A powerful account of the violence that women around the globe face every day, including child brides, female infanticide, honor killings, genital mutilation and physical and emotional abuse. Storkey's research is meticulous and she does a great job of sharing testimonials and then breaking down how these crimes are justified in different cultures and religions. Great book, but reading some of the details about how women are treated, made my blood boil. *ARC provided by the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

Scars Across Humanity
Understanding and Overcoming Violence Against Women
by Elaine Storkey

InterVarsity Press

IVP Academic
Christian , Religion & Spirituality
Pub Date 20 Feb 2018

I am reviewing a copy of Scars Across Humanity through IV Press and Netgalley:


November 25 1960 in a Sugarcane field in the Dominican Public three sisters are brutally murdered. The sisters were strangled and clubbed to death, they were three out of the four Mirabal Sisters. The murder so brutal the killers put them in a Jeep and pushed it over the cliff, wanting to make it look like an accident but no one was fooled.

Almost fourth years later on November 25 1999, November 25 became known as the International Day Again Violence Towards Women.

From Tahir Egypt to the Congo violence against women is a real struggle, even in the United States Violence against women .

Elaine Storkey deals with everything from early forced marriages, to selective abortions, to spousal abuse.

Every three seconds a girl under eighteen is married somewhere in the world. That's barely the time it takes for a person to blink. Most of the times these marriages are without consent and generally to a much older man. These forced marriages put these girls at risk.

Elaine Storkey goes on to talk about both (so called) honor killings and Femicide. In some parts of the world some girls are murdered for something as harmless as talking to a boy. Even in the U.S and Canada we have seen cases of Honor Killings.


Human Trafficking is also a very real issue that sadly many women have to face. Although men can be victims of human trafficking it is women and girls who are most vulnerable.


Rape is also another evil women have to attend with.


I give Scars Across Humanity five out of five stars!


Happy Reading!

My heart often is sadden from all the violence in our world. As an advocate for Sex Trafficking Awareness, this book gave me an insight into how and why this is such a prevalent atrocity in today's world.

Wow.

This book is heavy--it covers heavy topics and has a lot of information. The brokenness's that have been covered in this book, the acts of violence against women across the world, it feels like a lot to think about. I appreciate that Storkey does not leave us with the information she's compiled but with a reminder of the hope that Christ bears and the hope that is being wrung out of movements for change.

I appreciate that she has taken the time to process through all of the information she has and has brought it together for others to read and, maybe for the first time, understand some of the things that are happening throughout the world.

An exploration into violence against women throughout the world and what Christians can do about it.

The first few chapters are a murderer's row of terrible stories documenting what women experience around the world: murder, honor killings, rape, physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, genital mutilation, child brides, and so on. A quite sobering look at the conditions of women worldwide.

The author then explores the means by which these abuses are explained. She does well at exposing the limitations of the biological/evolutionary view of things, and concludes that the power dynamic/relations narrative proves more compelling. The book concludes with explorations of how feminism relates to Islam and Christianity.

The author's likely liberal Protestantism, or at least highly feminist Christian views, comes out especially in the final chapters. It proves easy to dismiss certain interpretations of Christianity as enabling patriarchal abuse because of holding to a certain standard for said interpretation. Is the solution really to just make one's view of the New Testament culturally relative? Is there really refuge for abusers and those who perpetrate violence against women even in a "strict" interpretation, consistent with context, of New Testament Christianity?

Nevertheless, worth exploring to be reminded of the plight of women worldwide. It's not pleasant out there.