VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN WOMEN AGAINST VIOLENCE

WHY I WROTE ‘THE DIVINE WOMAN AND THE TWIN FLAME’

“The roots of violence against women lie in persistent discrimination against women and girls.” - UN

My new book, released this year, offers a spiritual template for individual women to explore living their full potential. But I also want to make it very clear that for me this feminine spirituality can be politically active and potent. By acknowledging the horrific circumstances faced by millions of women and girls politically, we can begin to contribute to the momentum and advocacy for positive change. Consider:

Among the poor, women are usually the poorest.

According to a UN briefing paper: “Violence against women and girls is not confined to a specific culture, region or country, or to particular groups of women within a society. The roots of violence against women lie in persistent discrimination against women and girls.

Up to 70 per cent of women experience violence in their lifetime, according to country data available.

Women aged 15-44 are more at risk from rape and domestic violence than from cancer, car accidents, war and malaria, according to World Bank data.” (www.un.org/en/globalissues/briefingpapers)

The UN research reports that half of women who are murdered are murdered by intimate partners or ex-partners. According to the World Health Organisation, in Australia, Canada, Israel, South Africa and the US, this figure is 40-70 per cent.

Millions of women globally are paying money for, and enjoying, a book that eroticises contracted female submission (’Fifty Shades of Grey’).

Many women now believe it is compulsory that their ‘pussies’ be hair-free (resembling a child’s), and that a woman’s natural body state is socially and individually unacceptable, even ‘disgusting’.

There is considerable evidence that younger women now feel compelled to have sex according to pornographic paradigms.

The UN estimates that, worldwide, one in five women will become a victim of rape or attempted rape in her lifetime. Women and girls are systematically raped in almost every warzone in the world. Angelina Jolie expressly confronts this in her film, ‘The Land of Blood and Honey’.

Boardrooms remain filled with men and professionally powerful women often have to negotiate periods of discrimination to advance to higher levels.

As of February 2012 in Australia, women earned an average of 17.4 per cent less than men across all sectors (average fulltime weekly wage of $1186.90 cf. to $1437.40). In some sectors, the gap was much wider – eg. Health, 32.6 per cent. (Australian Bureau of Statistics)

Of 500 young people who contacted the Australian Kids Helpline counselling service (Jan-March 2012) about concerns about ‘sexting’, 75 per cent of them were female and most under 19. One in three were aged 10-14. (Wendy Squires, ‘The Age’).

Three million women and girls will face Female Genital Mutilation between February 2012 and 2013 (WHO, ‘The Guardian’). Simultaneously, the number of women choosing voluntary plastic surgery to alter the appearance of their genitals (labiaplasty) is ‘sky-rocketing’. (Deborah Bateson, Medical Director of Family Planning NSW, ‘The Age’)

As the author of ‘The Divine Woman and the Twin Flame’, I believe that, woman by woman, the lot of women worldwide can be changed for the better. ‘The Divine Woman and the Twin Flame’ offers every woman a spiritual template for connecting with her authentic power, as a woman, in all aspects of her life. When a woman integrates this power, she becomes self-directed (what I call self-sovereign) and if she chooses to, she takes this power out into the world for the betterment of all. This power is essentially humane and will also alter for the better a woman’s relations with men and the masculine.

The book explores the most important issues in women’s lives: vocation, intimacy, love, sexuality, health and vitality, mothering and family life, creativity, spirituality and men.

The ‘Twin Flame’ aspect of the book explores the potential for women to form intimate relationships of the highest potency – whether they are heterosexual or not, and whatever their relationship orientation.

Early readers have described the book as life-changing. It is available from bookshops or can be bought online at: Facebook, The Divine Woman and the Twin Flame. Publicity enquiries or for images: twinflamepublicity@gmail.com or call Rowena Fitzgerald on 0413 210 940.

Jacinta’s blogspot, which addresses related themes of the book and other issues, is: http://www.jacintaleplastrierofficial.blogspot.com