And the prevalence of gender based violence is one of the issues at the forefront of this policy. According to Ramirez, there is an alarmingly high percentage of people who believe that domestic violence is normalized and "not anyone's business." However, she explained that this problem is a public one, and should not be kept behind closed doors.
Thea Garcia Ramirez, President, National Women's Commission
"It was one of the UN agencies that did a survey and it was found that 11% of those survey which was a good group of people - think it's okay to abuse your spouse to try to get them to do what you want. They need to get in line, then it's okay. A lot about 30% believe that gender base violence is something that is private as we discussed, I don't agree with that, I think that gender base violence cost tax dollars. Like I said from before it means that if somebody gets hit, they have to access healthcare which cost money, downtime cost social security. Obviously, there would be a police report that is costing and it would cost if it ends up in the courts then it cost money there, so with that being said your private business cannot cost the public money and then you would turn around and say it's my private affair, it's not. Gender base violence is a public ill, it's a public problem and it has to be address that way."
"There have been increases in reporting, but by and large people only report. We know that they report about 40% of the incidences. So, if you're talking that we have about 2000 reported incidents, that's only representative of about 40% of the incidents. 60% or the large majority does go unreported and so worldwide we know that one in three women will know or see or experience gender base violence during their lifetime at one point or another."
