Green Party leader calls for education in UK schools to tackle VAW
Summary from ePolitix, October 12, 2011
Green Party leader Caroline Lucas has called for educational programmes about violence against women (VAW) to be made part of the curriculum in every school in the UK.
The facts speak for themselves, she says. One in four women in the UK will experience domestic violence in their lifetime, and it’s thought that two women per week are killed by a current or former partner, and an estimated 60,000 women are raped every year.
An NSPCC study in 2005 found that 43 per cent of teenage girls thought male aggression against a partner was acceptable.
A YouGov poll for the End Violence Against Women Coalition found that one third of girls had experienced unwanted sexual contact at school. And the NSPCC has found that 33 per cent of girls aged between 13 and 17 who were in intimate relationships had experienced some kind of sexual violence.
Ms Lucas believes that as a society we are failing to tackle these issues and wants the government to consider making it an obligation for local authorities to develop violence against women strategies.
Totally agree with Caroline Lucas.