( CNN ) -- We first thought about starting this piece with the story of Saleha Begum , a survivor of Bangladesh 's 1971 war in which , some reports say , as many as 400,000 women were raped . Begum had been tied to a banana tree and repeatedly gang raped and burned with cigarettes for months until she was shot and left for dead in a pile of women . She did n't die , though , and was able to return home , ravaged and five months pregnant . When she got home she was branded a `` slut . '' We also thought of starting with the story of Ester Abeja , a woman in Uganda who was forcibly held as a `` bush wife '' by the Lord 's Resistance Army . Repeated rape with objects destroyed her insides . Her captors also made her kill her 1-year-old daughter by smashing the baby 's head into a tree . We ran through a dozen other stories of women like Begum and Abeja , and finally realized that it would be too difficult to find the right one -- the tale that would express exactly how and in what ways sexualized violence is being used as a weapon of war to devastate women and tear apart communities around the world , conflict by conflict , from Libya to the Democratic Republic of Congo . It is because of this complexity that we must understand how sexualized violence is being used . We must understand in order to stop it -- just as , when seeking to defuse a bomb , it is crucial to know its components . Both the World Health Organization and the U.N. Security Council have recognized that there is a lack of research on the nature and extent of sexualized violence in conflict , even as there is increasing demand from U.N. bodies , donors , and others for better analysis to work toward prevention and healing . All of this is why we have begun a new project at the Women 's Media Center that breaks down the specifics of sexualized violence into areas such as its motives and patterns , its fallout , and the gender and cultural attitudes that may have led to it . We 're calling our project Women Under Siege , because with four women being raped every five minutes in Congo alone , we can say it is nothing less than that -- an ongoing siege . And it 's time we began to put an end to it . Sexualized violence may be the only form of violence in which the victim is blamed or is even said to have invited it . In war , rape shames women , men , children , entire societies . The stigma imposed on all who are touched by this violence makes this weapon incredibly effective as a means of destroying the enemy . But it is crucial to remember that it was n't always like this , nor does it have to be . Sexualized violence is n't a `` natural '' part of conflict . For the first 90 % or more of human history , females and males had roles that were balanced and porous . Our societal positions were n't based on the domination of females by males . Humans and nature , women and men , were linked rather than ranked . The circle , not the hierarchy , was the organizing principle of our thinking . By analyzing how sexualized violence was used to ethnically cleanse , as it was in Bosnia ; to force pregnancies that would literally change the face of the next generation ; or , as in Egypt , to stop dissent , we can look to future wars and possibly prevent a reoccurrence . For generations , we have ignored or been denied knowledge of the mass sexualized violence inflicted on Jewish women in the Holocaust . Women who survived brutal attacks have even been accused of collaborating in order to survive , just as , say , a raped woman in the Congo may never be accepted back into her village or family because she is considered culpable . Last year , a book called `` Sexual Violence Against Jewish Women During the Holocaust '' brought to light how the Nazis perpetrated rape and sexual humiliation on a tremendous scale . Yet none of this had been revealed or tried at Nuremburg . If we 'd known about this earlier , might it have helped prevent rape camps in the former Yugoslavia ? Or rape as a weapon of genocide in the Congo ? Naming sexualized violence as a weapon of war makes it visible -- and once visible , prosecutable . What happened to men in the past was political , but what happened to women was cultural . The political was public and could be changed ; the other was private -- even sacred -- and could not or even should not be changed . Making clear that sexualized violence is political and public breaks down that wall . It acknowledges that sexualized violence does not need to happen . When masculinity is no longer defined by the possession and domination of women , when femininity is no longer about the absence of sexual experience or being owned , then we will have begun . But first , we have to stop saying sexualized violence is inevitable , or allowing its victims to be blamed . We have to imagine change before we can create it . Follow CNN Opinion on Twitter . Join the conversation on Facebook . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Gloria Steinem and Lauren Wolfe .
Gloria Steinem , Lauren Wolfe : The first thing I noticed about the women in this group was that they were all very beautiful. They say it has n't been well studied ; understanding its roots is important to stopping it . New project , Women Under Siege , aims to study causes of sexualized violence . Writers : Ensuring this violence is acknowledged as political , public is crucial first step .