Previously published: Eugene, Oregon : Cascade Books, 2015.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: Naming the problem -- A global pandemic -- Violence begins before birth: selective abortion and infanticide -- Cut for purity: female genital mutilation -- Early and enforced marriage: child abuse by another name -- Whose 'honour'?: killings and femicide as reprisals for shame -- Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide: violence in the home -- Money, sex and violence: trafficking and prostitution -- Rape -- War and sexual violence -- Why gender-based violence?: it's in our genes: exploring our evolutionary heritage -- Why gender-based violence?: power and patriarchy -- Religion and women -- Christianity and gender: a fuller picture.

Across the globe, acts of violence against women produce more deaths, disability, and mutilation than cancer, malaria, and traffic accidents combined. The truth is that violence on such a scale could not exist were it not structured in some way into the very fabric of societies and cultures themselves. It could not continue if it were not somehow supported by deep assumptions about the value of women, or some justification of the use of power. In many cultures such assumptions are reiterated every day in the absence of legal protection for women, or indifference toward issues of human rights. In Scars Across Humanity, Elaine Storkey offers a rigorously researched overview of this global pandemic. From female infanticide and child brides to domestic abuse, prostitution, rape, and honor killings, violence against women occurs at all stages of life, and in all cultures and societies. How and why has this violence become so prevalent? It seems ambitious to hope that we can find an answer to this question, but if violence to women is ever to be eliminated, we need to know what we are up against. - back of book.

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