The White Ribbon Day is celebrated every year beginning November 25 up to December 10 when the Human Rights Day will be the culmination of the celebrations.

The message behind the White Ribbon movement is aimed to stop every form of violence against women and sensitize everyone, particularly the youth, so that they learn from the very beginning that committing violence against women is doing it against the entire society and against each and every one of us.

The point is that violence against women is very often downplayed in many quarters and its negative effects are also equally undermined. And yet women are half of the population and they can never be discounted.

The reason why it is often down played is probably because it has been denied the necessary focus and priority by stakeholders and there has often been a tendency to take it with a certain acceptance. Tradition could be one such obstacle along with lack or scarcity of awareness on what it actually means and what it implies particularly for women.

Restricting women using such covert means of violence has its negative impact on society. It has its impact on development ventures as well because women may be discouraged from aspiring to rise up to high level management circles and leadership roles due to such prejudice.

Women are half of humanity and any harm done to them, be it physical or moral, is harm done on all of humanity. There may be a tendency to believe that it is a matter restricted to only women and hence men should consider it as something extra and to be taken lightly. But it is not.

First of all, almost every kind of violence perpetrated against women is carried out by men and this includes not only the one that everybody is ready to acknowledge and condemn openly such as sexual violence, but also other forms of violence such as beating, most commonly carried out by the male companion, partner or husband, or even a relative, an elder brother.

But there are also other forms of violence such as the ones that are carried out in places of work or in schools or any other public place for that matter, in transport facilities, in neighbourhoods etc. Often men believe that they are entitled to make any kinds of comments on say how women are dressed or use their personal toilette.

At times, these comments could be offensive but the men who pronounce them do not feel it that way; and although the women may feel it, they are forced to let go as the sensitiveness of the society is still low on certain modes of behaviour and attitude.

It may be beyond their radar of comprehension or appreciation and any comments to the negative may result in misunderstandings and eventually violence or other undesirable effects.

Indeed any form of violence, particularly those that are taken for granted such as simple harassment or remarks against the way women look, dress or behave do them much harm. They tend to inflict on them feelings of inferiority and limit them from enjoying their full liberty, their full personality and eventually achieve what others do.

But this is exactly what we need to do to elevate the mentality of people from may be the very early days of childhood that ‘abuse against women is abuse against every one’. Besides, we all have mothers and female relatives of all kinds.

Above all, we should not be condescending with any sort of violence or abuse against women and whenever we find any such incident, we must stand up to denounce it and make sure with all our capacity that it should not be repeated.

In Ethiopia, there have been studies regarding the kind of violence that often are directed against women just because of certain traditional malpractices due to the mere fact that they are women.

People may believe that they have to accept it as a natural thing. But this is still where a lot should be done even if progress has been recorded in the past few decades. We need to clarify and put things in the right perspective.