It is important to remember that psychological explanations for gender-based violence (i. e.
witnessing marital violence as a child, having an absent or rejecting father, or being abused as a
child) often fail to appreciate the role of wider inequalities in the relations between women and
men, and the need to transform these. It is not simply the case that if one sees or experiences
violence as a child, one will in turn abuse others. Studies emphasize that girls are three to six
times more likely to experience sexual abuse than boys, yet the vast majority of sexual abuse is
perpetrated by male, not female, adults