Taking on sexual harassment

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, October 28, 2012

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  The HinduRedefining misogyny Australian PM Julia Gillard. Photo: V.V. Krishnan
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  APGets it in the neck: Opposition leader Tony Abbot.

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It always comes as a shock to realise what good laws we have in this country and the absence of seriousness in implementing them.

You would imagine that women in powerful positions would never need to be worried about being sexually harassed at work. Or verbally abused just because they are women. India has many powerful women in politics and increasingly in the financial and corporate sectors. We hear no complaints from them, or at least they do not talk about this in public.

So when the Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, recently gave a blistering speech on the floor of the House in Canberra, accusing the leader of the opposition, Tony Abbot, in no uncertain terms of misogyny, it must have come as something of a surprise to our women in politics and business. Her famous statement, which was widely viewed on YouTube, says it all. Referring to Mr Abbot, she said: “If he wants to know what misogyny looks like in modern Australia, he doesn’t need a motion in the House of Representatives; he needs a mirror.”

Is it possible that even a woman as powerful as the Prime Minister of a country can be the victim of such misogyny and much of it open, not through innuendo or behind her back? Incidentally, the Australian Prime Minister’s use of the word “misogyny” also triggered a debate on the meaning of the term. The Macquarie dictionary definition is “hatred of women”. It is now being expanded to “entrenched prejudice against women”, according to the editor of the dictionary.

Definitions apart, Ms Gillard’s speech was a reminder that the issue of sexual harassment of all women is still one that remains unaddressed, especially in this country. And here it is the Supreme Court that has stepped in to remind us. In a ruling on October 19, the SC has asked all states, union territories and regulatory bodies to set up mandatory committees where women who are harassed at work can take their complaints. This ought to have been done a long time back. Whether this particular direction of the court will be followed or not is a moot point. Many such directions on a range of issues have been given in the past and convenient excuses have always been found for not implementing them.

Lawyers not exempt

The apex court has been quite specific about what it means in its ruling in response to a petition demanding implementation of the existing guidelines against sexual harassment in the workplace, incidentally also set out by the same court in 1997. The court has noted that “there is still no proper mechanism in place to address the complaints of sexual harassment of women lawyers in Bar Associations, lady doctors and nurses in the medical clinics and nursing homes, women architects working in offices of the engineers and architects and so on and so forth”. Such a ruling will gladden the hearts of many professional women who have learnt the art of swallowing the nonsense they experience at work that is often dismissed as harmless “teasing”. Yes, “eve-teasing” is sexual harassment.

But what is odd about this latest intervention of the apex court is that, in its own premises, committees where women can go and complain have not yet been set up. When 63 women lawyers who practise in the Supreme Court filed a petition in September, asking the apex court and all the other courts under it to implement an existing law, their petition went virtually unnoticed by the media. Yet what were these women asking? That the Supreme Court and the other courts should set up committees to deal with sexual harassment as required by the law.

It should strike anyone as extraordinary that the very court that laid down what are popularly known as the Vishaka guidelines against sexual harassment, which were as good as the law until the recent bill on sexual harassment was passed by Parliament, should itself not follow it.

Apparently, the Supreme Court does have such a committee but it covers only the women in its administrative wing and not those women who practise law in that court. So in their plea, these women lawyers have said: “There is no forum in the SC, or the courts below, for women to address the issue of sexual harassment experienced by them frequently at the hands of their colleagues and persons in whose contact they come in while discharging their duties as advocates.” The important word here is “frequently”. If that is indeed the case, then the absence of such a committee is a serious lapse on the part of all courts in India.

It always comes as a shock to realise what good laws we have in this country and the absence of seriousness in implementing them. The problem is not the law. It is those who ignore it; those who break it; and those, including the government, who give it “lip service”, in the words of the Supreme Court.

(To read the original, click here.)

Just a number

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, September 14, 2012

There is an epidemic of rape in the state of Haryana. Literally. Twelve instances of rape in the last month, 367 in the first six months of this year, 733 last year. And these are only the reported ones.

The shocking news of a 16-year-old Dalit girl in the state immolating herself after she was gang-raped is not just another statistic. (She was from Jind district, where the majority of these rapes have occurred in recent weeks.) It speaks to at least two depressing realities in this sordid tale. One, that if you are a poor woman who is raped, you cannot even imagine a life where there will be justice. Second, if you are a poor woman and a Dalit, then the chances of justice are even slimmer.

The list of the recent rape cases in Haryana makes depressing reading:

Nineteen-year-old newly-married girl abducted by four men in Gohana town near Sonipat and gang raped.

Thirteen-year-old girl raped by her neighbour in Rohtak.

Fifteen-year-old mentally challenged Dalit girl raped in Rohtak.

Thirty-year-old married backward caste woman gang raped inside her house by three men with guns.

Class XI teenage girl gang raped by four men in Gohana town.

Sixteen-year-old Dalit girl gang raped in Jind district

And so on.

Marriage at 16?

In some ways Haryana is a case apart. It has one of the lowest sex ratios in India – 833 women to every 1000 men. A decade back, when data about the extent of the declining sex ratio became known, an increase in sexual assault and violence on women was predicted. But for Haryanvi women, an additional factor is the continued dominance of caste-based khap panchayats, consisting exclusively of men, who lay down the law for everyone regardless of the laws of the land. These rules include special rules for women, how they should dress, behave and exercise their rights. Only the brave or foolhardy dare to question or defy the diktat of the khaps. Even if women obey khap laws, their lives are not free of violence as is evident from the increasing incidence of rape. Incidentally, the khap suggest that rapes will decrease if girls are married off at 16, even if the law of the land makes 18 the minimum age, because then they will not ‘stray’.

Against these realities, we have to worry about all women in Haryana. But Dalit women face a dual burden, that of caste and gender. According to a report in this paper (The Hindu, September 26, 2012), a study by the organisation Navsarjan of Maharashtra, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, revealed that there were 379 cases of atrocities against Dalit women between 2004 and 2009. Of these, 76 were cases of rape or gang rape. By early 2011, only 101 cases (26.6 per cent) or under one third, had been decided.

Clearly, Haryana is not alone when it comes to atrocities against Dalits, including Dalit women. But what has to be addressed urgently is the complete lack of any belief that the criminal justice system can work for the poor and the lower castes. It is only this type of frustration, combined with the shame that society heaps on the victims of rape instead of turning its wrath on the perpetrators, that can force a 16-year-old to end her life in one instance, and the father of another teenager who was raped to end his.

Not friendly places

There is no point in speaking in statistics. Go to any rural area practically anywhere in India and ask women whether they have the courage to go on their own to a police station to report a rape or any other crime. Nine times out of ten they will tell you that they don’t consider police stations friendly places. And this is three decades after campaigns by women’s groups led to important changes in the rape law and in the rules governing the police in their dealings with women. The only women who have been able to put these changes to effective use are those who are organised, have the backing of a collective and know what it is to fight the system instead of just despairing of it.

These recent reports of crimes against women in Haryana are just one more reminder of the contradictory trends in a so-called modernising India. On the one hand, you have technology – like mobile phones or satellite television – that is giving people, including women, the freedom to communicate and to access information even if they are unlettered. On the other hand, there is little that has changed for millions of women in rural India who continue to be burdened by the realities of daily existence without adequate water, sanitation, power, access to health or education. In addition, they have to face the growing conservatism of entrenched anti-women beliefs. And the knowledge that when they are attacked, raped or even killed, they will end up as a crime statistic with no one really caring whether there is any justice.

(To read the original, click here)