Violence against women has utilitarian value in a patriarchal society, which takes away from women, control over various aspects of their lives. It is used as a tool by the patriarchal system to control women's lives and to maintain domination over them. Violence is thus a regular, systemic and structural manifestation of social control of women. Feminists in their definitions emphasize on the role of unequal social, economic, cultural and political structures in perpetuating violence on women. Women experience violence also as members of different classes, castes, religion, ethnicity and others. Violence against women therefore not only crosses racial, ethnic, caste, class, national, spatial and other socio-economic boundaries but also is manoeuvred by such identities (Renzetti, Edleson and Bergen: 1990).

It is the result of unequal distribution of power between men and women, unequal access to resources, gendered division of labour, and gendered notions of sexuality that stems from traditional ideologies. Consequently, violence against women results in further subordination of women and reinforces women's economic, political and social inequalities.

It is now an internationally accepted fact that women's rights are human rights. Though addressed earlier it was only in the 1990s that concept of gender violence as human rights violation expanded rapidly. The 1993 Vienna World Conference on Human Rights, marked the culmination of a long struggle to secure international recognition of women's right as human rights. Article 18 of the Vienna declaration provides that: ‘[t]he human rights of women and of the girl child are an inalienable, integral and indivisible part of universal human rights. The full and equal participation of women in political, civil, economic, social and cultural life, at the national, regional and international levels, and the eradication of all forms of discrimination on grounds of sex are priority objectives of the international community' (Kapur: 2005: 96). Immediately after the Vienna conference, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly passed a declaration on violence against women that is known as Convention for Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). This declaration along with others like the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing (1995) has established the fact that violence against women is a violation of women's human rights and a form of discrimination that prevents women from participating fully in society and fulfilling their potential as human beings. India in 1993 ratified to the CEDAW declaration thereby committing ‘itself to work for elimination of all types of discriminations, which place women at a disadvantage' (Mohanty: 2005: 22). The Indian state thus is ‘obliged to protect women from all forms of violence they face, the obligation to protect being an internationally recognized human right' (Merry: 2003: 87).

Liz Kelly (1998), Surviving Sexual Polity has defined violence as “any physical, visual, verbal or sexual act that is experienced by the woman or girl at the time or later as a threat, invasion or assault, that has the effect of hurting her or degrading her and/or takes away her ability to contest an intimate contact”. The operational definitions of violence may be given as force whether it is over or covert, used to wrest upon an individual (a women) something that she does not want to give of her own free will and which cases her either physical injury or emotional trauma or both. Thus rape, kidnapping, murder, wife-battering, sexual abuse, eve-teasing are all examples of violence against women.