User:Queenbook2021/sandbox

Volunteer for the Visayans Inc
For my practice experience I will be working under an organization called Volunteer for the Visayans Inc which is located at Tacloban City, Philippines. This organization oversees different activities and programs such as: Public Health, Social Welfare, Education, Community Development, etc.

The program I will mainly be focusing on is the area of Social Welfare, specifically their Women's Shelter. The essential work that I have to perform is helping rehabilitate these women from their traumas and give them the tools to reintegrate in the community once again. The forms of rehabilitation can take in many forms, thus the organization desires that volunteers come up with activities that will help these women heal on their own pace while recovering form their traumas. Another important fact to take into mind when engaging under Women's Shelter program is due to its sensitivity people who ca volunteer are strictly for females only and they will be working closely with the social workers and staffs while conducting physical, emotional, and psychological counseling.

I anticipate that I can perform the activities that at times I may direct and at times I will help facilitate. Activities that comes into mind that I have a know I can handle are in the form of: reading, writing, art therapy, journalism, role plays, and being a personal confidant for those who wish to talk to me in a more personal manner.

Violence against women in the Philippines
In today's society third world countries such as the Philippines still deal with gender based violence which women predominantly suffer the most. The ever growing gender inequality can be traced by political, religious, and cultural reasons that allows violence against women to thrive. My goal is to understand how gender-based violence can be mitigated, how social class within families structure intensifies violence, and the history of intolerance towards women shaped throughout post-colonialism.

The part I would contribute more on this page would be adding new and more expanded idea about verbal abuse, social abuse, emotional abuse, and if I get to find a good resource even go through women facing financial abuse by their partners or husband. It has been a while since this part of the page has been update or have been considered being developed, so this is a perfect opportunity to give other people knowledge of specific ways women in the Philippines are experiencing violence.

Management of domestic violence
I've chosen this article since it helps explain how domestic violence developed throughout history and how it was just viewed as a domestic dispute that does not require administrative or state intervention. By modern integration and how it has been put in the arena of the public sphere it has become more visible and recognize in the community and in a larger scale, the country.

The part I will be contributing in this page is adding a new heading and paragraph. I'm not sure what I'll be naming the heading just yet. What I will mainly talk about is Eastern version of self help and therapy practices that this page seems too elude as it focus more on the Western version of therapy through counseling and Occupational therapy which in countries like the Philippines or other less developed countries are luxurious agencies that not all can afford or have access to. This part can also address more on how institutions such as family, schools, and government could be more active on their roles of preventing domestic abuse and educating those in low-income families.

Article Evaluation
I evaluated the Violence against women in the Philippines page, and this is what I found intriguing, that needs improvement, and contemplating when tackling my Practice Experience:

Content

 * I thought that the Psychological and Emotional Abuse part of the page needs to be expanded more. The writer(s) explained a through analysis of physical and emotional abuse but were bereft when trying to explain how Psychological and emotional abuse also plays a crucial part when dealing with violence and its aftermath.
 * It was informative how they showed how violence against women in the Philippines changes or how it was organized in different time periods, specifically when the country was under colonization.

Tone

 * The over all tone of the page was neutral and showed how violence developed in a historical sense.
 * Showing the historical development of violence towards the Filipino women tells it in a depressing theme, but creates the narration needed to see the importance of the risk these women need to endure.

Talk Page

 * One commentator was weary of using the face of a women who had acid thrown on her face or a women hugging her knees toward herself, because it lacks clear gender identity.


 * The concept of what a women should look like for them to be considered part of this specific gender seems to be a superficial outlook of what a battered women should look and represent. The fact that these women may look androgynous or unidentifiable by gender does not mean that they should be discounted of having undergo a brutal attack. If it comes to this then do we need to let our women look like the glamorous people we see in magazines and TV, that violence against women can only be defined if they look the part?

Area
For both my Area and Sector I will be adding a new section into the Wikipedia page, so my main concern is that my writing does not sound as if it an essay rather being informative.)

From the wise words of peer advisory Samantha: passive voice is when you can still question a sentence. by who, by what. If these questions cannot be answered you need to restructure you sentence.

Socioeconomic abuse
Socioeconomic abuse occurs when a male partner controls a household's financial resources as well as the social advancement of their female spouse or partner. Socioeconomic abuse situates women to be vulnerable to abusive partners and can limit them from getting financial resources. Socioeconomic abuse is less obvious than physical, sexual, or mental abuse as household finances are kept largely private and seen as an intimate family issue. Comprehensive acknowledgment and findings for the global prevalence of economic abuse is limited when considering it as a form of abuse in legal context.

There are cultural expectations that men must contribute larger portion of financial income compared to their female spouse or partner. If they cannot perform this task they may feel that their masculine domestic control over their spouse or partner diminishes; this is a key cause of their socioeconomic abuse of their spouse or partner.

Some of the forms of socioeconomic abuse are:


 * Gambling. Households where the male partner engage in gambling as a way to earn money for a living jeopardizes the financial stability of the household. Losing money from this type of addictive vice jeopardizes necessary family expenditures such as three meals a day, medicine, healthcare, or other monthly bills. The lack of money and a capricious financial status is a strong contending factor in domestic disputes.
 * Infidelity. Under the Philippine law only women can be charged with adultery. Although there is more autonomy for Filipino women compared to other Asian countries this does not mean that they do not experience gender-based bias in the eyes of the law. Male partners who perpetrate adultery cause severe psychological and emotional pressure for the women. When the male partner's income is halved or diminished by his spending on his mistress, the women of the household have to find ways to generate their own financial income.
 * Control over resource. Men can also subjugate their partner in the form of withholding their partner's resources such as: denying them money to buy food and necessities, hiding money from joint accounts, destroying their partner's personal belongings, turning off heat, electricity, and cellular data. Marital hostility and discord starts to emerge when one spouse has complete manipulation of their partner's personal or joint resource. This only makes the women more dependent, as their well-being rest and financial decisions rest with their abusive spouse.
 * Prevention of economic or educational growth. Social status, income disparity, or different level of educational background builds resentment or insecurity for the men and becomes a conflicting marital issue. When women generate better income for the family, their obligations and focus on household affairs also decreases, veering away from the traditional family values where the women stays in the house and takes care of the household needs and children, thus creating marital tension as men see this as their masculinity within the household being challenged. The impact of traditions, customs, and cultural practices exacerbate physical, emotional, sexual, and financial abuse of women. This interfere with their rights and ability to climb up the social ladder or advancement of higher positions in their workplace.

Community-based healing for domestic violence
In patriarchal societies, women struggle to make personal decisions over their own bodies or identities which makes them more vulnerable to domestic violence. It is paramount that women gain personal control over their body and a sense of self-efficacy in order to heal from domestic violence. However, women are less inclined to seek such help and healing because of societal norms (such as the expectation that femininity equates to domesticity) and gender disparity. In such contexts, scholars advocate for community-based healing. Where women live in tight-knit communities, such healing is a better option over individualized therapy (which is how trauma healing is approached in the West). Community-based healing focuses on providing psycho-social treatment for traumatized individuals, on building social cohesion among the community members, and on expanding access to healing resources.

Social concept of the body
The first step for healing involves women understanding the physical and social dimensions of their bodies and how they are depicted and valued in their society and culture. There is a societal pressure for women to please the men of their society at the expense of their own body and mind. This leads to gender inequality as their body is not only theirs but is controlled by hegemonic patriarchal dominance, undermining women's ability to make their own decisions about their lives and their bodies. In many societies, it is progressive feminist movements that are educating women about their bodily functions (a topic considered taboo) and offering women new ways to view and relate to their own bodies.

Ways for women to gain control over their body include the following:


 * Freely expressing their own identity, and behaving in ways that are shaped less by men.
 * Women looking up to strong female models, and gaining a sense of resiliency.
 * Gaining understanding about how to manage/take care of their bodily needs, and how to make informed choices.
 * Learning to feel comfortable seeking help when they need it; not feeling deviant for needing to talk about sex and sexuality.

Expansion of community-based healing resources
Women who have experienced domestic violence tend to drink and use drugs as coping mechanism to distort their memories of abuse. Emotions such as abandonment, betrayal, and confusion push them to turn to substance abuse. By expanding services -- job-seeking support, group talk therapy, drug use and alcoholism recovery support -- a community can help an individual woman battle depression and suicidal thoughts caused by their trauma.

Distribution of resources should be equitable for the community. Victims in a community will be empowered they perceive healing resources as expandable and renewable. In a context of resource scarcity, a woman's capacity to recover is impeded, exacerbating their mental, physical, and emotional health. Cooperation to share personal resources within the community will mitigate further damage as everyone tries to purposefully serve one another without trying to control the resources for personal gain.

In some cases, a community can provide spiritual healing for the women with the goal of fostering their authority over their bodies. Victims of domestic abuse have the tendency to feel helpless and powerless due to the trauma that they experienced. As such participating in a spiritual healing group will help them focus on finding inner peace with their body. There is also a sense that these victims will acknowledge each other's suffering and see that their suffering is not an isolated incident that they need to keep to themselves; this small but empowering step will help women regain their confidence and independence. It is also through group participation that women gain new sources of support, while enhancing or restoring their ability to continue social and interpersonal connections with others.

1. Domestic Violence in Urban Filipino Families, January 2016
Serquina-Ramiro, Laune, et al. "Domestic Violence in Urban Filipino Families." Asian Journal for Women's Studies, vol. 10, no. 2, 4 Jan. 2016, pp. 97-119.


 * Domestic disputes is possible from the power dynamics inside a household, since the family formation have an unequal balance between the women and the men.
 * This has been a constant struggle for women when it comes to gender equality since women in general, exercise less authoritative power compared to me men as they play different roles inside the household.
 * Women in the Philippines have more equal opportunity when it comes to education, food distribution, and household chores, although there are still major concerns when it comes to health care programs that serve as a better interest for them.
 * There more autonomy for Filipino women compared to other Asian countries, but there is still various forms of exploitation and abuse these women have to endure inside and outside their homes such as: sexual harassment in the workplace, prostitution, and illegal recruitment.
 * When their husband or partners beat these women it is accompanied with threats of withholding financial support.
 * One of the reasons why women in the Philippines accept and justify why their partner can beat them is the mentality that they deserve it if they were caught cheating on them since there is a law in the Philippines where only women can be charged with adultery.
 * The most frequent causes of marital disputes were vices such as drinking and gambling from the husbands and financial struggles due to seasonal or irregular jobs.
 * Some were abandoned for months and without support, even during pregnancy.
 * Male partner's who commit infidelity caused severe psychological pain and violence.
 * Gambling, which in many cases had become a means of earning a living, and so losing could mean foregoing a day's meals for the family.

2. Perpetration of Intimate Partner Aggression by Men and Women in the Philippines, 2008
Ansara, Donna L., and Michelle J. Hindin. “Perpetration of Intimate Partner Aggression by Men and Women in the Philippines.” Journal of Interpersonal Violence, vol. 24, no. 9, 3 September 2008, pp. 1579–1590.


 * This study uses data from the 2002 Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey to examine the prevalence of and factors associated with intimate partner violence perpetration by husbands and wives in Cebu, Philippines.
 * For women experiencing Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is common form of violence, and it becomes more apparent in developing countries. In the Philippines wife battering is considered justifiable under certain circumstances such as neglecting their child or children.
 * IPV comes in different forms such as and not limited to: psychological aggression, physical aggression, and sexual coercion.
 * Household living arrangements (nuclear, extended, or multi nuclear family), church attendance, wife’s alcohol use, household expenditures on alcohol, and husband dominance and control were the micro system factors that were explored. To this day religion plays a vital role on the justification of IPV and how women are willing to subjugate themselves under these rules.
 * Men would use weapons to instill fear 9.2% of women have reported, while 22% reported that they faced sexual coercion due to fearing their husbands if they said no.
 * The growing awareness of the importance of IPV as an international public health problem, more research is needed investigating the context and circumstances leading to the perpetration of violence within marriage and on developing effective interventions aimed at addressing this important social problem.

3. The Relationship between Socio-Economic Inequalities, June 2014
Antai, Diddy, et al. “The Relationship between Socio-Economic Inequalities, Intimate Partner Violence and Economic Abuse: A National Study of Women in the Philippines.” Global Public Health, vol. 9, no. 7, 2 June 2014, pp. 808–826.


 * Very little is known about the global prevalence of economic abuse, as it has historically not been included as a form of domestic and family violence in legal contexts nor in definitions used in surveys of violence.
 * A man could hinder a women's economic growth and stability when they are preventing them in attaining jobs in the market sphere and wanting them to commit in household affairs instead, showing up in their partner's job to harass or humiliate them to diminish their partner's confidence and ultimately make them quit their job/s, or stalking them while they are at work to make sure that they are not cheating.
 * Economic abuse by men can also be in the form of them withholding their partners resources such as: denying them money to buy food and necessities, hiding money from joint accounts, destroying their partner's personal belongings, turning off heat, electricity, and cellular data.
 * The psychological effects of economic abuse, e.g. fear and anxiety, loss of self-esteem, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, are reported to be worse than the physical effects. This makes the victim be force to become economically dependent with their perpetrators, leading to the continuous cycle of symbiotic violence.
 * Socioeconomic inequalities render women vulnerable to abusive partners who control and limit their access to financial resources; should the victim choose to leave the relationship, she is compelled to face economic hardship. Therefore unequal economic power and poverty place women at increased risk of abuse.
 * The role of socioeconomic inequalities, the findings that women who earned less than their spouse had higher odds of ‘not allowed to engage in legitimate work’ and ‘ever lost job/source of income because of husband’ are aligned with the literature on marital dependency and interdependence. This indicates that women, who become or are forced to become economically dependent on their spouse, are at greater risk of being abused or exploited, and ultimately less likely to leave an abusive relationship

4. Socioeconomic and Coercive power within the family, 1996
Mccloskey, Laura Ann. “Socioeconomic And Coercive Power Within The Family.” Gender & Society, vol. 10, no. 4, 1 Aug. 1996, pp. 449–463.


 * When men are financially vulnerable this incites higher risk of domestic violence in the household.
 * Lack of financial stability creates marital disputes, this jeopardizes the safety of the women as it increase domestic abuse
 * This study investigates whether couple's income and occupational status correlates with wife and child abuse.
 * The findings in this study suggest that income disparity rather than overall poverty contributes to wife abuse.
 * Men who have become unemployed believe that this diminishes their marital quality and masculine dominance over their wife. To make up for their shortcomings they display attitude of despotism within the household to try restoring a sense of power and self-esteem.
 * The lower the combined occupation status of both partners, the more likely the husband will physically abuse his wife.

5. Individual Migration as a Family Strategy: Young Women in the Philippines, June 2010
Lauby, Jennifer, and Oded Stark. “Individual Migration as a Family Strategy: Young Women in the Philippines.” Population Studies, vol. 42, no. 3, 1988, pp. 473–486.


 * In several developing societies women increasingly migrate alone.The fact that women perform different roles from men in society, the economy and the family, the reasons for their migration may also be different. In many cultures daughters are under the control of their parents to a greater degree than sons, and, correspondingly, the migratory behavior of women may be influenced more than that of men by familial considerations.
 * Yet to a certain extent, all migrants are influenced by the constraints, opportunities and objectives of people around them and, in particular, by the needs and resources of their families.
 * Under fairly general conditions, a desirable strategy for a rural family in coping with unstable agricultural income is to send a family member to work in the city.
 * This paper's main hypothesis is that in the Philippines women migrate for family reasons to a greater extent than do men.
 * The family needs which lead to migration may also help us understand why more migrants than non-migrants are in wage-earning occupations, and why women migrants accept jobs which, while affording a steady short-term income, do not provide much long-term stability.
 * To a large degree, women's opportunities and roles in the economic sphere have been intricately shaped by the interplay of cultural and historical forces. Philippine culture has long recognized the independent economic role of women.
 * The early colonization of the Philippines by Spain brought Christianity and with it a patriarchal structure of authority. The Spanish Code of Laws confined women to the home. They were forbidden to transact business or to dispose of property. The Christian teachings brought by the Roman Catholic priests included admonishments to women to be obedient, passive and pious.
 * Once we add to these considerations women's strong devotion to their families and their considerable willingness to abide by the decisions of their parents, we can see the rationale of Filipino families who so often choose to send a daughter rather than a son to work in the city as a strategy for advancing familial well-being.
 * Filipinas are among the most geographically mobile of Asian women.
 * Mother's work outside the home might be expected to affect the migration pattern of her daughters in two ways: a replication effect and an income effect. As she helps to earn the family's income, she and her husband may also expect a daughter to work outside the home, and so be more likely to send her to the city.
 * If the family wants a quick and steady source of income, it may prefer a wage earning job, and since it may expect remittances from a daughter (as well as willingness to remit) to decrease after a few years when she may marry and have other obligations, the family may not be too concerned with the long-run stability of the job or in the long term chances for upward mobility. While a majority of both urban-born
 * Even when an individual migrates alone, he or she may be acting as an agent on behalf of a principal back at home.

6. Prostitution and victim narrative in the Philippines, August 2009
Roces, Mina. “Prostitution, Womens Movements and the Victim Narrative in the Philippines.” Womens Studies International Forum, vol. 32, no. 4, 2009, pp. 270–280.


 * This article is about how women's organizations constructed “the Filipino woman” as part of the feminist project of addressing prostitution as a women's issue in the Philippines from 1985 to 2006.
 * Defining the Filipina: who she was, what she is, and what she will become—was central to activist ideologies.
 * Representations of the feminine were used in strategies such as lobbying for legislative changes, as well as to mobilize followers and forge feminist identities. In this sense, they were crucial in the feminist re-education campaign—in the overall plan to “re-socialise” the populace to give cultural capital to its women viz-a-viz its men.
 * Their aim was trying to involve the transformation of former “victims” or survivors into advocates.
 * . Women's activists deployed the victim narrative to argue for the passage of the Anti-Trafficking Act of 2003 that decriminalized prostitutes, but preferred to use the narrative of advocacy, agency and empowerment when fashioning former prostitutes and survivors of trafficking into feminist activists.
 * The latter was part of the overall feminist project of dismantling cultural constructions of the feminine as “suffering martyr” and rejecting the cultural capital associated with this ideal.
 * The term “victim narrative” to mean the discourse in which women's experiences of prostitution were constructed in a history of continuing oppression and violation.
 * . The analysis that suggests the strategic use of two contradictory narratives avoids the pitfalls raised by feminist scholars about the negative consequences of subscribing to binary categories that divide women into either agents or victims.
 * Looking at the Philippine context traditional cultural constructions of femininity idealized them “the woman as martyr”
 * Feminists hoped to alter constructions of the feminine so as to remove the cultural capital or prestige given to the “woman as martyr”, but this strategy contradicted the position that prostitutes were victims of violence.
 * Definitions of Filipino femininity have altered little despite the major breakthroughs made by women's activism throughout the entire twentieth century. Marriage is still viewed as the destiny of women regardless of educational attainments.
 * Women were constructed in relational terms with men as “dutiful wives and daughters” or “suffering mothers”. Women who sacrificed their interests in the name of the kinship group were exalted as heroines and role models.

7. Violence against women in Ghana: a look at women's perceptions and review of policy and social responses, December 2004
Amoakohene, M. “Violence against Women in Ghana: a Look at Women's Perceptions and Review of Policy and Social Responses.” Social Science & Medicine, vol 59, no 11, December 2004, pp. 2373-2385.


 * Tradition, custom, cultural attitudes, behaviors and practices, which often are so deeply ingrained as to defy change, sometimes account for abuses and violations of women’s rights (Robinson, 1995). Omeje (2001) argues that harmful traditional practices including the sexual exploitation of cult women are probably the most severe menace to women’s rights and the optimum realization of their development potential in contemporary Africa.
 * It impacts negatively on women’s health and ability to contribute meaningfully to the advancement of society
 * . It defines domestic violence as violence intentionally perpetrated by husbands or male partners—people known to be intimate associates. Domestic violence is approached from a multidimensional perspective by examining the multiple facets of violence against women: sexual, socio-economic, cultural, pseudo-religious and mental torture. Women’s perceptions of their rights, responsibilities, duties and abuses or violations are evaluated using open-ended qualitative questions in two major cities in Ghana: Accra and Kumasi.
 * Policy responses to domestic violence are then examined by first reviewing what provisions exist in the country’s constitution to address the problem and then the specific steps the government itself has taken. Civil society’s response in the form of activities by non-governmental organizations is also reviewed. Finally, the effects of domestic violence on women’s health and well-being are examined and suggestions for addressing the problem are made.
 * Violence against women is thus observed to be a violation of women’s physical and/or emotional well-being, which manifests in various forms. But whatever its form, it constitutes a means of social control in which the subservient position of women is highlighted and their vulnerability accentuated.

1. Emerging Strategies in the Prevention of Domestic Violence, 1999
Wolfe, David A., and Peter G. Jaffe. “Emerging Strategies in the Prevention of Domestic Violence.” The Future of Children, vol. 9, no. 3, 1999, pp. 133–144.


 * Three prevention model: (1) primary prevention to reduce the incidence of the problem before it occurs; (2) secondary prevention to decrease the prevalence after early signs of the problem; and (3) tertiary prevention to intervene once the problem is already clearly evident and causing.
 * A primary example of prevention reduction is teaching it early in school and to help student perceive and know what domestic violence is, since it gets left unnoticed in the public sphere for far too long for a victim to handle.
 * Domestic violence is a complex matter that needs to be address more to help ease crisis intervention and prevention. It allows address the idea for women to actually seek help when they need it without being seen as a deviant.
 * Domestic violence is caused by an underlying power imbalance that can be understood only by examining society as a whole. The analysis focuses on patriarchy or male domination over women and children through physical, economic, and political control.
 * Intensive collaboration and coordinated services across agencies may be vital in prevention efforts to address chronic domestic violence and to help prevent future generations of batterers and victims.
 * The government should be involved in creating stronger prevention of domestic violence and give better access to people for resources to those who are experiencing domestic abuse themselves.

2. The Effects of Ritual Healing on Female Victims of Abuse: A Study of Empowerment and Transformation, Oct 1989
Jacobs, Janet L. "The Effects of Ritual Healing on Female Victims of Abuse: A Study of Empowerment and Transformation." Sociology of Religion, vol. 50, no. 3, 1 Oct. 1989, pp. 265-79.


 * This article provides a framework in which to consider the healing dimension of women's spirituality and how in the spiritual realm they can find peace in their mind and body.
 * This is a participant observation study that focus on women getting spiritual healing through one another, which is movement that allows them to empower themselves through spiritual therapeutic means.
 * The women find a cathartic release from the spiritual healing by first acknowledging that they are a victim of sexual abuse, then shouting the perpetrator name in the group to make it known that a perpetrator is real and is not an illusion. This makes them conscious of their body and of themselves generating the pent up anger, frustration,sadness, etc to help them address their situation better.
 * The confessional act creates the bond these women need to connect with one another and in it they can openly grieve of the humiliation and pain they had will endure. This connection reduces the thought that they are isolated individuals who can only seclude their sufferings to themselves.
 * The release of anger in the ritual context impacts the participants in two significant ways. The first is that the ritual provides a social structure in which to experience intense emotions that, given the cultural norm of repression, are rarely validated outside the ritual setting. The second effect of the ritual is that the group provides a sale place for women to express feelings of anger without fear of hurting others or doing harm to themselves.
 * Due to societal constraint when it comes to emotions, women may find it unappealing if not taboo to let out their rage. This raises the question on how far a woman is allowed to be conscious of their own feelings or are they suppose to be desensitized as hegemonic societal norms dictate them to do so.

3. Body as Space, Body as Site: Bodily Integrity and Women's Empowerment in India, May 2008
Mauther, Kanchan. "Body as Space, Body as Site: Bodily Integrity and Women's Empowerment in India." Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 43, no. 17, 2 May 2008, pp. 54-63.


 * The rights of a woman's body can be dictated by the society and the culture they live in and in such the control for their own autonomy may not be feasible. This generates a life living of violence and patriarchal fear.
 * They are taught for a young age to conform to societal norms and never question it. That their body functions to satisfy sexual needs for men and with this creates the notion that women can only see their value by the subjugated relationship they have with their male counterpart.
 * That men showing physical violence is a "macho" side of them protruding masculine behaviors that equates to better female domesticity. This makes women consciously and unconsciously learn to domesticate, discipline, and bear the matriarchal tradition of harmony in the household even if it means that they themselves will be the subject of violence throughout their lives.
 * Lacking the knowledge of sexuality or talking about sex due to its taboo discourse in highly religious societies. This is deem that women who talk about their sexuality or about sex are highly promiscuous individuals and can be the subject of scrutiny which could lead to interrogation, being shun by the community, threats of violence, or facing gender discrimination.
 * To create better gender equality their should be a discourse that gets through the public sphere about influencing changes of polices.
 * A significant transformation in the perception and images of women's body, in the notions of control over women's body, in the ways women care for their body, in the level of bodily insecurity and vulnerability faced by women, and in the struggles and movements around women's bodily functions.

4. South Asian Immigrant Women Who Have Survived Child Sexual Abuse: Resilience and Healing, March 2010
Singh, Anneliese A., et al. “South Asian Immigrant Women Who Have Survived Child Sexual Abuse: Resilience and Healing.” Violence Against Women, vol. 16, no. 4, 11 Mar. 2010, pp. 444–458.


 * Looking at the cultural background of South Asian women's resilient attitude and behavior after experiencing
 * Participants also discussed resilience strategies that had a collectivist orientation and focus, such as a spiritual belief in a divine order and connections with strong female role models.
 * The present study explores the cultural context and processes of resilience used by South Asian female survivors of child sexual abuse in an effort to highlight their voices and bring an end to their absence in the research literature.
 * Despite this lack of research, it is critical that helping professionals understand how South Asian immigrant women’s cultural backgrounds influence the resilience strategies they use in their healing from child sexual abuse.
 * Participants in this study reported resilience strategies, such as actively managing feelings of helplessness, powerlessness, and lack of control, in addition to resisting being overwhelmed by threatening and dangerous feelings as a result of their abuse.
 * For this study, resilience strategies were generally defined as an individual’s ability over time to face the difficulty of surviving sexual trauma directly and adapt to adverse circumstances with success following sexual trauma.
 * Mira’s cultural values carried a belief in people’s “innate goodness,” and she said that she began healing from child sexual abuse when she actively looked at the “good and worth” in herself and other people.
 * Mira shared that intentional self-care was an important resilience strategy for her; once she “began to value her experience and value herself,” she also began establishing boundaries in relationships and reading books on abuse. She described this regular self-care as being critical to “taking care of her mind, body, and spirit.”
 * However, they described transforming the South Asian demand of women’s silence about abuse into a positive coping strategy. For instance, they used silence to have solitary time to develop and validate their own thoughts and feelings about the abuse. In the silence, they were able to transform their approach to life by learning the importance of boundaries and self-reliance, which participants believed led to their increased ability to heal.
 * They described eventually finding “a sense of purpose” that led them to excel in academic, career, volunteer, and advocacy paths to provide a role model for making positive changes for others in the world.

5. Empowerment and Synergy, October 2008
Katz, Richard. “Empowerment and Synergy.” Prevention in Human Services, vol. 3, no. 2-3, 1984, pp. 201–226.


 * community healing system that reflect a Western style mental healthcare
 * As these healing resources expand and access to them increases, empowerment expands.
 * . The emphasis is on establishing equity in that distribution or what amounts to a redistribution, so that those who are presently disenfranchised and oppressed can have a fair share of the power.
 * Evidence exists that there is an alternative paradigm. based on synergy, which can free such human resources from the grip of scarcity and competition. The term synergy describes a pattern by which phenomena relate to each other, including how people relate to each other and other phenomena.
 * Within the synergy paradigm, a resource such,as helping expands and becomes renewable, yet it can remain valuable.
 * The resource is activated by individuals and communities who function as its guardian and not its possessor. and who. often guided by the motivation of service to others, allow the resource to be shared by all members of the community. The increasing amounts of the resource become increasingly available to all, so that collaboration rather than competition is encouraged. Paradoxically. the more the resource is utilized, the more there is to be utilized.
 * Within the synergistic paradigm, empowerment assumes new potential. "Control over their own lives" becomes a renewable, expansively accessible resource, as does the process of empowerment itself.
 * This paper summarizes observations from field studies on the functioning of empowerment within a synergistic paradigm. It proposes that when empowerment is viewed as a self-generating and generative resource.' it is intrinsically suited to that paradigm, The emphasis in the paper is on community healing systems, including community mental health in the West. The focus is on access to and control of healing resources, especially the power to heal. The term "healing" rather than "helping" is used to suggest a more generic and inclusive process.
 * Empowerment is not limited to or identifiable with individuals; it becomes a resource beyond the self. It occurs across individuals and within communities. It also suggests that we can turn to "education as transformation".
 * Empowerment deals with the generation and distribution of power, in the form of access to and control of resources
 * Even the best intention experts can create expectations and structures whereby an initial reliance on their knowledge endures. Those who seek to empower continue to direct the process of empowerment, and those who seek to become empowered continue to look outside themselves for advice.
 * Personal meaning-making is encouraged, but as a resource to be shared with the community, not as a means to accumulate personal prestige or rewards.
 * Spiritual power, for example, is a resource which comes from beyond the community and is often a basis for healing power.
 * This occurs when individuals are kept apart from each other and from a perceptive engagement with institutions by the deadening "culture of silence."
 * The concept of empowerment as a source of images which can stimulate action.
 * Synergistic community can exist even though its members are not altruistic in the usual sense of that word, namely intentionally wishing to share or help others. Sometimes the structure of synergistic communities is the dominant feature, overriding any individual motivations. Members can act out of what they perceive as their own best, even individual interests, but the structure makes what is good for one, good for all. There are many examples of synergy.

6. Social Contexts of Trauma and Healing, January 2007
Ajdukovic, Dean. “Social Contexts of Trauma and Healing.” Medicine, Conflict and Survival, vol. 20, no. 2, 1 Aug. 2003, pp. 120–135.


 * Although mass trauma has the negative consequence for any person who experience them, it becomes a different discourse when social context is added to it. The degree of severity become distinct as locations may vary with how they deal with trauma.
 * Understanding the social context of the trauma helps create the right social intervention for healing at social and personal levels.
 * If the trauma victim has access to appropriate assistance, support and treatment, he or she stands a good change of getting on with a constructive life as a member of the community again.
 * The support mechanism for those who have experienced trauma is crucial, as these victims may feel as if they have gone through a process of injustice that violates their human rights.
 * Once people are able to return to their devastated original communities, the expectation is that they should start functioning normally and look at the hard work of rebuilding their homes and lives as a challenge. In principle, they are expected to put past suffering aside, together with their traumatic experiences and symptoms, and build a better future.
 * At the community level, collective violence disrupts normal patterns of social activities, fractures social relationships, and damages social structures. People feel betrayed, and both value systems and moral norms are disturbed. The feeling of being dis-empowered does not only affect individuals but also collective community.
 * The task of effective community-based interventions is to facilitate psycho social reconstruction of the communities, decrease social tensions among groups that have been involved in conﬂict, provide treatment for the most traumatized individuals and work towards re-connecting community members.
 * We therefore see individual recovery from trauma and community social reconstruction as two parallel, non-linear and related processes: the individuals need to deal with disturbing post-traumatic symptoms and integrate their traumatic experiences and losses.

7. Community Therapeutic Intervention for Women Healing from Trauma, August 2006
Mcwhirter, Paula T. “Community Therapeutic Intervention for Women Healing From Trauma.” The Journal for Specialists in Group Work, vol. 31, no 4, 2006, 339-351.

Paula T. McWhirter. Pages 339-351


 * The prevalence of family trauma experienced by women is an alarming concern for community mental health professionals. As many as one out of two women has experienced some form of interpersonal victimization.
 * Abuse and victimization is often normalized and minimized by the victims themselves. Many are uneducated about what constitutes abuse and unaware of the possible long-term effects.
 * Women who have experienced trauma are often isolated and cut off from traditional sources of social and interpersonal support. Group participation is thought to establish new sources of support, while enhancing or restoring ability to continue social and interpersonal connections with others.
 * This study involved a five week community based group therapy treatment for women in transition, conducted at a family transitional housing shelter. The intervention was designed to address the specific needs of women who present for services at housing shelters, mental health hospitals, and clinics for a variety of presenting concerns, but who also report experiences of abuse or trauma in some form. The intervention assesses previous victimization and addresses it in the healing process.
 * It was expected that participation would result in improved social, financial, family and personal functioning among participants. It was further hypothesized that the therapeutic group intervention would demonstrate increased network size and decreased social isolation, decreased financial stress, decreased reports of family conflict with increased family bonding, and increased self-efficacy following participation in the group intervention.
 * The curriculum was developed to increase awareness of abuse over ones lifetime and to assess the influence of alcohol and drugs, as well as other unhealthy mechanisms, in dealing with abuse experiences.
 * Distortions were not considered negative or pathological, but instead were viewed as inaccurate perceptions the world. Distortions are often brought to our awareness as a result of an unmanageable event. During this session, women were encouraged to share examples of unmanageable events, which frequently included a connection between alcohol and drug addiction with experiences of abuse throughout the lifespan. Finally, group participants’ current personal needs were identified, explored and discussed in terms of healthy alternatives to meet these needs.

Area
In the Philippines, Filipino women are perceived to have more gender equality and autonomy when comparing them to other Asian races, but this does not mean that they don't experience gender inequality, discrimination, or violence. There is actually a law in the Philippines that wives can be charged with adultery if they are caught cheating but this does not apply the husbands at all. This brings up the idea that Filipino women are the subject of scrutiny when it comes to their sexual and emotional loyalty towards their husband but the government is willing to turn a blind eye if a man does the same thing. Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is prevalent not just through physical or sexual abuse but can also be through financial abuse when the husband or male perpetrator withholds money from their female partner, destroy the properties of these women, or even abstaining them from attaining economic freedom by joining the workforce in the market sphere. In our world today we see an influx of women wanting to attain economic stability and independence, but if someone were to hinder these women's access to the labor market by governing them to do only domestic household affairs this makes women dependent for financial support with their perpetrator and can lead to being trapped in a violent and abusive relationship.

There is still a strong perception that IPV is a private matter and does not need to be address in the public sphere, this rings the strongest to women who have little to no education and are below the age of 20 years old. These are also the women who are already pregnant and need the full support of their partner or spouse, thus husbands or male partners who leave their pregnant wife or partner seems to be a greater risk of experiencing socioeconomic hardship. The notion that the husband or their male partner leaving them may be perceived as the woman being difficult to handle or that they are not desirable anymore making it that an unborn child may be conceived in an unstable household. This may be why in some of the studies they find that women and men in the Philippines consider wife battery is a justifiable act when it concern the negligence of the mother's part to be maintain the cohesion and integrity of the family.

Sector
The process of healing when undergoing the process of being a victim of rape, incest, and battering can be daunting and have its traumatic effects that can affect an individual's ability to function in their everyday lives. In the article, The Effects of Ritual Healing on Female Victims of Abuse: A Study of Empowerment and Transformation it shows a framework that through spiritual healing women can once again regain consciousness with their body and emotions. In our society today it is imposed in us to control and restrain undesired emotions, which in some cases can gag an individual's ability to express themselves freely without repercussion from society. In this study women who have experienced any of the three forms of trauma gather together and with and carry an egg with them. The egg represents the their perpetrator, they then proceed to throw or smash the egg however they please while shouting their perpetrator's name, thus creating a cathartic release.