Structural violence comes in the form of gender and racial disparities – violence, deaths, and pay

Structural violence is persistent also in the form of gender disparities. Although the lives of women around the world have improved noticeably in recent decades, gaps in access to rights, education, health, and jobs still remain. One of the worst disparities is the rate at which girls and women die relative to males in low‐income, developing countries, where an estimated 3.9 million excess deaths occur each year, purely as a result of gender inequality. Almost two‐fifths of all female fetuses worldwide are never allowed to grow due to a pref-erence for sons, one‐sixth of all girls die in childhood, and over one‐third of women die in their reproductive years (World Bank, 2012). An important facet of this gender‐biased structural violence is the fact that it leads to, and encourages, behavioral violence. Countries in the Middle East, Central and Southern Asia, and North Africa record higher rates of gender‐based violence than the rates in Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) countries. The South Asia region, known for its poor economic status, contains 69% of the world’s population but suffers 96% of the world’s structural violence. In Bangladesh, men propagate violence on women mainly because they have witnessed violence in their families of origin, and because social systems and structures condone such violence (Cross, 2013). Similar studies have shown that women with little education in Egypt are far more likely to tolerate violence from their husbands, especially if they are dependent on them for sustenance.Not all gender‐based structural violence is necessarily behavioral; statistics of income dif-ferences in the US show that in 2012 the wage rate for men was 23% higher than that for women, the difference being attributable to cultural biases that deny women the same oppor-tunities as men to explore their potential. Women 1year out of college and working full time earned on average 35,296US dollars per year, while their male counterparts earned 42,918 dollars per year (Kesley, 2013). Another aspect of this gender disparity is the statistics on maternal deaths. In the 1980s, half a million maternal deaths occurred annually, of which 99% were in poor countries. Although the number of annual maternal deaths has been declining since then, a 2010 survey report by the UN Population Fund (FPA) showed that pregnancy‐ and birth‐related complications are still the leading causes of death among 15‐ to 19‐year‐olds in low‐income countries (Mukherjee et al., 2011).Structural violence can also operate through systematic racial disparities. The United States is home to systematic racial discrimination; the US incarcerates 2.4 million people, and although African‐Americans make up only 13% of the population, they comprise 41% of the country’s prison population. And while drug‐use figures are similar for blacks and whites in the US, the former are 2.8 to 5.5 times more likely to be arrested and to receive longer and harsher sentences for this kind of crime than the latter (Human Rights Watch, 2009).A recent US Department of Justice report (2015) on the police department of Ferguson, Missouri, following an investigation of the 2014 police killing of an unarmed African‐American teenager, revealed that the impact on African‐Americans is disproportionate at all levels of jus-tice, a trend that is widespread throughout the entire country (Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, 2012). This kind of disparity is directly attributable to structural racism, which facilitates nega-tive stereotypes and legitimizes keeping minority groups from defending themselves. Many of the U.S. practices, particularly in the areas of criminal justice, immigration, and national secu-rity, violate international human rights standards in this manner (Human Rights Watch, 2015).A more hidden but similar trend is apparent in unemployment figures: data from a 2013 Center for Economic and Policy Research survey showed that the overall unemployment rate among 22‐ to 27‐year‐old college graduates in the US was 5.6%, while for African‐American graduates, it was 12.4% (Jones & Schmitt, 2014). At the same time, African‐Americans exhibit elevated rates of mortality for 8 out of the 10 major causes of death, most of which have an association with disparities in healthcare access (Williams & Collins, 2001). In 2008, white Americans with 16years or more of schooling had life expectancies far greater than African‐Americans with fewer than 12years of education—14.2years for men and 10.3years for women (Olshansky et al., 2012). Europe also has a number of disturbing trends in the area of racial disparity, which are now threatening to enter mainstream politics through far‐right parties, thereby further entrenching discriminatory structures. Sentiments against immigration are run-ning particularly high, with most Europeans viewing immigrants as an economic burden, as not assimilating, and as perpetrating crimes—these attitudes are a side effect of global structural violence, which divides rich countries and poor countries roughly over racial lines.Another form of structural violence is the control of voting rights and the denial of political power. This can occur either within sovereign states, as in the Apartheid regime of South Africa, or within international bodies like the International Monetary Fund, in which countries such as Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States exert excessive influence. For example, the US treasury funds more than half of the World Bank and therefore has numerous fiscal privileges, while low-income countries like those in Africa have little hope of enjoying the same privileges and thus the benefits of trade liberalization (Global Envision, 2007). Global insti-tutions can also facilitate and encourage corruption in national governments and institutions: in the face of extreme inequalities, it is far more lucrative for the latter to cater to the interests of foreign governments and firms than to the interests of their impoverished compatriots (Pogge, 2002). In this manner, the power to choose and to change unjust structures is unavailable to those who do not have the power in the first place