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Gender Violence in India

Etc.

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<b>The paper below is a contribution by Prof. Rekha Pande, from the [Wikigender University: Centre for Women's Studies, University of Hyderabad|Centre for Women’s studies (CWS), University of Hyderabad] in [Pagelink infos="Gender Equality in India"].</b>
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<div id="toc"><h2>Table of Contents</h2>
<ul>
<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="#w_history-of-womens-movement-in-india"><span class="tocnumber">1</span> <span class="toctext">History of Women's Movement in India</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="#w_gender-violence-issues-and-manifestations"><span class="tocnumber">2</span> <span class="toctext">Gender Violence: Issues and Manifestations</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="#w_legislations-and-other-positive-developments"><span class="tocnumber">3</span> <span class="toctext">Legislations and other positive developments</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="#w_looking-ahead"><span class="tocnumber">4</span> <span class="toctext">Looking Ahead</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="#w_references"><span class="tocnumber">5</span> <span class="toctext">References</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="#w_see-also"><span class="tocnumber">6</span> <span class="toctext">See also</span></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="#w_bibiliography"><span class="tocnumber">7</span> <span class="toctext">Bibiliography</span></a></li>
</ul>
</div><h2 id="w_history-of-womens-movement-in-india">History of Women's Movement in India</h2>
<p>Looking at the history of women empowerment movements’ one can identify some broad trajectories: in the initial phases a number of women were organizing and mobilizing around the globe for their rights. The development planners and policy makers in [Pagelink infos="Gender Equality in India"] did not have any interaction with these groups and they considered feminism as irrelevant to development and it was viewed as a luxury for the better of women in the industrialized countries. In this phase development is seen as an administrative problem, whose solution lay in transferring vast amount of resources and technological innovations from rich to poor countries. Eventually there were efforts to integrate women in the developmental process, wherein [Pagelink infos="Access to Education|education"] and employment became the indicators of women’s involvement in the development process, but again under this phase a large chunk of rural women were purview of the developmental process. But today the question of development is being addressed from the feminist perspective and concerns about issues like child care, [Pagelink infos="Reproductive Category:Health|reproductive rights"], [Pagelink infos="violence against women"], family planning, transfer of technology and rural development have given the concept of development a new meaning. If development leads only to an increase in production, then it consequentially tends to reinforce and exaggerate the imbalances and inequalities within and in between societies. Development has to be an integral process with economic, social and cultural aspects of an individual’s life, enabling them to the take control of their life situation; herein comes the concept of empowerment.
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<h2 id="w_gender-violence-issues-and-manifestations">Gender Violence: Issues and Manifestations</h2>
<p>A major issue that haunts the process of development and empowerment in India is the issue of Gender violence. The many forms of violence against women and girl children are to be understood as gender violence. Only when we look at violence not as a private issue but a developmental and human rights issue, that we will be able to see the question in its totality. Violence has an economic, social and political cost to society and is not a private affair. Gender violence is rooted in the theory that the cause of domestic violence is one person’s arbitrary belief in the right to exert power over another person, interpersonal interactions or interpersonal relations and is situated in the socio-economic and political content of power relations <ref> Kelkar, Violence Against Women in India-Perspectives and Strategies </ref>. 
</p><p>In [Pagelink infos="South Asia"], in the absence of State support structures, family is a group that one looks to for love, gentleness and solidarity, yet it is one of the very few groups which uses physical force leading to  the increasing problem of violence in our society. It is well known that as bonds of tradition weaken with modernization, gender violence within families tends to increase. Domestic violence is not unique to India, nor is it a recent phenomenon. But in India what is unusual is the resistance to its elimination by society at large and society’s lack of recognition of it as a serious issue. What is recent however is the courage of women to face up to domestic violence—not just women in organized groups but also female victims who are well aware of the adverse consequences that “going public” will have on their lives. With the backdrop of the patriarchal social structure, the tradition of familial piety and the asymmetrical gender expectations in India, this defiant movement to expose domestic violence has created the space for a national debate on the issue.
</p><p>In India, in the recent past, it has been primarily due to the efforts of the Women’s movement that violence against women was recognized as an issue meriting serious concern. Towards Equality, Report of 1974, this sharply highlighted the abysmal low status of women in modern India, and focused attention on the fact that despite many progressive social legislation’s and constitutional guarantees, women’s status had not improved much (Towards Equality Report, 1974). However, this report did not include violence as an important issue in its discussion on the status of women.  It was only in 1995, the Indian Government had recognized violence against women as one of the eleven critical areas of concern <ref> Country Report,1995, Fourth World Conference on Women and child development, New Delhi, Ministry of Human Resources Development </ref>. 
</p><p>Gender violence is rooted in the theory that the cause of [Pagelink infos="domestic violence"] is one person’s arbitrary belief in the right to exert power over another person, interpersonal interactions or interpersonal relations and is situated in the socio-economic and political content of power relations <ref> Kelkar, Violence Against Women in India-Perspectives and Strategies </ref>. In Indian families, most of the working class women, even while facing violence, also face the trivializing of this reality in their lives. Middle class women face another kind of censoring of the violence that they face within homes. The public private divide which operates very strongly in many middle class women’s lives do not allow them to speak about the humiliation and violence they undergo. Both these, trivializing as well as silencing are political acts which support a structure of oppression of women <ref> Rekha Pande ( with Bindu, K.C. Mumtaz Fatima, Nuzhath Khatoon), 2008,  “Narratives of domestic violence, Reconstructing masculinities and Feminities”, in Singh, Manjit and D.P. Singh( ed),  Violence –impact and intervention </ref>. Girls who observe domestic violence are more likely to tolerate abusive partners as adults, thus subjecting another generation to the same sad dynamics. The wife’s tolerance is explained in terms of traditional socialization or learned helplessness <ref> Flavia Agnes, Violence in the Family: Wife beating </ref>.  Women tend to be the peacemakers on relationships, the ones responsible for making the marriage work. 
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<h2 id="w_legislations-and-other-positive-developments">Legislations and other positive developments</h2>
<p>Traditionally violence against women was considered women’s issue to be addressed through counseling,legal aid and organizing women’s shelters.  However, the issue came into sharp focus in the 1980’s with the widespread coverage by the mass media of growing incidents of torture of brides, of dowry deaths and of the localized populous protests against these heinous crimes <ref> Madhu Kishwar, In search of answers </ref>.  The campaigns by women and the slogan that, “ A suicide in the family is murder”, has brought about a change in the Indian Penal Code through Section 498 A, and for the first time criminalized domestic violence and created a much needed space for a distressed women facing violence in her marital home. The agitation against liquor in Andhra Pradesh also brought in the issue of violence in the public realm <ref> Rekha Pande, The public face of a private domestic violence </ref>.  There has now increasingly been a feeling that definition of violence only as physical acts of aggression are inadequate.  The understanding of violence has to incorporate the imperceptible psychological unseen day to day violence perpetrated within the families through cultural, religious practices, inter personal, interrelationships, language, gesture and socialization.
</p><p>Despite the growing interest and recognition of the issue of domestic violence there is a dearth of literature on domestic violence in India. We do not have much data on domestic violence except few qualitative studies of a very small sample <ref> V.Rao Mahajan, Wife beating in rural South India: A qualitative and econometric analysis </ref> . Three studies from Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra and Karnataka have clearly shown that domestic violence is an all-pervasive phenomenon in India.  It showed that violence cuts across caste, class, religion, age and education. Inspite of economic prosperity and high literacy rate two out of every five wives experience physical abuse.
</p><p>In Indian families, most of the working class women, even while facing violence, also face the trivializing of this reality in their lives. Middle class women face another kind of censoring of the violence that they face within homes. The public private divide which operates very strongly in many middle class women’s lives does not allow them to speak about the humiliation and violence they undergo. Both these trivializing as well as silencing are political acts which support a structure of oppression of women . Girls who observe domestic violence are more likely to tolerate abusive partners as adults, thus subjecting another generation to the same sad dynamics. The wife’s tolerance is explained in terms of traditional socialization or learned helplessness.  Women tend to be the peacemakers in relationships, the ones responsible for making the marriage work. 
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<h2 id="w_looking-ahead">Looking Ahead</h2>
<p>We can 	eliminate gender violence only  if we change the values of our society.  We need to begin with the individual. Each individual must make a pledge about his or her own immediate action in private as well as public life if age old practices and values are to be changed. There is a need to measure one’s masculinity in terms of equality. One can start at home by teaching one’s son to fight against inequality and to teach the daughter to break the silence. In this new millennium there is a need to move beyond the family. Supporting women’s efforts and promoting men’s role in gender peace are important. A new approach is needed, one that supports the family as an institution based on equality, love and respect rather than on power and privilege for men and boys and weakness and subservience prescribed for women and girls. Children both male and female should be raised by instituting qualities of tenderness and nurturance as well as assertion. Only then will a healthy respect be ensured and gender violence be eliminated.       
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<h2 id="w_references">References</h2>
<p><references/>
</p>
<h2 id="w_see-also">See also</h2>
<ul><li>[Pagelink infos="The Gender Equality in Indian Girl Child"]
</li><li>[Pagelink infos="Violence against women"]
</li><li>[Pagelink infos="Violence against women and the Millennium Development Goals"]
</li><li>[Pagelink infos="Domestic Violence in Gender Equality in India"]
</li><li>[Pagelink infos="Domestic violence"]
</li></ul>
<h2 id="w_bibiliography">Bibiliography</h2>
<ol><li>Kelkar, Govind, ,1991,  Violence against Women in India- Perspective  and Strategies , Bangkok, Asian  Institute of Technology.
</li><li>Country Report,1995,  Fourth World Conference on Women and child development, New Delhi, Ministry of Human Resources Development. 
</li><li>Pande Rekha ( with Bindu, K.C. Mumtaz Fatima, Nuzhath Khatoon), 2008,  “Narratives of domestic violence, Reconstructing masculinities and Feminities”, in Singh, Manjit and D.P. Singh( ed),  Violence –impact and intervention, New Delhi, Atlantic publishers and Distributors,  pp. 121-140. 
</li><li>Agnes, Flavia, 1980,  Violence in the Family: Wife beating, Bombay, SNDT, Women’s Centre, 1980.
</li><li>Ahuja, R, 1987,  Crime against Women , Jaipur, Rawat Publications,. Mahajan, A. 1990.
</li></ol>
<p>”Instigators of wife battering”, in Sooshma Sood (Ed), Violence against women,  Jaipur. Arihant Publishers, 
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<ol><li>Kishwar, Madhu and Vanita, Ruth (ed) , 1984.  In search of answers, London, Zed Books, 
</li><li>Pande, Rekha, 2002 , The public face of a private domestic violence, International Feminist Journal of Politics, U.K , Rutledge,. Vol. 4, No. 3, , pp.342-367.
</li><li>Mahajan, Op. cit. , Rao, V. 1997, “Wife beating in rural South India: A qualitative and econometric analysis”, Social Science and medicine, No. 44,Vol.8
</li><li>PROWID , 1999,  Domestic violence in India, A summary report of 3 studies, Washington, DC International Center for Research on Women,.
</li></ol>
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