Jennifer Olmsted: Gender Roles In Violence Against Women

I attended the event Gender, Economic development, and Armed conflicts on Wednesday, April 6th 2016. This event was presented by Jennifer Olmsted. A brief overview of this event was that it regarded major points that had a strong correlation to women including the causes of war, the different categories of conflicts, the impact of these conflicts, the gender roles that take places within them and sexual reproductive rights. I believe the primary goal of this event was to further educate the attendees of what conflicts are taking place. I believe it is crucial to provide this information so, college students are able to act further on instances that they see such as rape. I believe it was very wise to make this connection with college students
This reading is reachable through the the book “Women's Lives” by Gwyn Kirk. I related it back to this reading because of the amount of violence Jennifer Olmstead talked about. Throughout this reading, I was able to find many examples of reasons why men believe they are superior to women. A few key terms that stood out to me throughout this reading was intimate partner violence and battered women syndrome. Intimate partner violence stood out specifically because it regarded the “idealized family” which was exactly what Jennifer Olstad had mentioned numerous times. Men believe that it is a given that they work while the women take care of the children. As men would come home for the war, they would take their aggression and depression out on their wife, which leads to battered women syndrome. Often times, the women in the household would be so accustomed to taking care of their children that they would do anything to retain this position, therefore, she learned the helplessness she was feeling and didn’t act upon it. The next reading I was able to easily relate to the new information I acquired was “White Privilege and Male Privilege” by Peggy McIntosh. This reading easily relates to fact that men and whites are treated with priority over anyone else in society. Jennifer helps emphasize on this point, as she discusses that if you wanted to be in charge you had to be a white male. Also, Jennifer Olmstead goes in specific detail than many white men believe they are doing nothing wrong. Through the article by Peggy McIntosh, this can be explained more in-depth. Peggy McIntosh believes that white males don’t see their privilege because they have lived with it for so long. After relating the information I learned to the reading, I began to formulate many