I recently attended a three-day conference organized by the UN women, focused on a topic close to my heart, ending violence against women in India.
I want to lay special emphasis on ‘In India.’ You may wonder, is India different from the rest of the world? Do global strategies on avoiding violence against women not apply to Indian women? From my experience, I know this is a fact.
Culturally, women of my generation grew up observing their grandmothers, mothers, and aunts, who were super strong women. But they still normalized patriarchy in ways that seem absurd today. They had very little time for self-care, made sacrifices for their families and considered themselves their lowest priority. They turned to male members for validation of smallest decisions. Their sense of self was entangled in the family structure, in husbands, in- laws, children and relatives.
Forget standing up for themselves or expressing their needs or desires, even thinking they were equal labelled them as ‘selfish’, which went against the ‘Ideal Women’ stereotype propagated by media and society and hardwired into all Indians. Men have the ‘Ideal Men’ syndrome too but that’s a topic for another day. This Ideal woman syndrome defines the norms of who and what to be. The more women sacrificed, the closer they moved towards an archetype.
Imagine taking a stance against violence to women in such an environment, especially when it frequently occurs in intimate relationships! It simply put women on a war footing against family, and often led to them being ostracized. Taking the recourse of law, further reduced attempts for reconciliation. Thus, even though women yearned for justice, it was a tug between losing a relationship or taking the refuge of the law. This is also what made financially independent and strong women return to abusive relationships. Standing up for themselves and remaining steadfast to their decision was often a difficult journey.
My opinion was validated at the UN Workshop by country-wide organizations who shared their experience of working in this space. During our discussions, a unanimous agreement was reached that primary prevention needs to be the focus instead of secondary response and redressal. Resources being an issue, the most economical way of dealing with these situations is getting it right in the first place.
What is primary prevention? Basically it entails engaging with men/boys and community in an empathic and emotional manner without making it about rights. Developing healthy interpersonal relationships and an apt vocabulary for negotiations is most important. This needs capacity building at all levels, for children, educators, leaders, parents, media, stakeholders big and small. And ensuring people from all socio-economic backgrounds, caste and creed or gender need to change their mental schema of deep-rooted bias. Addressing the psychology of aggression and violence in the perpetrator is another key issue. Men need to understand such behaviour is unacceptable, but it is also necessary to provide help and support to them.
According to me, progressive laws with regressive mindsets are failing us. Our society needs to challenge stereotypes and self-limiting beliefs that prevent us from challenging the status quo. Is this something we can do? Absolutely. We must come together as a community and implement change. Only then can we reduce, if not end violence against women.
