'Scrupulously researched and documented, illustrated with both statistics and personal stories, this is a book that changes perceptions and could play a substantive role in achieving change.' -Margaret Hebblethwaite, author and missionary in Paraguay

Published to coincide with the UN International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (25 November 2015), Scars Across Humanity is a thoroughly documented investigation into the causes of violence against women, past and present. Global in scope, and addressing the issues as they affect women at every stage of life, this powerful book also offers a probing critique of evolutionary and social-scientific accounts of gender-based violence, and of the role that religion can play, for good or ill, in the struggle against this worldwide problem.

Introduction: naming the problem 1

1 A global pandemic 4

2 Violence begins before birth: selective abortion and infanticide 18

3 Cut for purity: female genital mutilation 29

4 Early and enforced marriage: child abuse by another name 47

5 Whose ‘honour’? Killings and femicide as reprisals for shame 59

6 Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide: violence in the home 75

7 Money, sex and violence: trafficking and prostitution 96

8 Rape 115

9 War and sexual violence 133

10 Why gender-based violence? It’s in our genes: exploring our evolutionary heritage 152

11 Why gender-based violence? Power and patriarchy 170

12 Religion and women 187

13 Christianity and gender: a fuller picture 204

Notes 224

Select bibliography 260

Index 269