This important and timely reference work examines violence against women and gender-based discrimination around the world, providing a global perspective on why this kind of oppression is still occurring in the 21st century. Within the past decade, the attention that has been paid to violence against women by international government organizations such as the United Nations and World Health Organization has grown. Yet silences around the violent treatment of women remains across the world, particularly in those countries where women's rights are not protected and statistics are not available. Women and Violence encompasses a global perspective of the history, causes, and complex underpinnings of gender and violence from a multidimensional and cross-disciplinary perspective. Chapters focus on a specific world region, including North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, Central and East Asia, South and Southeast Asia, and Oceania. Each chapter begins with a general discussion on its world region, then focuses on particular forms of violence against women in the more specific contexts of particular countries and in relation to the wider region. Readers will be able to make cross-cultural comparisons, learning how to view gender-based violence and women's advocacy against discrimination that is occurring around the world.