In the developing world, gender discrimination takes on violent and lethal forms.

• Globally, 5,000 women and girls are murdered every year in so-called "honor killings" by family members who feel disgraced because a sister or daughter has seemed to act immodestly, or because they have fallen in love with the wrong guy, or because (most cruelly) they have been "defiled" by rape.
• Every year, millions of girls in the developing world (about one in seven) are forced into marriage before the age of 15, a situation in which incidents of violence are high and sexual initiation is accompanied by force, fear, and pain.
• Every day, about 6,000 girls around the world are faced with enduring female genital mutilation (FGM), which is the cutting away of all or part of the external female genitalia—generally done without anesthetic.

All of this violence against women and girls in the developing world—all the wife beatings, the dowry murders, honor killings, the acid burnings, the coercive child marriages and the genital mutilation—is against the law in nearly all the countries where it occurs. These laws, however, are simply not enforced—and it becomes "open season" against women and girls.