This is an interesting question, Mr. Speaker, and I shall answer it in this way. The more one studies these questions the more one knows that the solution to violence toward women must be found in a context where there is no need for men to be violent.
The way to make it possible for men and women to be equal partners is to ensure that both can fulfil their total potential and then they will go on to be capable of a partnership of equals.
What we are finding more and more, and what some people have realized for a long time already, is that the couple must be based on a relationship of equality. As for help, the networks of men and women must be such that they create couples in which there can be an equal to equal relationship.
This is the case not only here but also in the poorer developing countries. I find the report so extraordinary because it states that the inequality between the sexes is considered a problem of the utmost urgency and is a priority for development. To quote the report, it is “a matter of urgency affecting both human rights and development priorities”.
Inequality must be brought out into the light and solutions sought, with women first of all, in order to manage to attain a level of equality so that within the couple, the woman can assert herself in situations relating to her fertility. There are millions—