[Table changed slightly according to: Schmidt-Häuer, Julia: Human Rights - Men's Rights - Women's Rights; LIT: Münster 2002, Page 172]

During the course of the 20th Century, the position of women has improved step for step due to changes to the constitution at national level and through international declarations and documents. Formal legal limitations have been dissolved in many countries. Improved access to education, health care, employment and political participation has been the consequence. Despite this it is apparent that the protection of women's rights is in no way guaranteed, either globally or independent of cultural context. Women's rights violations are the product of violence. The most important human right - the right to life and bodily integrity - is being refused to women daily and worldwide. They are subjected to violence on a large scale in the family, the society and on the part of the state.

The special character of this form of violence consists of the fact that it is not just directed towards individual women but againstall women as a social group. Violence against women encompasses all things that deny a woman the right to realise her potential for development for reasons of gender. It frequently comprises a form of contempt for women, which is socially accepted to a degree so that men are frequently not even aware of it, whereby, in contrast, women frequently see it as a necessary evil of their being women, or accept it as a form of relationship between man and woman which is based on biology.

Structural and personal violence can be differentiated between: Under violence to the person direct attacks on the body of a woman such as the rape of women and girls, physical abuse or the murder of women is to be understood. In most cases, violence to the person is usually connected directly with the female body, to the reproductive function of the woman and to her sexuality. Structural violence expresses itself in the ideology of inferiority, in scorn and in the object status of women and is linked to men's desire for superiority in many social areas.