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Forsaken Females: The Global Brutalization of Women. Andrea Parrot and Nina Cummings. Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006. 253 pp.
Forsaken Females is coauthored by Andrea Parrot, a professor in the Department of Policy Analysis and Management, and Nina Cummings, a health educator, both from Cornell University. In a cross-cultural body of research, this text examines the educational, religious, traditional, and family structures that predispose women to experiencing violence. An important work, this book is partitioned into three main caveats: (1) the demarcation and explication of the context in which violence against women occurs; (2) the practices used to perpetrate such violence; and (3) the consequences and potential solutions to the brutalization of women.
The demarcation, explication, and contextualization of violence against women demands a breadth of reflexivity quite difficult to achieve. Sensitive to the ever-present and ongoing debates of cultural relativism versus egocentrism, the authors argue the merits of potential universal truths that challenge human rights abuses, despite cultural diversity. While arguing the importance of understanding cultural perspectives on constructions of gender, identity, and power, the authors skillfully elucidate the role culture also plays in forming behaviors that perpetrate violence against women.
From the perspectives of human rights workers and...