thing on my
life plan I think my rebellious genes
won out then and I thought okay they
want numbers
we'll give them numbers and I went back
to school and made studying domestic
violence the subject of my doctoral
dissertation so in leon nicaragua we
carried out a survey and interviewed 500
women about their experiences with
violence and when we started out we
really have no idea whether women would
even talk to us about something
the sensitive but we found out that
women were actually eager in and even
grateful to be able to tell their
stories to somebody who listened to them
with empathy without judging them many
of them had never told anybody about the
violence they were experiencing and so
it was a really emotional experience we
also knew it could be dangerous for
women to talk to us so we came up with
different ways of keeping that a
complete secret so for example if a
husband came into the room while we were
interviewing a woman and wanted to know
what we were talking about we would
switch to a dummy questionnaire and we
started asking her about you know
immunizations and breastfeeding and
other stuff until he got bored and left
and then we always made sure to give her
referrals to medical care counseling
legal support if she needed it and
information about her rights the
findings from the study were truly
shocking we found out that 52 percent or
one out of every two women had
experienced physical or sexual violence
from a partner in her lifetime and one
out of every four women had experienced
violence in the last 12 months
this was vastly more than we had
expected
in fact only 3,000 women had reported
violence to the police in the year
before this study whereas according to
our statistics to our calculations it
was really more like 250,000 women who
had experienced violence we presented
our findings everywhere we published in
peer-reviewed scientific journals but we
also went all over the country talking
to mayor's to health promoters to
community activists to tell them what
was going on with domestic violence in
the country and it caused a huge wave of
indignation throughout the country in
addition to the numbers we told the
story of a woman we called Ana Christina
whose story
came the title of our of our study hana
christina was married at age 15 to a man
who brutalized her and her two daughters
for years she told us how when he would
come home drunk and abusive she'd have
to escape over the wall in the backyard
and sleep in the neighbor's patio to
avoid the violence he would tell her and
she was completely worthless and nobody
would ever care about her and she
believed him she told her mother what
was going on and her mother said this is
what happens to every woman and that she
should just stay with it and keep her
family together for the sake of the
children a few times she got up the
courage to go to the police and they
sent her right home and told her to
learn how to be a better wife and every
time she tried to leave he would win her
back with apologies with flowers with
chocolates and she would give in until
one day her grandmother urged her to
leave she sat her down and she said to
her child
what are you gonna do with candies and
he'll and her grandmother's support gave
her the courage to leave her
relationship and to leave the violence
so after telling this story
I don't want candies inhale became a
rallying cry for the women's movement in
Nicaragua so now that we had the hard
numbers we were able to get the domestic
violence law introduced into the
National Assembly but we didn't stop
there we published our findings in
full-page ads in the newspapers and we
encouraged women to tear them out to
sign them and send them in to us
demanding that their representatives
passed the domestic violence law just
over two weeks we collected 16,000
signatures and we went over to the
National Assembly and we stuffed them in
the representatives mailboxes and we
reminded them
that women made up half the electorate
and they were going to notice who voted
for the law when the elections came
around next time so it wasn't a total
surprise that a few weeks later the
domestic violence law passed unanimously
in Nicaragua of course the story didn't
end there in fact it was just the
beginning but having a strong law saying
that domestic violence was a crime was a
really powerful statement that things
were beginning to change in Nicaragua
and we weren't the only ones doing this
kind of research there were researchers
and activists all over the world who
were doing similar studies around this
time to look at the prevalence of
domestic violence and other forms of
violence against women and together with
the World Health Organization we carried
out a landmark multi-country study on
domestic violence and women's health
which showed the true magnitude of the
problem throughout the world and that is
why we are able to say with scientific
precision that one out of every three
women will experience physical or sexual
abuse by a partner in her lifetime and
that's not just in Nicaragua or in
Africa that's here that's in our
communities and maybe in our homes as a
result of these numbers and the hard
work of the women's movement violence
against women is now at the very top of
the International Development Human
Rights and public health agenda so I've
been really lucky in my life to be
surrounded by many heroes and courageous
people starting with my father Daniel
Ellsberg who risk 115 years of jail when
he copied the Pentagon Papers and
released them to the New York Times
at the time Henry Kissinger called him
the most the most dangerous man in
America
so you can see where my rebellious genes
come from what I learned from my father
is that courage is contagious he was
inspired to do what he did because he
met some young draft resisters who were
on their way to jail to protest the
Vietnam War and I have seen so many
times in my work that one woman standing
up and saying no to violence in her life
can have a ripple effect that can
transform communities when we presented
our results one of the ways we did it
was through this popular fotonovela
that community women could read and
discuss together and one day a friend of
mine was at a police station and she saw
a woman sitting there looking nervous
reading back and forth over through this
this this pamphlet and she asked her
what she was doing and the woman said
I've been to this police station too so
many times to report my husband for all
the beatings and I always lose courage
and I always go home afterwards but this
time I think I'm gonna go through with
it I brought on a Christina with me to
give me courage because I think if she
could do it if she could overcome the
violence then maybe I can - when we were
talking to women and asking them to tell
us their stories about violence one of
the women spoke to us and said she
really didn't understand why she should
do this it would be really painful to
recall these experiences and she really
couldn't see what what good it would do
and one of our interviewers who was
herself a survivor of violence said to
her well you're probably right it's
probably too late for you and me but
think about our daughters and our
granddaughters if you share your story
maybe maybe things will be better for
them
and they won't have to suffer the way we
did so this year we're going back to
Nicaragua to speak to the daughters and
the granddaughters of the women that we
interviewed 20 years ago to see what's
changed since then and we're
particularly interested in understanding
what kinds of programs and policies have
been most effective in preventing
violence against women so one thing I've
learned in all these years as a
researcher is that numbers do matter and
they can make a difference but the faces
behind the numbers are just as important
and the next time you hear a really
shocking statistic about violence
against women or trafficking or child
marriage I invite you to remember the
thousands of ana Kristina's who shared
their pain so that we could know the
truth of what was happening behind
closed doors and I invite us all to
think if they could conquer their fear
and their shame to tell their stories
what can we do in our own lives to end
violence against women