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The 1993 United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women covers "any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or private life and physical, sexual and psychological violence perpetrated or condoned by the state, wherever it occurs." In their "Introduction" to Breaking the Silence: Violence against Women in Asia, the editors elaborate how the various modes and manifestations of violence directed at girls and women begin as early as the "pre-birth period" with "coerced pregnancy" and "sex-selective abortion," specifically with female foeticide (2). The different forms of violence and abuse expand and intensify through girlhood and continue into womanhood, as evidenced in this litany. The editors thus conclude: "There is no stage in the life cycle in which women are exempt from the threat of violence" (2).
If such a sweeping declaration can be made about "women" as a generic class of vulnerably gendered subjects, the charge, of "breaking the silence" about "violence against women in Asia," begs several related questions about both silence and violence: What makes violence against women in Asia similar to and different from violence against women in other continental locations like Africa or South America? Put another way, are women in Asia subject to particular forms of gender-related violence, which are manifest across regional and national differences throughout Asia? Are there then also specific forms of silence about VAW within and across national boundaries in Asia? Indeed, many of the essays address the problem of silence surrounding the problem of violence, which takes on multiple and sometimes conflicting registers in this volume.
First, the most obvious meaning of silence is the women's own inability and/or unwillingness to disclose their experiences due to feelings of shame and fear of further violence, punishment, and/or ostracism due to widespread "negative perceptions of victims of rape and sexual harassment" (39). As pointed out on several occasions, some abused women may not themselves recognize the violence and abuse as such due to early socialization and communal pressures, which work to naturalize certain forms of physical mistreatment or sexual coercion as part of...