Going back now to the other parts of my sweeping assertions, part 2- women are targeted for violence based on sex.
There is lots and lots of male violence in the world. Guys hurt and kill each other for all sorts of reasons. But when women are victims it is very often on the basis of her sex- rape and domestic violence.
85% of domestic violence victims are women. Almost one third of female homicide victims are killed by an intimate parter, as compared to 3% of men.
http://www.ncadv.org/files/DomesticViolenceFactSheet(National).pdf In 70-80% of intimate partner homicides, no matter which partner was killed, the man physically abused the woman before the murder. U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics state that 91% of rape victims are female and 9% are male, and 99% of arrestees for rape are male.
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/SOO.PDF
As for the protection women receive, that's actually the easiest part of the whole thing. In the US 23 states have hate crime laws protecting race, relgion and ethncity from hate crimes, but only 13 list gender.
http://www.adl.org/assets/pdf/combating-hate/state_hate_crime_laws.pdf
Gender was added to the federal list of protected groups in 2009, in the same bill that added sexual orientation and gender identity.
Civil Rights Division Home Page. However, rape and sexual assault are not classified as hate crimes, even then they include group-specific slurs which would trigger a hate crime investigation if the word was kike instead of whore. Sigh.