Sex trafficking is a far more lucrative industry than begging for girls, which is what will "save" Latika from being blinded, the film suggests. Despite a few films, some books, more studies and innumerable news reports on the controversial and shrouded issue of incest and child abuse, it is only the devastating statistics that tell the true horror of what children in India face on a daily basis. With sex trafficking being a profitable business, sexual abuse in the country is as rampant among boys as it is among girls.
With over 35 million homeless children, and shelters, for only 36,000 of these children, life can be precariously balanced. In Delhi alone, nearly half a million children live on the streets. And against the background of these statistics, the equally disturbing rape cases by teachers at a welfare home in northern India over several months just expose the weaknesses in the system, and the critical need for stronger measures protecting children.
Cases like that of Josef Fritzl in Austria generate shock and horror even as they shatter myths of the home as a safe and secure environment for children.
Recent reports of "The Josef Fritzl of India" were enough to shake audiences across the country when the media exposed the story of a father raping his 12 year old daughter for nine years hit every news channel.
Black magic and greed propelled the horrendous exploitation of his own daughter not just by the tantric (black magic practitioner) father, but in complicity with the mother in the superstitious hope of it bringing them huge wealth. Needless to say that the girl's nine year long silence created enough space to question her "morals" even as short-lived rumors of her alleged illicit relationship with the tantric, which the parents apparently denied, did a few rounds. One not insignificant part of the story appears to be that only when her younger sister was being made to endure the same ordeal did she expose her parents. But was she truly the Josef Fritzl of India or a media-created headline who happened to be located in the financial capital of the country? How else can one explain the statistics of more than 53 percent of Indian children facing one or more forms of sexual abuse, of which 50 percent is perpetrated by people they know?
Most cases of sexually abused children go unreported, and there is no clear law on the subject except the Goa Children's Act, which clearly states that child sexual abuse is a widespread problem in India. The enormity of the statistics and the diversity of the incidents disband several myths; that it is a cultural, social or class-specific issue, that not only girls are victimized and that even the safe environments of the home are always safe. What complicates the situation further is the issue of missing children, which again in the face of more serious crimes. A grossly understaffed and overstretched police force are reduced to mere statistics for an annual crime record. It is believed that only 10 percent of the missing cases are registered with police. According to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) every year 7,058 children are reported missing in the national capital region of Delhi accounting for 6.7 percent of the country's missing children, and earning it the dubious distinction of coming second only to the eastern city of Kolkata. A majority of these children are girls from marginalized communities between 12-19 years of age. With only a small percentage of these missing children recovered every year, it indicates the human trafficking nexus located around the sex and organ trade.
The UN Convention on the Rights of Child, 1989 was ratified by India in 1992. The Women and Child Development (WCD) Ministry has been asked by the Home Ministry to draft a separate law for Indian children to protect their rights along the lines of the Domestic Violence Act for women. Apart from physical abuse, checking sexual abuse and assault of children, as mentioned under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, is also an integral part of the proposed law. The more defined the law incorporates every kind of contact with a child with sexual intent as punishable.
Recently, there have been calls from various quarters asking political parties to make child rights an integral part of their election manifestoes. Some of the demands included amendments in the Indian Constitution to specifically recognize child rights, and a review of the National Policy for Children to cover a plethora of issues like the amendment of the Immoral Traffic Prevention Act by redefining trafficking to include trafficking for child labour, organ transplantation, child pornography, pedophilia, child sexual abuse and even religion-sanctioned practices, it paves the way for an integrated Child Protection Act.
Bigamy is outlawed in India with the exception of the Muslim minority community which is governed by its own personal/ family law. What this has, in effect, meant is that even non-Muslim men have been able to use the method of quick-fix conversions to undermine the law. From revered film stars to powerful politicians, the professional elite to the educated populace, almost everyone has milked the benefits of this exception made for Muslim personal law. While the last conducted survey on the subject as far back as 1974 points to the prevalence of the practice more commonly amongst the tribal’s of the country, even between the Hindu and Muslim communities it is the former who showed higher incidence (at 5.8% as opposed to 5.6 %) which when converted to actual numbers with reference to the actual strength of both populations is a substantial difference.
The Supreme Court of the country had already made a very clear judgment in 1995 in what is famously called the Sarla Mudgal vs. the Union of India case whereby a conversion to Islam would not protect a man from the bigamy law if the first marriage was prior to his conversion and as a non-Muslim. It is on the basis of this judgment and another in 2000 that the law commission filed a report seeking for amendments in the family law under the Hindu Marriage Act (HMA) as well as other religious personal laws.
While the Muslim clergy have been quick to come to the defense of bigamy and polygamy within Muslim law the truth is that, in practice, even the Muslim men do not use bigamy and polygamy in the spirit that it was meant to be. Many of the religious clergy have been quick to explain the beginnings of the practice - at a time of war when women – widows and orphans – outnumbered men necessitating such a practice. The point that seems to be missed is that the practice was introduced as an adaptation to the circumstances. Perhaps it is time for this practice to be reviewed according to the present circumstances.
The law commission, on its part, has been on the defensive as experience has shown that any attempts at revisions in laws, particularly those pertaining to women with respect to religious groups have always been a volatile issue. It has been quick to reassure the religious leaders that it does not intend to change any laws with relation to bigamy within the Muslim personal law and only wants insertions that would prevent the misuse of conversions to break a law. But conversions-for-marriage do not make a significant number of the bigamy cases. It is the use of this method by the powerful elite of the country that makes salacious media events out of these episodes only to shift focus away from women who actually bear the consequences of such alliances. In many parts of the country it is seen as a male prerogative and with tacit social acceptance many do not even feel the need to use conversion’s flimsy cloak of legality.
Multiple marriages have socially and legally punished women rather than men. The Bigamy Law has been under cloud for some time especially since the Supreme Court passed a decision that women in substantially long live-in relationships should be given the same rights as a legally wedded wife. This was to protect the second wife who under the bigamy law loses all rights since the marriage is considered null and void in the absence of the dissolution of the former. Besides, in the event of the death of the spouse the family often disinherited them since the marriage would not be legally recognized. And with uneducated women very often duped into such marriages or unable to get out of them for fear of ostracism, social boycott and stigma continuing to live within such a legally tenuous alliance, this was the protection that the courts were offering.
On the flip side men simply deserted the first wife to live with the next with no support or maintenance which a Muslim wife is eligible to (but might not necessarily get). Bigamists often go scot free because courts can only act on a formal complaint, the onus of which lies on the wife. Thus, most cases of bigamy often go unregistered because women fear stigmatization for prosecuting their own husbands. Besides, single and deserted women have a very poor status in our society. Both the instances of the SC decision - of awarding women in live-in relationships the status of a wife and of capping conversions-for-marriage - stems from these situations that women find themselves in.
But conversions are merely a symptom of a much larger problem that exists, irrespective of religious affiliations, in communities which see women as either commodities or unequal entities in the social hierarchy. Neither is bigamy common only among the Muslim community and nor is there enough evidence to suggest that every Muslim man who enters a bigamous relationship does ‘equal’ justice – by way of social and legal rights - to all his spouses as stipulated by their personal law. Most of the times the women are simply deserted, left to fend for themselves and their children. The irony is that despite the fact that progressive groups both within and outside Muslim society in India do not favor bigamy, religious leaders continue to block legislative reform. There have been instances of demands that Indian Muslim girls be exempted from the provisions of the law restraining child marriage. And it is against this background that there once again lies the potential of the issue trickling down to one of religious sensitivities over women’s rights.
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The success of such events has meant that state governments and political groups have also joined the fray. As a consequence mass marriages in recent years have constantly courted controversy like instances of minor girls being married off at such functions. The latest in a series of such controversies was generated at a mass wedding in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh where hundreds of would-be brides reportedly underwent virginity tests, tests they were informed of only when they reached the venue. Many were apparently bullied into the ‘medical examination’ as they were told that their refusal would mean that they would be denied their wedding gifts worth 6,500 rupees (approximately $132) and even the wedding ceremony. Under the state-run scheme marriages are solemnized free of cost, all arrangements are made by the district administration and every couple is also provided assistance in the form of household articles. Each woman underwent an extensive physical examination before being given a special badge which allowed them to participate in the ceremony. Almost all of the prospective brides who were from poor, tribal families complained of the shame and humiliation they felt following the exercise.
This scheme, started by the state government in 2006, was to aid girls from poor families to get married on the government expense. The denials and explanations have come fast from the local administration. While some officials refute that the virginity tests took place there were others who said the tests were conducted to ensure that “…the women were not pregnant.” Still others said many of the would-be brides did not have ‘proper documents’ and looked “dubious” which led to the necessity for a doctor’s examination of the candidates. What really prompted this controversial measure is believed to be the earlier incident of a woman going into labor pains during the course of the wedding ceremony sending shock waves throughout her community.
For most communities in the traditional Indian context the bride’s virginity is expected. With concepts of honor and dignity deeply woven into women’s role in society and closely tied to her sexuality, pre-marital sex is frowned upon and a young woman’s virginity is highly prized. Juxtaposed against this are powerful concepts of male virility and masculinity which sends confusing signals to young boys and girls especially in rural areas with fewer avenues for information on sexuality.
Still other accusations surfaced following the controversy with allegations that ‘fake marriages’ were being held since “middlemen produce recently married couples as unmarried” and earn their ‘cut’ or commission from the government’s financial assistance to the couples. It is believed that these allegations prompted the local authorities to order the virginity and pregnancy tests in their desperate attempts to weed out already-married brides kicking up a storm in the bargain. Of the virginity and pregnancy tests ordered on the 152 prospective brides, 14 were pregnant while one girl turned out to be a minor. In the process violating the privacy of every young woman waiting to be married. Thus the ‘virginity test’ which for centuries has been traditionally conducted in the groom’s household to test the chastity of the new bride was converted into a state-sponsored circus.
The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) issued a notice to the state government even as the national woman rights watchdog, the National Commission for Women (NCW) launched an investigation. On its part, state government insists the ‘procedural medical examinations’ aimed to keep the event free from any fraudulent entries. Even as the incident shows signs of taking on political colors as two tribal girls, who had alleged that a virginity test was conducted on them ahead of the mass marriage function later retracted their statement the truth is that the state machinery violated the human rights and dignity of the women present.
Is the concerned state department then perpetuating the notion that only virgins should be married and those non-conforming to this primary requirement can be denied the courtesy of mass wedding? And yet the scheme claims to be applicable to poor unmarried, widowed, divorced or abandoned women who have found a prospective spouse. How does that explain a virginity test? While a bride’s virginity is a contentious issue in traditional Indian context, activists working amongst the tribal communities claim that many such tribal communities actually have a culture of boys and girls living together before they decide to marry.
A study titled ‘Youth in India, Situation and Needs’, conducted across six states representing different geographical and socio-cultural parts of the country carried out by the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), Mumbai and the Population Council, New Delhi comments on the incidence of premarital sex amongst the youth. According to the survey, around 19 percent of rural and 10 percent of urban male youth indulge in pre-marital sex. And young men from certain tribal regions showed a higher incidence than the national average. Eight percent of young rural women indulge in pre-marital sex as compared to two percent urban female youth.
Could then also be a case of the state administration’s own disconnect with local cultural practices; or the actions of an insensate grassroots bureaucracy who, in its attempts to nab ‘fraudsters,’ infringed upon both tribal and women’s rights. With the government’s financial aid for such families hinged on the chastity of the girl, this humiliation was the price the poor women paid for government largesse.
]]>Unfortunately, over time it is invariably the bride's family that carries the material burden that the reparation of these debts entail. Consequently, marriage has come to be symbolized as such a burden upon the girl's family that it determines the "de-valuation" of girls over their lifetime.
The tremendous social and financial burden of an impending marriage of a daughter 18 years later is enough compulsion for many to kill infant girls if they do not already have the wherewithal to selectively terminate pregnancies on the basis of the sex of the fetus. Dowry at the time of marriage and throughout marriage and the gender imbalance in nurture and care of children all eventually play itself out even in this social institution and gets manifested in the manner in which marriage is symbolized as a burden for the girl's parents and a money-minting enterprise for the boy's parents.
A rather peculiar and alarming practice that locates itself in certain parts of the country exhibits this same gender imbalance in a frighteningly unique manner. Poverty and the inability to muster a "decent" dowry for the daughter's marriage; the scandalous possibility of an unmarried daughter at home and the social stigma attached to it has led to desperate measures in certain parts of the country. A recent government survey shows 209 men were kidnapped in the country last year. They were forced into marriage. The age group of these prospective grooms varied from 10 to 50 years.
This is a trend that is more common in the less prosperous and backward state of Bihar in eastern India. Evidenced here for decades - it is a state where the kidnappings of men are at par with women, in fact even higher, according to the report, "Crime in India - 2007" of the National Crime Records Bureau of India. Though still more young girls than boys are kidnapped for marriage, there are parts of India where kidnappings of boys for marriage occur more frequently than for ransom.
The proof of the prevalence of this practice is in the fear that grips parents of "eligible" bachelors in certain parts of Bihar (which are known for this) as the wedding season approaches every year. One has personal memories tied to train journeys through this region when co-passengers secured doors of the train coaches when transiting here, less out of the fear of being robbed but more out of the fear of pakadua shaadis or the kidnappings of young men for forced marriages.
From what once sounded more legend, less fact, it is a menace that has assumed alarming proportions in recent years and spread to the neighboring districts too. The massive pressure of increasing dowry demands and the inability of most parents to fulfill them has resulted in families seeking the services of criminal gangs that kidnap unmarried men and force them into wedlock. Even as cases might appear rampant in certain areas many go unreported out of fear of these local criminals.
According to the police, over the years it has turned into a high-profit, low-risk business that many gangs thrive on as they earn a sizeable commission from these marriage-related kidnappings. And by stretching the saying of "honor among thieves" a little further, their responsibility does not end with the abduction alone. They ensure that the marriage is solemnized and the girl sent to the boy's home.
Forced marriages in India tread a very thin line between approved and coerced because marriages are often arranged by the parents and the community with the couples hardly having a say in the matter. In fact, 40 percent of the world's child marriages take place in India. And traditions and social mores ensure that a marriage once solemnized within the parameters of traditional requirements is considered legitimate. Over the years wherever this practice of abduction-for-marriage has been prevalent, even the village community has been known to have extended support to the girl's side. And with the advent of modern technology, practices such as these have moved to the next level as the ceremony is videographed so that the tape can be used as evidence subsequently in a dispute between both parties.
With 15 percent of girls in rural areas across the country married before 13, the pressure to find grooms for them in a country with a imbalanced sex ratio begins very early. Subsequently, the first pregnancy for a majority 52 percent is between 15 and 19. But what happens to the girls who have been forced into such marriages on the basis of deceit - in this case deceiving the boy's family? What happens to them once they leave their maternal homes and are sent to their matrimonial homes? It is hardly surprising that in most cases they are not accepted by the groom's side of the family. But with a greater social stigma attached to abandonment many of these girls do not even return to their native villages. The physical and mental torture inflicted at the matrimonial homes becomes more acceptable than having to carry the label of an abandoned woman. Many of the grooms actually go on to marry again with these girls reduced to the status of labor hands. Their vulnerability is heightened by the fact that they are a mere commodity in this coerced social contract, with physical and sexual exploitation, the punishment they bear for a crime committed elsewhere. And with "fate" being the compelling argument in the kind of groom they get, the fate of their lives too get relegated to the realms of a dark, mute corners of a fake domesticity that even their families rarely hear about.
Ironically, reports of election fraud that have surfaced have indicated the registration of high numbers of women in traditionally and culturally conservative provinces. Figures from Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission show a suspiciously high number of registered women voters. Figures from Khost show around 72,958 women registered compared to 38,500 men. The suspicions are that where women could not register in person Afghan men might have registered multiple women. Figures from less conservative regions, like the more liberal northern province of Herat, where women move about more freely, show that 55,483 women registered compared with 104,946 men, making the allegations of tampering more serious. An armed insurgency, drugs, corruption and a feeble government, the controversial Shiite law, electoral malpractices and Taliban threats all point to the significance that women might come to play in healing Afghanistan's troubled history -- if they were able to enjoy political and social freedoms like their counterparts.
Despite coercion to prevent voting and threats to punish those seen with the indelible ink on their fingers and even actual rocket attacks that kept voters away, for many Afghans democracy lies at the root of any sustainable solution to the country's stable future. And yet every step forward appears to be at the cost of half the population of the country -- as witnessed in the passing of the controversial family law that dramatically abrogates women's freedoms recently. In April this year national and international outcry had forced President Karzai to promise a review of a bill that opened up a contentious debate on right to cultural identity and women's rights.
With a dwindling support base, the passage of the law is seen by many as the outgoing president's latest sell-out to the radical clerics and fundamentalist leaders amongst the political elite of the country. In a country in which women still are not as politically active the law may actually help the chances of the beleaguered president.
The revised legislation, which retains many of its earlier provisions allows husbands to starve wives who fail to obey sexual demands, passed quietly in the days leading up to the crucial presidential elections. As in the earlier version, the law grants guardianship of children exclusively to their fathers and grandfathers, and requires women to get permission from their husbands to work. A minor alteration states that women can leave their homes in adherence with "local customs," but otherwise, the law largely remains unchanged.
What this has done in effect is to shift the enforcement of the law completely into the hands of the law enforcers and the husbands. According to Human Rights Watch, it effectively allows a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying "blood money" to a girl injured when raped. The international chorus of condemnation surrounding provisions legalizing marital rape evidently did not pull many strings in favor of the Afghan women. The rehashed version continues to contradict the Afghan constitution and international treaties signed by the country. The truth is that the code of conduct laid down for women by the law are not very different from what most women face on a daily basis in the country. Hence, the hue and cry over the law is seen by most, including many women, as an unneccessary interference in local affairs.
While the language of the law might have been watered down, its actual provisons remained the same and it enjoys the backing of hardline Shia clerics who are believed to influence the voting patterns of some of the country's Shias. The large number of candidates has increased the possibility of a second round of voting and that is when these back room deals and contentious laws might really count. Women's rights are hardly a huge price to pay for the guarantee of a victory. The irony really is that laws like these that once were seen as the stamp of the Taliban militia are now being approved by the head of a democratic government, a government that the US administartion and its Western allies help set up.
Malalai Joya, a Member of Parliament who was expelled from the Wolesi Jirga (the National Assembly) for likening her fellow members to zoo animals, sums up the condition of women in the country: "The killing of women is like killing a bird today in Afghanistan." While the Taliban succeeded in pushing back women's rights by centuries, the past eight years of international presence in Afghanistan have not shown very significant progress to getting women back to the conditions they were used to in pre-war years. Afghanistan is a signatory to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and has thus committed itself to working to ensure equality for women. Under its Constitution, 25 per cent of members of parliament must be women. However, women's presence in parliament has not translated into tangible improvements in their situation in the country. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan's (UNAMA) report, published in July 2009, is an indictment of the tremendous risk - to their lives and that of their families - those defending women's rights and the equality agenda face.
Entitled "Silence Is Violence: End the Abuse of Women in Afghanistan," the report describes the pervasive violence against women in Afghanistan, which has inhibited their participation in public life. A woman provincial council member was killed early this year in Kandahar. Another high-ranking policewoman was also murdered in the same province in 2008. The year 2005 witnessed the murder of a 25-year-old poet-activist in Herat and a popular veejay of a musical show in Kabul. And even as the list of women murdered seems endless, it is also country that has seen a tremendous increase in the rates of suicide. Recent statistics show that about 25% of women in the country are subjected to sexual violence, 30.7% women suffer physical violence and another 30% suffer from psychological violence. For many women this is the only way to end the constant cycle of violence both inside and outside their homes. The kind of abuse faced by women ranges from beatings to electric shocks and burns. And the victims are girls married as young as twelve. Even today 43 per cent of the female population is under 18 years when they marry. Consequently, Afghanistan has one of the worst maternal mortality rates in the world as one woman dies every 27 minutes due to pregnancy-related complications. Forced marriages, domestic violence, poverty and lack of access to education are some of the main reasons for suicides. In a country where 80 percent of the women are illiterate their ability to turn to the democratic structures for redress also remain stunted.
It is only recently that women are turning to the method of divorce to get out of abusive marriages, otherwise considered taboo. And women who manage to get a divorce hide from their family out of fear of what are referred to as "honor killings" because of the disrepute a divorce brings to the family name. While Afghanistan's law allows a man divorce without his wife's consent, a woman needs the approval of her husband and witnesses who can testify in court that the divorce is justified. Often for battered women the price of freedom through a divorce means losing custody of their children, a prospect that dissuades many battered women. Many women compensate their husbands for a divorce. Consequently literate women work several jobs to pay their husbands back for their freedom.
Afghanistan's presidential elections had two women candidates in the fray. The pictures of women candidates displayed across the country was itself seen by many as a crime against Islam. And of the 3,000 provincial council candidates, 328 are women. Even as their posters were torn down, they suffered abuse and feared for their safety these are women who have promised to work on the women's agenda in Afghanistan. And while these steps might be pitifully slow for some the agonizing situation of the women is summed up by an Afghan woman when she said "...we are not helpless, history has forced helplessness onto us." And even as the political game has induced a sense of cynicism these elections are still seen by many as the change that Afghanistan has been long hoping for.
]]>In India, the traditional patriarchal set-up demands that the woman moves into the matrimonial home of her husband, which also houses her in-laws and new extended family. A huge number of migrant women in the country move away from their natal homes after their marriage, which is hardly surprising since girls and women are viewed as someone's else property to be given up by way of marriage in any case. According to the 2001 census, women account for almost three quarters, or 65 percent, of the total migration reported in the country.
While female migrant labor remains invisible for many reasons, it is also often tied to the migration of the spouses so there is more opportunity for exploitation and vulnerability to occur.
In a trafficking situation, after being sold off to the next buyer by a fake husband who is involved in the sex trafficking network, women find themselves in fraternal polyandrous marriages. When they reach their matrimonial homes, they are abandoned for various reasons, and are put in abusive conditions working for little or no remuneration.
Women's position in Indian society and how they continue to be viewed determines the decisions that are made for them in marriage, whether real or contrived marriages. In many cases, they simply have become the currency of exchange. It is just the terms of engagement that get modified according to the situation.
The conditions change with the social factors driving them at that time. In many parts of India, girls are devalued and often are unwelcome in most households, especially if a second child is a female born into a home where the first-born child is already a girl. In these settings, sex selection abortion, female infanticide, or neglect of girl children through denial of food and medical care may be routine. Higher rates of mortality among girl children lead to skewed sex ratios in which boys far outnumber girls. As a result, India has fewer females per thousand males than is the norm biologically or socially in most other countries. The national average in the country, as per the 2001 census, is 933 females per 1,000 males. In some states, however, the ratio is far worse. Uttar Pradesh, for example, has a gender ratio of 898 females to 1000 males, ranking only slightly better than Punjab, Haryana and Sikkim, the worst affected states.
Yet the near-drought of young, marriageable women that results in regions such as Punjab and Haryana where gender discrimination is most pronounced has driven prospective suitors in these areas to resort to "buying" their brides from other more impoverished regions. So the skewed gender ratio in these states leads to sourcing brides from faraway eastern states of India like West Bengal, Assam and Tripura.
Even as sex selection extracts its price, communities have devised their own means of dealing with the situation of uneven gender ratios. In a country where marriages thrive on regional, caste and class, and the chastity of the girl, new means of driving marriage arrangements have been prompted by the scarcity of girls and driven by poverty of a substantial bulk of the population.
For example, a pre-assembled baraat, or wedding procession, consists of a ready groom and willing parents. All that's missing in this perfect wedding scenario is the bride, who has to be found somewhere. These are the essential ingredients of what is being increasingly referred to as chatpat shaadi or instant wedding, an increasingly common practice in some districts of the north state Uttar Pradesh (UP).
Unorthodox at the very least and excessively pragmatic at the most, families engage in these instant weddings to fulfill the socially indispensable requirement of marriage, a community pressure that bears upon eligible girls and boys and their families, though sooner for girls than boys.
What the eastern parts of this state have been witnessing over the years is the arrival of boys in groups of ten or more with their families in tow. The destination villages conduct guided tours, on the basis of locally collected data about eligible girls and acquiescent parents. Initially the practice involved cross-checking the antecedents of both families, but it's now a practice the girls' families are doing away with.
The ceremony's immediacy is reflected by the hurried, exchanged vows at the local temple, and the groom's party's return home in a matter of days, with a very young bride in tow.
To some extent, these marriages bear the imprint of mass marriages conducted in almost every rural or semi-urban part of the country. It's a quick fix community work model practised by local politicians. In many of these mass marriages, young girls have been married in clear violation of the law. These marriages can be seen as just another local version of marriage with poverty being the guiding factor.
What is even more interesting is that while the female to male ratio is below 900 in the western districts, it is above 1,000 in some of the eastern districts guiding the flow of women from eastern UP to the western part of the state via matrimony.
Weddings in small towns and villages were traditionally arranged by the community's priest, who had access to information about eligible girls and boys and willing parents. Today's instant weddings are now arranged by a local facilitator. While frequently a middle-man, the facilitator could also be a woman, who by virtue of marriage, has family in the villages of both the bride and the groom. The facilitator is the person who verifies the antecedents of both sides, and arranges the modalities and logistics of the wedding. Despite the financial burden the dowry system places on the bride's side, these weddings have become attractive because of the limited economic burden placed on the parents. Often the absence of a dowry demand is what makes the groom acceptable, no questions asked. In fact, the financial insecurity of the bride's family implies that the groom's side bears a substantial part of the wedding expenses - the bride price for the girl. Often the lucrative offer of a dowry-less alliance is the first step into a life built on deceit and various levels of exploitation as the girl is taken to far off villages and towns, isolated from her own support systems and family.The pressure the institution of marriage places on the social fabric and its denizens only widens the scope of exploitation of girls, and often her family. Innumerable narratives center around the lack of information and naiveté of the victims, with women realizing they have been duped after they are a long distance from their homes.
Low literacy levels only worsen their situations as they rarely know whom to approach for redress in a completely alien and hostile environment. The amount of deceit involves cases when the groom's side have built an entire façade of home, relatives and assets for the bride, and reality strikes only when the bride reaches her new home.
What could follow is physical and sexual abuse apart from being confined to prevent women from returning to their families. The social ostracism associated with an abandoned or divorced wife forces women to continue living in this environment.
The exploitative and dangerous practice of child marriages occurs when girls are sold off to men old enough to be their fathers and grandfathers, and it is guised as a legal marriage.
This man, known for having started Germany's first-ever discotheque and popularized stripteases in post-war West Germany, felt discriminated against and filed charges against a 19-year-old for refusing to sleep with him. Putting a finger on the emotions elicited by the septuagenarian's grouse seemed the bigger task: was it anger, humor, ridicule , outrage, anger...?
While age discrimination in Germany more often refers to the employment market, here was someone with the audacity to give it a whole new meaning. And it is cases like this that make one wonder how different perceptions surrounding women really are when it comes to their position and status across societies.
While the manifestations of these perceptions might oscillate from subtle to the barbaric, depending on the cultural context, gender discrimination is something women continue to wrestle with, whether it is amidst more liberal and and gender-balanced societies or in the conservative societies that continue to struggle to bring about parity even at the more basic levels. Women suffer sex-based discrimination whether it is in India or a country like Germany, home of some of the more liberal laws in Europe.
The more recent case of a German professor's gender discrimination lawsuit leading to a local government investigation over the appointment of a university director, has become the flash point for highlighting women's struggle to reach top academic positions in the country. The suit is hinged on German regulations, which require that women should be preferentially selected for leading positions if all candidates are of equal merit. The country's dismal record in this context is reflected in findings from 2006 which show that only 7 of 109 universities in Germany are led by women. With only 9 percent of the senior academic positions occupied by women, Germany had the lowest proportion in 12 major European countries.
Another case that made headlines was that of a group of six women executives who filed a gender-discrimination suit against the US subsidiary of a German investment bank claiming unequal pay for the same work when compared to their male counterparts, denial of access to key deals and "systematic" denial for promotions at their workplace.
In addition to these complaints, the suit included descriptions of sexual advances, derisive remarks regarding maternity leave and that meetings would sometimes end with a visit to a strip club. The company claimed that many of the claims were "irrelevant" to a sex-discrimination case.
Thousands of miles and many cultural contexts apart, the stories are not so different for many Indian women professionals. One that stands out in public memory is that of India's first female Indian Police Service (IPS) officer. After over three and a half decades of police service and a more than ordinary service record, she was overlooked for the prestigious appointment of the Indian capital's police commissioner for a junior. It prompted her voluntary retirement from the service.
Having courted controversy throughout her service, the gender bias is believed to have worked against her too, a pattern also evidenced in several bureaucratic appointments in the country around the same time. While public outcry often does enough to show the support for individual cases, it hardly changed the actual system, due to the social sanction accorded to such discrimination.
Even in Germany, though the number of gender-discrimination lawsuits has increased in more recent years, a less tangible, but perhaps more powerful factor that makes sex discrimination tacitly acceptable is the social acquiescence that is culturally not deemed as something outrageous.
Connected to this perhaps is the fact that compensation damages in Germany tend to be much lower with many people still believing in the concept of "contractual freedom," which gives complete autonomy to the employer on matters of promotions. More significantly, with so little social support for gender discrimination suits, women fear that such an action would hamper and permanently damage their chances on the job market.
Statistics reveal that while there is an average pay gap of 16 percent between men and women across the EU, a 2004 study showed an average gender-pay gap of 24 percent in Germany.
Back in India, there is currently is no law against sexual harassment and abuse at work places. The Supreme Court (SC) of India laid down certain guidelines and norms for observance at all work places, in the public or private sector, which are required to be treated as the law under the Indian Constitution. Thus, it is enforceable until a suitable legislation is enacted by the Indian Parliament. A recent ruling by the Bombay High Court on a case of sexual harassment filed by a female employee of a private sector company against her male superior comes as an encouragement for women who been silent on the issue.
Afraid of losing her job, the victim did not complain initially, but the harassment did not cease culminating in her dismissal from service after an enquiry was instated following her accusations. It is the Labor Court that upheld her appeal and directed the company to reinstate her last year. The company failed to comply with the Labor Court's ruling, which lead to the High Court's intervention.
It is the more recent case of the murder of the German Afghan girl in Hamburg, called an ‘honor killing,' that brings into direct conflict issues of gender and culture. The girl was murdered by her older brother after a culmination of a series of physical assaults, which are believed to have occurred in the presence of law enforcers, by the family.
In a country where the family took refuge, the flawed understanding and misplaced tolerance of a cultural practice should take precedence over any kind of intolerance to violence, particularly gender violence, is what eventually killed this young Afghan girl. Her death continues to lose itself amidst discourses on multiculturalism, integration, fundamentalism, honor and dishonor, a reflection of how gender imbalance should have no place in any society. It finds its way insidiously through the gaping holes of conservative, socio-political agendas just about anywhere in the world.
The legal persecution of homosexuals in India has its roots in the nation's colonization under the British Empire. A majority of the world's anti-gay laws trace back to an 1860 law, which British colonizers used. This law continues in India today. While section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) criminalizes homosexuality, it says that only homosexual males can be penalized, leaving lesbians outside its purview.
This is what defines lesbians in the country, a group that is believed to not exist. Despite the annual show of presence and numbers in different parts of the country during the gay pride parade, lesbians continue to remain one of the more closeted groups amongst the LGBT community.
Criminalization of homosexuals makes them vulnerable to arrests with a sentence of up to 10 years in prison, which makes the penalties for gay sex far steeper than for crimes such as murder or rape. LGBT people often suffer repetitive harassment in the form of extortion, discrimination, ridicule, physical and sexual assault by government agencies, depression and despair arising from a life of duplicity - people forced to lead surreptitious lives by lying to their families and the spouses they have been forced to marry. Suicide is often the only avenue out of this cycle of violence. The irony is that there have been too few cases against lesbians since the implementation of the act, allowing many conservatives to use these statistics to ‘prove' that female homosexuality is alien to Indian culture.
Section 377 does not specifically talk about same-sex marriages, allowing gay and lesbian couples the space to exploit this loophole. Yet, it is a situation fraught with uncertainties since it also allows law enforcers to interpret the law as they want by leaving such marriages and couples at the mercy of any and every law enforcer's whim.
More recently, another film - that otherwise would hardly have made a dent commercially - ran into trouble with conservatives in 2004 because of its flagrant "lesbian content." Ironically, it also faced the ire of lesbian groups in India because of the portrayal of the lesbian protagonist as a psychopath.
This has been the case with a lot of commercial films dealing with the topic, when the lesbian is almost always against a social or family dysfunction which appears to become the driving point of her sexual orientation, thus feeding into the logic of alternative sexuality being a dysfunctional sexuality.
It is because of representations like this that are even more dangerous because they reinforce the traditional family as the right place of the Indian woman. And anyone seen as challenging this venerated institution then becomes the target of punitive action by self-proclaimed upholders of "culture" from within the community, or even the state.
The condition of the LGBT community has to be understood with the knowledge of women's role in Indian society, where public spaces are not only gendered but also heterosexist. In a sexually-repressive society, even women in heterosexual relationships understand sexuality mostly through violence. Caste and class distinctions ensure that heterosexual couples endure brutality and death for transgressing these barriers so the plight of the lesbian can only be imagined because violence against lesbians is inextricably linked to violence against women. Women rarely have avenues for redress, making the case for lesbians even more poignant.
Since the state protects women against domestic violence and marital rape, the widespread prevalence of these forms of violence and its tacit, societal acceptance are reflected in the small number of reported cases. But since lesbians challenge the very basis of this patriarchal order by completely excluding men from it, they are denied even this state protection against domestic violence and marital rape. They are often forced into heterosexual marriages by their own families as "a remedy" to their "sexual malfunction." There have been innumerable instances of lesbian couples forcefully separated by families and the community, and forced into heterosexual marriages. In other instances, they are legally persecuted like the case of a widowed mother of an 8-year-old boy from the eastern state of Bihar, who was charged with the abduction of her 19-year-old female partner. Many of the cases documented are of couples from small-town backgrounds and belong to the lower-middle class, having little or no exposure to the ‘western culture' or urban queer rights discourse, which challenges the ‘alien culture' discourse.
Patriarchy, in denying any sexual agency to women, ensures that they endure violence both as women and as lesbians since they are unable to play the primary stereotypical roles assigned to them - the good wife and caring mother. What makes homosexuality even more difficult is invisibility not just in the social domain, but also from political groups.
"Fire," failed to become a common forum for diverse rights organizations.
Lesbian rights groups that were attempting to bring the discourse into the realm of homophobia were, in fact, chastised by other rights groups for ‘derailing the larger debate of artistic freedom and democratic rights.' Thus, the issue of sexuality in the discourses on class and caste are very often seen as trivializing these more serious issues, a reflection of the seriousness, or lack of it, with which lesbian issues are viewed so what one witnesses is a total social rejection despite the obvious prevalence. It translates into a lack of support systems for these groups, and restrictions and controls on women's mobility allow them little access to the organizations. Even grass-root organizations are often clueless about sexuality issues and are unable to provide any support to these women.
This is what makes the first dedicated lesbian helpline in Chennai a truly path-breaking initiative.The fact that there are enough people in need of such a forum was evident, and even before the helpline was incepted in early February, the phones had already started ringing. Currently, most of the counselors are gay men, but the success of the venture is expected to draw more lesbians to volunteer. The call centre offers counseling services relying on qualified volunteers and GLBT advocacy groups as well as groups already engaged in offering psychotherapeutic services to lesbians have welcomed the move by joining hands with the helpline service. The challenges right now are enrolling enough qualified people to attend and document the calls, and finding a space for these groups of sexual minorities within mainstream society, where their daily existence is not circumscribed by the furtive lifestyle, continues to be an obstacle.
In the 1984 general election 44 women became parliamentarians. Two decades later, the 2004 general election returned about the same number of women parliamentarians to the 14th Lok Sabha (Lower House of Parliament), constituting a little over eight percent of the total law makers elected. The 13th Lok Sabha included the maximum of 49 women members, representing slightly over nine percent of the total strength of 543 members. Going further back into time, the figures become even starker, considering that 80 women were elected to power during the pre-independence elections of 1937 conducted under the Government of India Act, of course with reservation for women in place.
The truth is that in post-Independence India, when it comes to parliamentary representation, women have never been able to get close to the ten percent mark. Despite Articles 325 and 326, guaranteeing gender equality, the unequal representation of women in national political parties has become a norm rather than an aberration. Women's role and prominence in the election process and politics has been reduced to "mothers/daughters/wives of" - and sometimes "sisters of" - contesting candidates during election campaigns trails.
Women as candidates
It's ironic that in over six decades since independence and 15 Lok Sabha elections, several of India's most important political parties, despite being represented by firebrand, outspoken and often controversial women leaders, continue to field almost insignificant numbers of women candidates during polls. Consequently, women constitute a miniscule minority of the Lok Sabha. Unlike many of its global democratic counterparts, India can boast of a woman prime minister just three decades into independence and yet women's presence amidst the political leadership remains small. In most cases women, more specifically wives, have been used as mere pawns to fill up spaces made vacant by the husband's disqualification in the electoral process or from their political berths due to various reasons, like pending or ongoing criminal cases. So, once elected, the wife is expected to be the willing puppet with the strings firmly attached to the spouse's fingertips.
What makes this kind of representation even worse is that it flagrantly positions the wife as a mere façade rather than a serious candidate - doing little for the cause of women who are serious contenders. Fortunately, many such replacement candidates-cum-wives actually lost the elections, pointing to a mandate on both the criminal past of the male candidate and their take on their wives' new found status of political puppets.
Some women's groups have attempted to play an active role in the political process, like in the elections of 1991. The Akhil Bharatiya Mahila Dal (All India Women's Party), for instance, promoted itself as India's "first and only women's party," even fielding 400 candidates, but soon disappeared without as much as a smudge on the political landscape. The world's largest democracy, as a consequence, functions with roughly half its population continuing to remain under-represented in mainstream politics.
This worrying downward spiral is reflected in the number of women given contesting tickets across political parties, which has dropped from 247 in the 13th General Elections to 177 in the 14th General Elections, a trend reflected in the representation even from major political parties known for their vociferous claims of a commitment to an agenda of women's empowerment, who nonetheless fall short of actually nominating women candidates to contest elections. Of the 1,715 candidates in the fray for the first phase of polling in 124 Lok Sabha constituencies (held in mid-April) there were just 122 women candidates. The argument remains at the level of the hen and egg debate. Even though there is no real evidence suggesting that women candidates do any worse than their male counterparts during elections, women are often not seen as "winnable" contenders, thus losing the battle even before making it to the battle ground. But the argument is particularly weak in the case of the Indian polity, where people traditionally have reflected a tendency to vote for parties rather than individuals.
But the real reason for women candidates' marginalization is the use of "muscle power," both financial and physical, that might contribute to keeping women out of actual politics. Contesting an election, today, entails huge financial spending by candidates, an amount that many women might find hard to raise themselves. And given the largely prevalent traditional, patriarchal mindset they might find it harder to find backers either. Besides, with politics considered a brutal, dirty business, women are rarely encouraged to be a part of the process. Very often women visible in the political process are those who already belong to family with an existing political background. The fact is that their already prevalent lack of visibility in the public sphere tends to get reflected in their visibility in the political sphere.
Woman as a voter
In the world's largest democracy, women constitute a potential 340 million voters out of a total electorate of approximately 710 million. And yet their strength in the Lower House of Parliament constitutes a meagre 10.6 percent. Only recently, three young women topped the national competitive exams for the Indian Administrative Services (IAS) that will place them in important bureaucratic positions in the nation's bureaucracy - but their political masters are still going to be predominantly men. And not to be missed here is the candidate who was placed second - the only child of a farmer from Punjab - one of the states notorious for sex selective abortions and a dismally low sex ratio. Further statistics show that among the top 25 candidates, 40% are women, clearly pointing to the fact that with the availability of equal opportunities comes representation. What is also significant about the results of the 15th Lok Sabha is that the states of Punjab and Haryana - both stigmatized by skewed sex ratios - have actually registered a two-fold increase in the number of women Members of Parliament (MP) entering the LS this time. Six women candidates have won from their respective constituencies.
Women have a huge stake in any election. The passage of some women-specific laws shows the difference women in critical ministerial positions can make on issues and challenges facing women. Correspondingly, fewer women candidates also points to the fact that women's issues are not a priority even in election manifestoes, let alone post-election. Women, so far, have not been taken as serious voters. It is assumed that their vote is determined by the voting pattern of the family patriarch or the spouse (and in some cases the personal charisma of the male candidate!) but rarely are considered a serious political agenda. And this is despite the fact that some recent studies have shown that women are at par with men while excising voting rights. According to 2009 electoral polls, women voters are in majority in six states of the country.
Women's issues
India ranks 115th of 162 countries in terms of gender development. Lack of representation directly translates into a de-sensitized political leadership that is completely cut-off from the issues facing half the population of the country. It also results in disproportionately less legislation empowering women, delays in the passing of laws pertaining to women and very often actual blockage of laws addressing issues specific to women and girls, some deliberately and others out of a complete lack of understanding of women's issues. It is against a culture of violence against women, whether in regard to domestic violence, preference for male children reflected in sex-selective abortions, or the selective allocation of resources to girls, dowry-related violence amongst others that also manifests itself in government policies towards women. Often decisions on women's issues are made by state level bureaucrats and Members of state legislative assemblies (MLAs) who are predominantly male, with little concern, sympathy or understanding for problems facing women. Laws like equal property rights or a tougher anti-Sati law for women have faced stiff opposition from various quarters before being passed or blocked. Can blatantly anti-women policies or regressive laws pass through a Parliament which is adequately represented by women themselves?
Reservation of one-third seats in Parliament and state assemblies for women, also referred to as the Women's Reservation Bill, has been resisted by mostly male Members of Parliament (MPs) since it was first introduced in 1997. Those fervently opposing the bill believe that reservations of 33 percent will only translate into bringing urban elite women into power. While reservation quotas like these rarely bring a homogenized representation, even if the argument were justified, what it is suggesting is that Indian women should and would rather continue to be represented by a heterogeneous political leadership consisting of men than urban educated women. What this argument, rather mischievously, also does is pit women against men of the backward classes and castes, bringing the argument of gender equality on a collision course with men from marginalized groups. Besides, the very treatment of the reservation bill is proof of the fact that women's interests can never be completely represented by a group of men. Keeping women from policy-making positions and decisions only propagates the gender subjugation agenda. In 2008, the Bill was introduced in the Upper House of Parliament (Rajya Sabha) after women MPs formed a human chain around the law minister to enable him to do this. But the big question is whether it will get passed in the Lower House and become the law of the land.
The Women's Bill stands out as a perfect example of abundant rhetoric and scarce intent. Quite ironically, the drop in women's candidatures this year coincides with the introduction of Women's Reservation Bill which is on the agenda of the forthcoming Lok Sabha.
In contrast, in 1993, India enacted the
93rd and 94th Constitutional Amendments, reserving 33 percent of seats in
local bodies for women. The fears expressed over this amendment too had been
similar; that women would be mere puppets with family patriarchs - the
father-in-law or husband - pulling the strings of power. And while true in many
cases, today, both the emblematic and tangible value of having over a million
women running Panchayati Raj institutions makes a compelling case for the
women's bill to address the poor legislative representation of women across the
country. What the country needs is more women as lawmakers to help bring to the
political arena issues that are specific and critical to them to be able to
create an atmosphere of greater sensitization. Despite a new Lok Sabha and painfully
small increase in women's representaion since the last election Indian
democracy continues to be challenged by the unfinished agenda of women's
political empowerment.
Over a decade later, despite seven years of NATO presence to achieve normalcy in the violence-scarred country and against the background of a democratic government, the world watches in shock yet again - and, quite ironically, not for very different reasons. The collective dismay and outrage over the Taliban regime did not translate into much for the Afghan women in the 1990s; it took a 9/11 for the world to "rescue" them from atrocities institutionalized via the Taliban's ministry of vice and virtue, leaving behind festering wounds of fear and brutality that are yet to heal.
Now, under a democratically elected government - which the US and its allies helped install - the world watches, stunned yet again, at the recent ‘Afghan Shiite Personal Status Law,' which, in addition to dictating the conditions for marriage, divorce, inheritance, education, employment and free movement (the law says women can only leave home with the explicit permission of their husbands except in certain emergencies), also dictates sexual activity within marriage for women, thereby legalizing marital rape and gives custody of children to fathers and grandfathers. (Article 132 mandates that "the wife is bound to give a positive response to the sexual desires of her husband." Furthermore, if her husband is not travelling or sick, the wife is required to have sex with him at least every fourth night, the only exception being the wife's own illness.) Article 133 states, "the husband can stop the wife from any unnecessary act." Wifely duties also include "making herself up" or "dressing up" for her husband. In addition, the legal age of marriage for Shiite women has been lowered from eighteen to sixteen. The law consists of approximately 250 detailed restrictions that apply to the minority Shia community only, comprising 15% of the total Afghan population, making the invasion of personal space and privacy complete.
Quite ironically, the Hazaras, most of whom constitute the Shia minority of Afghanistan, have been one the groups that have had fewer restrictive freedoms for women when it comes to education and employment, even in the post-Taliban era of limited liberty. Many of the important bureaucratic, administrative or political positions held by Afghan women in the country are often represented by Shia Hazara women. For instance, Afghanistan's only woman governor and mayor belong to this community, as does the head of the Afghan Human Rights Commission. Over the years they have also grown their presence in the entertainment industry, whether it be Afghanistan's version of "American Idol," the "Afghan Star" or as veejays of MTV-style programs. This progress hasn't been without backlash, as evidenced in the controversial and sensational murder of Shaima Rezayee, who was amongst the first Afghan women to be seen publicly without a headscarf post-Taliban. Hazara women do not wear full-body covering burqas. Thus, not only does the law legalize and institutionalize oppression of women but appears to be designed to encourage the very men who have opposed women's oppression to degrade women (wives) of their community.
Currently, many of those opposing the law believe that the law was conceptualized by conservative religious radicals and members of the political and administrative elite who, in the past, have consistently targeted women's rights and free speech initiatives in the country, including opposing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These are the same groups of men who continue to support polygamy and the right of elderly men to marry very young girls - without any age restriction - and blame the spread of AIDS in the country on soap operas and music videos on Afghan TV; men with pasts of brutal violence who have themselves been embroiled in controversies like sexual abuse, horrendous human rights violations, mass rapes and sexual violence and yet enjoy political power as they occupy seats in Parliament, important political appointments and hence critical legislative powers.
National and international outrage over the law has delayed its passage; President Karzai, in damage control mode, admitted to "problems" in the law, which quite evidently violates the rights of women in every way imaginable. While he reiterates his commitment to equal rights for men and women as enshrined in the Afghan constitution, the timing of the law has been politically linked to the forthcoming elections in August. He is seen as an embattled president hoping to score with the powerful right-wing radicals in his run-up to re-election. As critics around the world are accusing the President of selling out to extremists, ironically though hardly surprisingly, praise for him comes from a disquieting quarter - the Taliban - which is often described as an "enemy of Afghanistan" by the president himself.
Provisions under the Afghan constitution allow Shiites to pass their own family laws based on their legal traditions. If such a law is indeed passed, it, in effect, opens a Pandora's box of similar discriminatory laws, in the name of maintaining ethnic identity and diversity by religious conservatives amidst other minority ethnic groups.
The recent violence in Kabul against a group of women protesting the marriage law points to how culture and tradition can clash with critical issues of reproductive and sexual health, especially in a country where medical facilities and care are not as easily accessible to women. The march organized by women's rights activists and attended by mostly young women was swamped by counter-protesters - both men and women - who pelted stones at the demonstrators. The law has backers who accuse "foreigners" of meddling in Afghan affairs. But can the issue be simplified to the rights of the Shiite community versus human rights with regard to women? Many groups have now jumped into the fray to work out proposals taking into account Islamic traditions of fairness, justice, tolerance to revise the controversial legislation, focusing on reform within the Family Code. That the family law has to be developed keeping the rights and health of both women and children at the forefront is even more critical in a war ravaged society where suicide rates amongst women have shown a phenomenal increase; women increasingly see this as the only escape from the violence they face with some hospitals reporting as many as 600 suicide attempts in a year. With one of the highest fertility rates in Asia, as an average Afghan woman bears 6-7 children, according to the UNFPA, the fervent opposition to contraceptives and condoms by conservative groups makes the situation even more precarious. The infant mortality rate is estimated at 127 per 1,000 live births. And the maternal mortality rate too is high, with at least two Afghan women dying from pregnancy-related complications every hour. Additionally, according to recent statistics about 25% of women in the country are subjected to sexual violence; 30.7% suffer physical violence, in most cases by husbands or other family members and another 30% suffer from psychological violence. Against this extreme vulnerability and with Afghanistan the opium granary of the world, opium abuse has also registered an increase amidst women to numb the pain and compensate for the inadequate health care available to them.
The international community played a role during the drafting of the Afghan constitution, ensuring seats for women in Parliament, and now this is the time to follow up on those principles that they enshrined for the Afghan people. Seven years into international troop presence and fighting the Al Qaeda and Taliban it is time that pressure is also mounted on institutions within the government to promote and develop a culture of human rights. Countries that have invested directly in development funds for women's rights and family law reform should hold the Afghan government accountable for progress in this direction. In the past, every time the President was attacked for the Taliban's resurgence in the country, he was quick to point out the steps forward with regard to women's health, rights and representation and girls' education. The new law now makes bogus all such claims even as it clearly breaks the promises made by Kabul to the international community over protection of human rights.
Moving forward on human rights for women has to be a significant component of the international engagement in Afghanistan - especially since that was one of the pretexts of direct military engagement in Afghanistan apart from the "war on terror" and the "war on drugs." While funding governments have long been careful to keep a distance from domestic policy decisions in Afghanistan, this might not be the time to be evasive using the pretext of cultural difference. If a stable sustainable democracy is the goal, Afghan women have to be viewed as a critical component towards the achievement of that goal and not as mere sacrifices at the altar of immediate political maneuvers.
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The police commissioner on the other
hand has referred to the recent
attacks on women as mere incidents of "eve teasing." While eve-teasing
is itself a term specific to the South Asian region, associated with
unsolicited verbal harassment like catcalls, whistles and/or remarks
directed towards women, the incidents that he so casually referred to
were actual assaults on women for being dressed in western attire.
More importantly, even eve teasing calls for action against the perpetrators.
What really constitutes an act of violence against a woman or girl? That she is not treated equally under the social and legal order? That she does not have access to basic needs for a dignified existence? That she faces discrimination in the allocation of daily needs for survival both within the household as well as socially? If social, economic and political freedoms are the indices for development, then women in the country constitute an important chunk of the population who continue to be deprived.
India is a country of contrasts in not just the multiplicity of religions and faiths but also cultural contexts and subcontexts that define customs and rituals, roles and positions. And it is against this background of mostly patriarchal and feudal practices that issues concerning women get defined, refined, formulated, modified, accepted and rejected. So while in one part of the country a law is formulated to safeguard the rights of women even in live-in relationships in another part of the country women are facing physical assaults for being dressed in "western attire." And instead of punishing the perpetrators the issue is being debated on the finer nuances of semantics. That in a sense encapsulates the discourse on women's rights in the country.
The status of women both in their maternal homes and matrimonial homes is circumscribed by the lack of sexual autonomy and it is this sexual control of women that in turn provides the label for male authority. Self-styled vigilantes have very often "punished" couples for inter-religious or inter-caste relationships, a phenomenon that was once restricted to satellite villages has been finding expression in towns and cities as well. The status of women within their families and communities is specifically delimited by matrimony and fertility, ironically, the two things they also have very little control over. And yet with fertility at the core of their pre-assigned social role reproductive health care conditions and accessibility continue to be abysmal in the country reflected in maternal deaths - one in every seven minutes.
While the government has been struggling with making healthcare accessible to each and every woman in the country, conservative customs and beliefs associated with child-bearing and rearing further aggravated by women's low education and poverty results in the under use of already scarce services. Poor reproductive health transmits from one generation to the next not just undermining the survival of individuals but the well-being of families contributing to the endless generational cycle of poverty. With scarce accessibility and accompanying restrictions women in remote, rural areas tend to rely on the same person for all their health care needs associated more with levels of trust and confidence on these people. This is what makes it imperative that all health care needs are made accessible to these education-deprived, poor women from a single source - an idea that the government is toying through the important agency of midwives and other grassroot groups who have better access to these women.
Similarly, the public awareness campaigns
around HIV/AIDS have also shown definite shifts. Some of the earlier
administrations had avoided the condom-use strategy and actually followed
a deliberate policy of sexual abstinence and marital fidelity in the
AIDS prevention campaigns using the argument of "decency" to remove condom advertisements from state-run television
networks. The more recent community campaigns around HIV/AIDS and domestic
violence have shown a departure from the earlier trends with the focus
shifting to the need to bring as many people into the fold of an open
discourse on the issue. Interesting and catchy campaigns of community
outreach like the condom
ringtone and the bell bajao
(ring the bell) campaign.
The latter draws in the public to participate and bring an end to domestic
violence, helping to make issues like this a larger public
and social issue by including men to take a stand against domestic violence.
Aside from judgments like those allowing an HIV positive mother the right to bring up her child -- which are a step forward in removing stereotypes associated with the virus and discriminating against the victims -- mostly women who often have been the care-givers to the positive spouse only to be abandoned by the family later. That the message of HIV is reaching people is reflected in smaller towns and remote regions where young people despite their limited education and conservative upbringing have opted for pre-marital HIV testing with the support of their families.
The Criminal Procedure Code is also in line for an amendment in light of the increase in rape cases in the country. Seen as a landmark step for ensuring gender justice the amendment is intended to protect rape victims from suffering further trauma during the process of investigation. More importantly, it intends having women judges presiding over rape cases in addition to the provision of in-camera hearings. During the investigation stage, the rape victim can record her statement at her residence and in the presence of a woman officer. An insensitive machinery only aggravates the agony for the victim evidenced in the suicide of Sarita who consumed poison in the presence of her young daughters at the police station that refused to listen to her complaints against one of their own. There has also been a suggestion to set up special funds for the rape victims by the central and state governments. This would be important keeping in mind the social ostracization that many women face from the family and community apart from the direct physical and mental trauma associated with the sexual assault.
And yet on the other side contentious judgements like the Supreme Court judgement stating that gifts given by the wife's side to the husband's family even after the marriage, did not constitute dowry only served to further legally entrench the already controversial practice of dowry considering that dowry harassment follows a continuous pattern into decades of marriage. Besides, quite often falling prey to the temptation of meeting immediate targets rather than more sustainable goals, the administration has contributed to hardening stereotypes of manliness placing women in even more vulnerable positions and the entire community in a volatile situation by opting for schemes like the guns for vasectomies and palna (cradle) scheme; the latter an emotive response to sex selective abortions. And yet, female fetuses are regularly recovered from dumping yards with the most recent case being the recovery of nine female fetuses from a river bank in a district of the western state of Rajasthan. As per the 2001 Census, the sex ratio of the state is only 922 females per 1,000 males, very close to the equally skewed national average of 933 females.
A case that hinged precariously between emotive arguments of personal trauma and ethical issues was related to the abortion law itself as evidenced in the denial of abortion of a 24-week fetus with a congenital heart condition last year. The Supreme Cour only recently issued notice to the Centre on this petition that challenged the law prohibiting abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy in case of fetal abnormality. Many believe that the time has come to change the 1971 Act.
The mixed bag of laws, bills, commitments, broken promises, new pledges and fresh possibilities for women's rights comes with its share of anticipation and disappointments. Will promises be converted into laws and will prejudices make way for a little more tolerance and a little less chauvinism? Will social perceptions of women and their traditionally assigned roles in society witness a change under the collective pressure of government laws and social campaigns? And will society eventually look at girls through the same lens that they see boys? And yet hope survives...
]]>A woman's ability to bear innumerable children, mostly boys, is what increases or diminishes a woman's position within the marital home and eventually extends to her position in society. Quite closely connected to this is her sexual autonomy, which remains restricted. It is this control over both property and the sexual control of women that defines male power and authority, and the secondary status of women in both the paternal and matrimonial homes.
The Taj Mahal - one of the eternal symbols of love - is a mausoleum erected by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan for his favorite queen, Mumtaz Mahal, who died of complications related to childbirth after having delivered 14 children. Even today, despite leaps in medical research and technology, thousands of women in the country continue to die during childbirth, and, even more tragically, unremembered and mostly unaccounted for. In India every seven minutes a maternal death occurs; more than 75,000 women die each year in India alone. While the maternal mortality ratio over the years has been falling, the rate is too slow, continuing to add to the already enormous statistics.
While inaccessibility to even basic medical facilities is entrenched, social attitudes around the accepted role of women as childbearers - and more specifically of male children - further exacerbates the problem. Governments make and execute laws governing ownership, marriage and divorce, education, inheritance, employment and family leave, and innumerable aspects of life that directly impact the status of females relative to men. And every woman in spite of her educational and social status in society is expected to play this pre-assigned role. While a minuscule minority might be able to exercise their choice of timing, by and large this choice is not available to most women. And the same is true of pre- and post- natal care as well.
Consequently, not only do women go through one pregnancy after the other but most of the time they are unaware of the health hazards for themselves and their children, not to mention the possibilities of infections from their spouses.
The concern surrounding HIV/AIDS in recent years has had the effect of opening the doors to information on other possible infections too. While vulnerability to misinformation continues to engulf women from poorer sections -- many will be deprived of their children and thrown out of their matrimonial homes after having contracted the virus (frequently from their spouses) -- a recent judgment has set a positive precedent in stating that a positive mother cannot be deprived from bringing up her child. More importantly, it might serve to remove stereotypes associated with the virus.
In the throes of poverty and illiteracy most women find themselves married off at a very young age. Even before they are able to understand the real implications of the relationship, these young women are already into their first - if not second or third - pregnancies. At a time when the various state governments struggle over the ethics of sex education in the curriculum of school-going children, many organizations have taken it upon themselves to use sex-education as a tool to empower young girls, women and communities in delaying both marriages and pregnancies.
Kishanganj - an underdeveloped district in the eastern state of Bihar - which lacked even a district hospital until a few years ago, has in more recent months witnessed important attitudinal changes brought on by reproductive and sexual healthcare classes to teenage girls in a madrassa. Consequently, information is all it took for a mother-in-law to get her daughters-in-law operations to prevent further pregnancies. A 16-year-old girl, keen on pursuing her education, aware of the hazards of early childbirth, chose to marry only after she turned eighteen. The census of 2001 had shown this district with the lowest female literacy rate, 18.5 per cent, in India.
Another such initiative has been the formation of the Coalition for Women Deliver, India in October 2007, an effort that would include all current and new players working towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). One of the critical goals is to strengthen local partnerships while addressing high maternal mortality in the country. Why local partnerships? While funds and policy commitments are in place, it is at the level of actual implementation that gaps appear. The problem remains the absence of skilled health workers and medical personnel at the community and district level, further undermining strong policy commitments towards the reduction of maternal deaths.
For years, midwives have been the closest pregnant women got to any kind of structured health care during and after their childbirths. Having woken up to the magnitude of the tragedy of maternal mortality due to the lack of adequate medical support, the government in recent years is focusing on the issue of training auxiliary nurse midwives (ANM). The focus is especially in rural areas, to deal with emergency situations with the support of a functioning health care referral system. Investing in midwives could prove to be the swiftest way of achieving universal access to reproductive health, as well as improve maternal health for most governments.
But the battle is not just restricted to adequate health care during and after childbirth. The preference for the boy child and the second-class treatment of girl children within their paternal homes is a reflection of societal attitudes which only get reinforced as the girl moves in to adulthood. The same patterns are then replicated in the matrimonial homes. From sex selective abortions to engineer a male child, to the manner in which daughters are treated while prioritizing and apportioning resources during the childhood -- these are all manifestations of this mindset.
Considering anemic women are bound to bear anemic children, it is hardly surprising then that seventy percent of children in India in the age group of six to 59 months suffer from it. 63 per cent are in the urban areas and 71.5 percent in the rural areas. Hope comes in the form of a woman who recently pursued a legal battle against her husband and in-laws for forcing her to abort her fetus after an ultrasound test ostensibly showed the fetus to be that of a female.
The Women Deliver Coalition operates as an advocacy group whose primary role is to be a neutral, inclusive pan-India entity to convene diverse groups working in maternal health for regular information sharing. In a path breaking attempt as an India-specific one-stop-shop on maternal health, they will host the creation of a public virtual domain that brings together information at policy and program levels on maternal health and build advocacy platforms across all sectors, especially linking developmental work to media and industry.
In communities where women's rights are on par with men's, women are able to take control of their own fertility and invariably have fewer children on average. Unfortunately, in many cultural contexts and sub-contexts, contraception is socially and morally criminalized, leaving women with very few options of birth control. Girls brought up as equals and eventually vested with choices over their fertility invest more for their children and less on having more children, through their own health paving the way for healthy families. And those families in turn reflect the health of communities they inhabit and societies they build.
]]>Despite the existence of the anti-bigamy law, there are just too many examples of it all around, whether from the almost revered celluloid world of filmstars, the powerful politicians or the general populace. Often the cheap trick of conversion has been used to by-pass the law since the Muslim personal law does not come under this jurisdiction (India does not have a uniform civil code and since Muslim personal law allows polygamy, Muslims practicing polygamy cannot be penalized by the Indian civil law). Most of the time the first wife does not even file a case against the husband and continues to cohabitate in a tenuous compromise with the ‘other' woman or second wife.
The Indian Supreme Court's (SC) decision that a live-in-relationship should be treated as equivalent to marriage is set to change the dynamics of such relationships. The court's proposal was followed by similar suggestions from the National Commission for Women (NCW), which in seeking to change the definition of ‘wife' recommended that women in live-in relationships should be entitled to maintenance if the man deserts her.
The Mumbai High court recently followed suit and is ready to sanctify live-in relationships and the Maharashtra cabinet approved a proposal which seeks to give the status of a wife to a woman involved in a live-in relationship.
What makes this proposal interesting is that despite the need to have marriages registered, Indian marriages have hinged so heavily on symbolism that even the exchange of garlands at a temple, application of the sindoor (vermilion worn by women on the forehead as symbols of matrimony) or the mangalsutra (worn around the neck) were enough to prove marriages in the country for, at least, the majority Hindu community. And this is what made deceiving an illiterate girl or her family into a fake marriage and subsequent abandonment very easy. Besides, there have been innumerable situations where the second wife/woman is often not aware of the existence of another wife until much later into the relationship; where the woman was led to believe that the man was either unmarried, divorced or widowed and went ahead with the formalities required by- or customs governing - marriage laws. The threats of exposure and stigma attached to such a relationship not only prevent women from seeking redress but very often, by extension of the same threat, are coerced into remaining in the relationship.
As a way of countering this, the NCW suggested that even if a marriage was not registered a woman's claim would stand if she provided enough proof of a long-term relationship. Thus, by removing the stigma accorded to live-in relationships, the provision takes into account the plight of women who have been tricked into marriage (or by the promise of marriage) and into what are stigmatized, socially ambiguous, sexually exploitative relationships.
While the argument very often used is that live-in relationships are not part of the Indian culture, you have innumerable narratives indicating the existence of the practice of men having more than one wife and/or also what is commonly and disparagingly referred to as a mistress. While the former, despite being a common cultural practice, has been deemed illegal the latter is a practice that has been ignored so far by any law. While women in certain pockets of urban India could pressure and negotiate to change the nature of such a relationship into a marital one - thus involving a divorce from the first to be able to legally marry the next - most of the solutions (like circumventing the law by ‘instant' conversions to Islam, or else a tenuous compromise between both the wives) actually indicate a disregard for a law meant to protect from bigamous or polygamous marriages.
When the bigamy law is invoked it invariably means abandonment of the ‘other woman' who in the presence of the wife is not recognized by law; and while the wife still has avenues to seek redress (though it is often not used) in case of abandonment by the husband, the ‘other' woman is both socially and legally abandoned. Also, despite the tacit social acceptance of second marriages/second families as a right of the man in rural India or amidst the urban poor, it is only when the man dies that women in these relationships really face the brunt of society since nothing legally accords them even the status of a widow. In effect, this is the protection that the law gives such women.
The proposal takes a step forward and states that children born to such parents would be called legitimate. Moreover, these children will have a right to their parent's property. The stigma attached to illegitimacy has often prevented the acknowledgment of such a child and hence accorded a socially peripheral status to such children.
However, while the amendment covers the interests of women involved in polygamous or live-in relationships, the catch here is that the 'reasonably long period' is yet to be specified. On the flip-side, it raises the questions of pitting one woman's right to legal protection against another's? And what really happens to the bigamy law? If bigamy is illegal how is a live-in relationship equal to a marriage? This amendment is bound to bring up issues and cases that in turn are bound to be far more complex depending upon the social circumstances and contexts of the parties involved. There is a vast divide that exists between urban cosmopolitan India, towns and cities struggling between modernization and traditionalism, and remote rural India.
The recent ruling is only the latest in a series of recommendations by various bodies seeking equal rights for both the married woman and live-in female partner. When the Domestic Violence Law came into force in October 2006, it did not distinguish between a woman who is married and a woman who is in a live-in relationship. The Delhi High court also, earlier in the year, upheld a rape case against a man since the sexual relationship between the two hinged on the promise of marriage by the man - indicating a recognition of the protection that even women, not necessarily within the realm of a traditional marriage, require.
There have been cases in the past century even in pre-independence India when judgments have been made in favor of women/persons in live-in relationships, so the Supreme Court proposal is not without precedent. What the proposal does, in effect, is to make a Your browser may not support display of this image.distinction between immoral and illegal/law and morality. And yet, because the legal sanction for live-in relationships is meant to work to the advantage of women who become victims of their circumstances, even if it was a matter of choice, it is based on the assumption that the relationship is not between equals; therefore women need protection by the courts from the patriarchal definition of marriage and such relationships too. Such protective sanction is bound to raise extremely prickly questions especially with regard to the agency of women. And this really is where the extreme divide between cosmopolitan India and the rest of the country comes into play. By giving live-in relationships the status of a marriage it defeats the very reason why most urban, financially independent individuals - men and women alike - opt for this as opposed to the institution of marriage. For those for whom it is a willful rejection of the stereotypes and inequalities that the institution of marriage has come to represent, this legal sanction puts it back into the same trap, albeit by giving legal protection to the woman. It implies that live-in relationships are bound by the same rules and structures as a marriage.
For most of semi- and illiterate India, just as divorce (or abandonment in most cases) socially tends to be harsher for a wife, the estranged female partner (in the live-in relationship) will continue to face the same social ostracism since acceptance for such relationships when it comes to the woman is still low. While the law attempts to protect those who direly need this protection, what is required more is a rigorous restructure of gender imbalanced social structures - those customs and practices that govern and differentiate how girls and women - sisters, wives, mothers and daughters - are treated.
]]>What "crimes" had these women committed? Three of the women were teenagers who wanted to marry men of their choice. The other two - the mother and an aunt of one of the girls - supported their decision. The women were abducted by men from their tribe, shot and thrown into a ditch while still alive; the older women were buried along with them for protesting, according to a report by the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC).
Across the eastern border in India, a region that was still some days celebrating the Olympic glory of its homegrown pugilist -- Vijender Kumar's bronze medal -- was recently shrouded by the hushed whispers of another honor killing. Two girls were killed on their return from a late evening outing, escorted by unidentified men. The entire village is believed to have watched as both were assaulted with sticks and axes, hauled to the cremation ground half-dead and set on fire by their family for the sake of "honor" -- quite ironically on Diwali, a day celebrated as the festival of lights in many parts of the country. But what was even more shocking was the evidence of the system's casual acceptance of this family's act. Not even a "First Information Report" was registered until a fortnight later.
Numbers of women killed frequently go unreported, the perpetrators unpunished as the concept of family honor tacitly justifies the act in the
eyes of the immediate community. And while such incidents elicit attention
due to the intrigue and horror attached to them as some primordial custom
practiced by certain sequestered communities, the fact is that this form
of violence is just a part of a much larger problem of violence against
women and an issue that transcends cultures and religions. Complicity
by other women in the family and the community only helps strengthen
the notion of women as property and the perception that violence against
family members is a family matter and outside of the judicial and public domain.
But at the center of the problem of violence against women is the imbalance
of gender relations that assume men to be superior to women. And against
the background of this subordinate status of women, much of gender violence
is considered normal and enjoys social sanction.
When women are considered vessels of family, clan and tribal or community honor, they will almost always be the direct victims of crimes against a community or violence between groups. And one does not have to look too far for evidence of these manifestations of violence in the public sphere, tacitly supported by state and society either by directly perpetrating it or rarely taking proactive measures to curb it and punish the guilty.
In October, the Orissa government in eastern India placed six policemen under suspension for misconduct and negligence of duty in connection with the rape of a nun two months prior, in August, during violence that had consumed the district of Kandhamal, killing nearly 35 people on the discovery of the murder of a Hindu religious leader. Despite a First Information Report filed the very next day, the result of the investigative report and medical findings were not filed for weeks and investigations began only a month after reports started appearing in the media. Police officials claimed they were busy dealing with the law-and-order situation in the district, preventing them from looking into the matter. That the rape of a woman was not considered as much a part of the violence at the time and was sidelined in the face of larger "law and order" concerns is a reminder of not just the manner in which rape and violence against women is perceived even by protectors and upholders of the legal system itself but that it is an accepted collateral of violence of this kind.
Only recently did the West Bengal court (in eastern India) award life imprisonment to two Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) activists - major coalition partners of the ruling Left Front government in the state - for the 2006 rape and murder of a teenage girl. The girl was among those protesting land acquisition for a car project in her native region of Singur. While the company withdrew their project from Singur earlier this year in the face of continuing protests against land acquisition, the teenager's charred body was recovered from what were once premises of the project in December 2006. Initially the government had called foul and blamed the death on conspiracy theorists. There have been whispers that this perhaps was only one of several cases of sexual assaults against women during the course of the agitation.
And in this hierarchical structure of gender violence, women from the lower castes of Indian society are even more vulnerable. By virtue of their position in the social structure they are the ones that find themselves the most vulnerable to exploitation of all kinds, while assaults are carried out with impunity with the knowledge that avenues for redress are even fewer and farther in between. Documented evidence and narratives by several human rights groups indicate that sexual abuse and other forms of violence against these women are used as tools for teaching political "lessons" for what is perceived as rebellion or attempts at dislodging the old, existent social order. Threatened by sexual exploitation of various kinds, these women have also been arrested and raped in custody as a means of punishing their male relatives both by the law enforcers themselves or powerful men within their communities.
Many women learn to accept violence
very early in life. The family
itself socializes them to accept predetermined social relations expressed
in unequal division of labor between the sexes and control over the
allocation of resources. And it is within the so-called secure walls
of the home that women, very often, are most exposed to violence as they grow up watching the violence perpetrated against the other
women in the household by the male members of the family. These violent actions are often
closely linked to the concept of a woman as property and dependent
on a male protector be it father, husband or son.
Despite the recognition of gender-based violence as a human rights violation, which also includes "violence perpetrated or condoned by the state," a large percentage of women continue to be unprotected against it -- whether it be in the context of the family, the community or the state. What is even more tragic is that at every point key social institutions not only fail to be critical of the violence but, in fact, play their role in legitimizing and maintaining the violence. And even as women find their own voice within these spaces, sometimes accepting the violence or negotiating space within it, adding another dimension to their condition are the more passive and insidious forms of violence that work in tandem -- like sex selective abortions, sustained nutritional deprivation and delayed health care for female infants, or the unequal allocation of household resources detrimental to the health of the girl child.
]]>While cosmopolitan India has seen women negotiate the tight spaces between working professional and home-maker for themselves - depending on what works best for them, it really is the smaller towns and cities, aspiring metros, or rural parts of the country that are still light years away from urbane India, where women struggle to pay the price for the education they fight for and the discrimination they fight against. These are parts of the country where stereotypical images continue to be too rigid to deconstruct and traditional responsibilities saddled with more modern imagery and demands ensure that women constantly struggle to balance the two.
Women rejoining work after a prolonged maternity leave are known to stagnate or lose out professionally when compared to other colleagues. Often they are ignored when it comes to assigning more challenging tasks simply on the assumption that if you are not already married you would be soon and would immediately jump into the process of starting and then raising a family.
The Indian government recently decided to give women in government service paid child care leave for two years. The provision, implemented since September 1, 2008, allows leave for the entire service period and can be availed in a combination of spells, over and above the regular leave to which an employee is entitled. More importantly, it will not affect seniority and regular promotions. In government service, where senior appointments are often decided by a matter of seniority which could amount to barely a few days apart between contending aspirants, women lose out due to the leave availed during their pregnancies since the number of workdays is counted while determining seniority.
Established social roles and familial pressures ensure that education has often not been a guarantee for a woman to be able to make decisions regarding their own fertility - when and how many children she wants. The government's earlier two child policy, which was mandatory for government employees, has also witnessed this group of professionals as offenders in sex selective abortions since promotions were guided by who violated or adhered to the two child norm. From forced sterilization in the seventies the two-child policy shifted to disincentives for government employees who had more than two children. The benefits (and underlying pressure) of having a small family were not always accompanied by a corresponding sensitization towards rearing a girl child. The child care provision too continues to be guided by an encouragement for smaller families. The new leave regime for women means that during their stint with the government, they can avail of this paid leave for as much as three years, provided it is used for the two oldest children. Besides, even if a woman has only one child, she can take the two-year leave. It is a move that has been welcomed by many.
But what about women in the private sector?
Many are asking for its extension to the private sector which in more recent years has seen a rise in the employment opportunities available to women. Those pushing to adopt these policies in the private sector also point out that the sector has fewer systems in place protecting women employees from gender-based exploitation. The disproportionate ratio of few jobs and more job-seekers coupled with market competitiveness ensures that most women lose professionally on returning from even the mandatory 90 day maternity leave. Women in the private sector are often hard-pressed for such leave beyond the maternity break (rarely beyond 90 days), besides the regular quota of earned, casual and medical leave. Given that women already suffer from this bias, the fear expressed by some that it may lead to a further entrenchment of this gender bias and negatively impact women's career prospects and in fact even directly impact their recruitment might not appear so far-fetched.
The government, on the other hand, argues that the decision will help women balance home and office responsibilities -- a clear indication of its own unwillingness to interfere in established social roles of women. So, the government finds it easier to introduce provisions hinged on these established notions. A working woman would now get government assistance in balancing her role of a good mother/wife with that of a professional. With men comprising seventy percent of the work force, in most sectors, the resentment is bound to show. In government services like the armed forces women are already accused of getting away with softer assignments and priority with regard to leave most of the time. Women were not allowed permanent commission in the armed forces - except in the medical corps - (a practice that is to change prospectively by the year 2015) which means they do not enjoy the perks that a regular permanent employee of the armed forces enjoys. In the context of other government departments an extension of the same argument and disguised resentment is bound to add on additional work burden on other employees with such prolonged absences of women employees.
Bringing up baby, changing roles
But one of the more crucial concerns is surrounding the perception that women alone are saddled with the responsibility of bringing up the children. While being sensitive towards the demands on a woman with relation to child rearing, the notification does little to change the notion of child rearing being a shared responsibility. It puts the burden of care-giving completely on the women and does little to change the traditional roles of men as breadwinners to that of care-givers. Urban couples increasingly share responsibilities, but by giving all the benefits to the women the government is doing little to change the mindset that child care is solely the woman's responsibility. Moreover, families that have made the transition to shared responsibilities are the ones who will either suffer from this provision or shift back to the more stereotypical division of labor between spouses as the provision literally places the responsibility of childcare on women.
A part of the child care leave can be used to take care of a sick child, again suggesting that only women are equipped to take care of their sick children. Why is the mother the only person responsible for teaching or taking care during illness, if the father is also willing to perform similar duties?
Shifting roles require rules that benefit that shift. Fifteen days of paternity leave stands out in stark contrast to three years for the woman, revealing the role a father plays/is expected to play in the actual process of nurturing. A more gendered approach is required and child care leave should be extended to both parents with either of them taking the leave to share childcare responsibilities.
And yet, the new leave regime is bound to make government jobs more woman friendly and attractive not only for women but also for nuclear families because of the underlying assurance that, at least, the mother can be with the child when needed. It will also benefit women in most parts of the country where they continue to struggle to maintain a balance between professional and domestic commitments from within the demands of rigid, stereotyped roles. And more crucially, it will benefit single mothers the most, especially in light of recent instances of single mothers losing the custody of their children by virtue of being working professionals as the court found them incapable of taking care of the child. But correspondingly it also throws up the issue of single fatherhood as the law fails to take into account single fathers who also have child care responsibilities. Child care leave is bound to be a tricky issue at a time when the pace of change in Indian society is far from homogenous. Different parts of the country with virtually different time zones as far as the traditional gender imbalanced, division of roles is concerned. It is in this context of contesting changes that the actual implementation of the law and its impact on the lives of women both in the professional and domestic sphere will become crucial.
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